tagged w/ Wildfires
-
From Chile to Colombia to Mexico, Latin America has been battered recently by wildfires, floods and droughts.
For many witnessing the extreme weather in the region and around the world, the question that comes up again and again is whether climate change is playing a role. The response from experts: Probably.
While leading climate scientists are unable to pin any single flood or heat wave solely on climate change, experts say the number of extreme weather events is increasing worldwide and the evidence suggests global warming is having an impact.
Wildfires are raging in Chile during an atypical heat wave, and northern Mexico is suffering from its worst drought in 70 years of record-keeping. A second straight season of heavy rains in Colombia killed at least 182 people, destroyed more than 1,200 homes and caused an estimated $2 billion in damage in the past four months.
Researchers predict more wild, unusual weather in the coming years, and they say Latin America is especially vulnerable because deforestation and sprawling construction have made the region more susceptible to flooding and landslides.
At a rose farm in the Colombian town of Chia, workers say floodwaters covered fields of roses last month for the second time in less than a year, leaving damaged greenhouses and a wasteland of shriveled flowers.
"Never in the history of this farm — and it's a business with 30 years in the market — have we ever had any such problem," said Javier Castellanos, the farm's manager, who estimates the damage at more than $6 million after floods in April and December.
He suspects climate change has been intensifying the rainstorms.
While experts say the cyclical cooling of the Pacific Ocean known as La Nina is a big factor in the weather, some also say climate change is likely making some of the severe weather more pronounced than it otherwise would be.
"We're seeing an increase in extremes of high temperatures, an increase in extremes of heavy precipitation, an increase in the length and severity of droughts," said Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University.
more at the linkFrom Chile to Colombia to Mexico, Latin America has been battered recently by... more
-
-
Texas, Alabama and Missouri topped the list of states hardest hit by the unrelenting assault of extreme weather in 2011.
Severe weather across much of the nation has raised the question of whether global warming has already begun to influence shorter-term weather patterns, and the specter of even more extreme years to come as global temperatures continue to rise.
STATES OF DISASTER: TOP 10 STATES
#1- Texas
#2- Alabama
#3- Missouri
#4- North Carolina
#5- Oklahoma
#6- Tennessee
#7- Kansas
#8- Connecticut
#9- Vermont
#10- New Jersey
According to climate studies, the short answer is- yes: the new climate environment created by global warming is more conducive to some extreme events, particularly heat waves and heavy precipitation events: these are now more likely to occur and be more intense when they do take place. Climate models have more difficulty predicting how climate change may be influencing other types of extremes, such as severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, but a warming climate provides more fuel to these events in the form of increased water vapor and heat in the atmosphere.
And those extreme events -- searing heat waves, parching drought, deadly tornadoes, blizzards and floods -- cost billions of dollars in damage, affected millions of lives and tragically, killed more than a thousand people across the U.S.
By some measures, 2011 was the most extreme year for the U.S. since reliable record-keeping began in the 19thcentury -- and the costs have been enormous: according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2011 set a record for the most billion dollar disasters in a single year. There were 12, breaking the old record of nine set in 2009. The aggregate damage from these 12 events totals at least $52 billion, NOAA found.
More at the link-click on the picture here to see more.Texas, Alabama and Missouri topped the list of states hardest hit by the unrelenting... more
-
-
Thirty per cent of the Earth’s surface is affected by fire. Fire destroys forests and vegetation which are our sources of food – it is both a driver and an indicator of climate change.
When biomass is burned, copious amounts of gases and particulate matter are released, billowing smoke plumes fill the sky, and entire ecosystems can change in seconds.
“We’ve seen very saddening situations of fires, particularly in Africa, West America and the Amazon. Fires have been increasing, and have been responsible for thousands of citizens to be relocated. Enormous amounts of money have been spent on destroyed homes and property,” says Jimmy Adegoke, a climate scientist at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa. “Texas in the United States has experienced its record hottest summer this year with record heat waves, droughts and fires.”
The rate of biomass burning is expected to increase in coming years, because climate change causes hotter and drier conditions. Additionally built-up material from repeated fire suppression provides ideal conditions for fires to burn strongly when they eventually break out.
These fires can be seen from space. Using infrared images, satellites can view the hotspots and origin of fires through dark clouds of smoke which can’t be seen with the naked eye. In 2000, NASA launched two minibus-sized satellites, Terra and Aqua, with instruments called MODIS attached to them to scan the globe daily, looking specifically for fire ‘scars’.
“In July I flew over the burning Amazon area in a 2000 kilometre smoke ball. The sun was dim and red and the sky was grey and black. Down here we think it’s bad, but if you see the fires from space, you see how bad it really is and how big the affected areas are,” says Piers Sellers, research scientist for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
“Fires change the characteristics of the ‘clouded south’. Fires affect the interaction between clouds, the sun and the Earth’s surface.” Clouds play an important role in the climate system – fire emissions change the colour and optical characteristics of clouds. Instead of acting as reflectors, clouds now have much more absorption qualities.
“Solar radiation is either retained, reflected by clouds or enters the atmosphere. Mostly it warms the Earth’s surface, which can result in fires.” A high frequency of fire outbreaks causes dark burnt areas which increases the absorption power of heat of the Earth’s surface.
“We are expecting a bigger release of carbon in the atmosphere due to fires,” Adegoke says. Plants grow and use CO2 from the atmosphere to build and maintain biomass and remove CO2.
Burning coal, oil and natural gas transforms carbon from fossil pools created millions of years ago in the Earth’s atmosphere, and affects the climate and ecosystems.
NASA satellites’ tracking of smoke plumes have clearly indicated that fires have a global effect, because their emissions get carried by wind currents.
“The major sources of fires are localised at different times of the year, but the impacts are global.” CO2 has gone up and down, but is ultimately increasing. This affects the Earth’s sustainability potential – the ability of ecosystems to support productivity, especially in north and mid-Africa.
Fires lead to human suffering, poverty, frustration and wars on a regional and global scale. “These effects are aggravated by societies’ lack of interest in global change issues, non-participation in mitigation effort and more biomass burning for survival.”
According to Adegeko, increased fire frequency is directly related to water and rainfall patterns. His current research looks closely at how this impacts on the seven African countries that rely on Lake Chad, which is drying up at an alarming rate. “40 years ago, it was the biggest lake in Africa, but now it is less than 20% what it used to be. This affects the livelihoods of 40 million African people.”
Satellites help scientists track from space where fires are, how intense they are, and where emissions are going in the atmosphere. According to NASA waves of fires occur each year in Africa, starting in the north and moving down to the south. “Documenting fire patterns are important, because they make up a big part of the carbon budget,” Sellers says.
“Beyond observing, the satellites provide information used to create early warning systems,” Adegoke says. Each year Eskom, which produces 95% of South Africa’s electricity and 70% of Africa’s electricity, experiences a substantial amount of down time on its transmission lines due to wildfires. “South Africa is a water scarce country and fire poses a real threat to their people and their biodiversity. South Africa is the third most naturally diverse country in the world.”
South Africa’s geographical position gives them the advantage of being able to track satellites with an advanced capability, which has led to the development of the successful Advanced Fire Information System (AFIS).
AFIS uses SMS alerts to disseminate critical information to fire brigades, farmers, energy providers and fire managers.
“Not all fires are bad, some have a useful productive ecological function, but more needs to be done to manage human-induced fires,” Adegoke says. Sub-saharan Africa uses an agricultural method called ‘slash and burn’, an agricultural practice aimed at preparing land to grow crops quickly and efficiently in areas that were once forested. “A lot of unnecessary burning is done in this way and it has unintentional consequences.”
More at the linkThirty per cent of the Earth’s surface is affected by fire. Fire destroys... more
-
-
Wintertime droughts are increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, and human-caused climate change is partly responsible, according to a new analysis by NOAA scientists and colleagues at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). In the last 20 years, 10 of the driest 12 winters have taken place in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.
“The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” said Martin Hoerling, Ph.D. of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., lead author of a paper published online in the Journal of Climate this month. “This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region’s climate to normal.”
The above is from a news release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “NOAA study: Human-caused climate change a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts.”
It’s a bombshell for three reasons. First, this NOAA team has not always found a human cause for extreme weather events, as Climate Progress discussed here. Second, the study found that global warming is already driving drought in a key region of the world: Climate change is harming a great many people now. Third, the analysis provides important confirmation of climate predictions that human-caused emissions would lead to drying: “The team also found agreement between the observed increase in winter droughts and in the projections of climate models that include known increases in greenhouse gases.”
This comes on the heel of the USGS study, that, despite its flaws still found, “The decrease of floods in the southwestern region is consistent with other research findings that this region has been getting drier and experienced less precipitation as a likely result of climate change.”
And these studies amplify the piece I had in the journal Nature this week that argued drying and Dust-Bowlification driven by climate change — and the impact on food insecurity — are probably the gravest threats the human race faces in the coming decades.
The fact that the NOAA analysis confirmed the climate models predictions of drying is especially worrisome because the climate models project a very dry future for large parts of the planet’s currently habited and arable land in the coming decades:
More at the linkWintertime droughts are increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, and... more
-
-
President Barack Obama swiped at Texas Gov. Rick Perry, criticizing him as "a governor whose state is on fire, denying climate change."
Obama also poked at the audience reactions at recent GOP presidential debates, singling out those who cheered at the prospect of someone dying because he didn't have health insurance – and those who booed a gay service member.
http://veracitystew.com/2011/09/26/war-of-words-obama-slams-perry-on-climate-change/President Barack Obama swiped at Texas Gov. Rick Perry, criticizing him as "a... more
-
-
No wonder Rick Perry prays for Texas during these wildfires! 2nd largest state in union has 114 paid fire departments, 187 combination paid/volunteer depts and 879 volunteer fire dept. The state cut funding for those volunteer departments from $30M to $7M.
Members of some volunteer departments have spent money out of pocket for equipment, but hey, that state budget sure makes Perry look like a big time budget genius, huh? I figured the 'Texas Miracle' was probably just smoke and mirrors. Turns out it is just smoke. If the GOP there had any mirrors they might be scared of what they see in them.
How many homes gone already? Gee, does cutting funding to essential services really save money?
Of course, Perry is counting on FEMA at this point. FEMA, FEMA? That seems to ring a bell... oh yeah, Perry is critical of the agency, but "he told CBS’ Erica Hill Tuesday that now was not the time to worry about reforming the agency." http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/texas-cut-fire-department-funding-by-75-percent-this-year/ Right, RIck, just send the teams in, crank up the federal money machine and haul your ass out of the wildfire.
Will Eric Cantor insist on cuts to other essential services to make up for what will be sent to Texas to put out wildfires and maintain the myth of the much touted (by Perry) 'Texas Miracle?'
My ol granny used to say "You pay for what you need, whether you buy it or not". Might be we need some grannies running things. She was, by the way, a Republican. Of course, back when she registered to vote, just after women were finally granted that precious right, the GOP was a different animal than it is today.No wonder Rick Perry prays for Texas during these wildfires! 2nd largest state in... more
-
-
Just 100 days after a deadly earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, concerns are being raised about several U.S. nuclear stations that are facing natural disasters of their own.Just 100 days after a deadly earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi... more
-
-
In New Mexico, an out-of-control wildfire that began Sunday has already burned nearly 80-square miles and is a mile or less from Los Alamos National Laboratory, home to a nuclear weapons plutonium facility. Pieces of ash from the fire have dropped onto the laboratory grounds, sparking "spot" fires. A senior investigator with the Project on Government Oversight said a fire at the facility would be a "disaster" that could result in large and lethal releases of radiation. Officials insist explosive materials on the laboratory’s grounds are safely stored in underground bunkers made of concrete and steel. But the group, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, told the Associated Press that the fire appeared to be about 3.5 miles from a dumpsite where as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in fabric tents above ground. The group said the drums were awaiting transport to a low-level radiation dump site in southern New Mexico. We speak with Greg Mello, the director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a citizen-led nuclear disarmament group based in New Mexico. “Los Alamos National Laboratory is becoming the center of plutonium manufacturing for the country,” Mello says, even though “it is a place with a lot of natural hazards, not just fires, but also earthquakes.”In New Mexico, an out-of-control wildfire that began Sunday has already burned nearly... more
-
-
Wildfires can cause similar damage to other devastating natural disasters, and while they similarly have their own season, they can occur at any time. These top 25 wildfires consist of historical as well as recent fires and what caused them.
:http://www.firesciencedegree.com/top-25-wildfires-of-all-time/Wildfires can cause similar damage to other devastating natural disasters, and while... more
-
-
Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense, lasting on average 78 days longer than they did just two decades ago. Northern Arizona University Biology Professor Bruce Hungate tells host Bruce Gellerman about research that shows a relationship between fire and the release of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.
Transcript
GELLERMAN: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios in Somerville Mass, this is Living on Earth. I'm Bruce Gellerman. Nitrous Oxide is commonly known as laughing gas, but there’s nothing funny about its effects on climate change.
Biologist Bruce Hungate accidentally discovered that during wild fires, huge amounts of nitrous oxide in the soil are released into the atmosphere. It all has to do with microscopic bugs in the soil that give off laughing gas. Bruce Hungate is a professor at Northern Arizona University.
HUNGATE: Bacteria called denitrifiers use nitrate in respiration just like humans use oxygen, and in the process, they produce nitrous oxide. Fires promote conditions in the soil that favor production of nitrous oxide by these soil microorganisms. They’re microscopic, but their impacts are global by producing this greenhouse gas. And in fact, most of the nitrous oxide in the atmosphere comes from these tiny creatures.
GELLERMAN: So how potent is nitrous oxide as a greenhouse gas, compared to, say, carbon dioxide?
HUNGATE: So on a molecule-per-molecule basis, nitrous oxide is three hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide. That’s a very potent greenhouse gas.
GELLERMAN: So you studied grasslands, right?
HUNGATE: Right.
GELLERMAN: Would I find nitrous oxide and these little bugs that produce it in forests?
HUNGATE: Denitrifiers are everywhere. They’re in soils all around the world. And they produce nitrous oxide from these soils all around the world. And there actually have been a lot of experiments looking at the impacts of fire on nitrous oxide production from forests as well, it turns out, especially in the tropics - and often there what you see is after a fire, you get more nitrous oxide emitted from soil.
Bruce Hungate is a professor of Biology at Northern Arizona University. (Northern Arizona University.
GELLERMAN: And we didn’t know about this forest-fire and nitrous oxide relationship before?
HUNGATE: What we did know is that, in general, after fire, nitrous oxide emissions often go up. So we knew that before. What we didn’t know is how fires interact with these other components of the changing environment and in our experiment that was the real surprise.
GELLERMAN: You were running a series of experiments and you had a bunch of test plots, as I understand it, and that’s where you made your discovery.
HUNGATE: That’s right. We started this experiment back in 1998 in a grassland in California where we actually changed the physical environment around test plots to try to simulate the environment of the future. We focused on four on-going global environmental changes. More CO2 in the atmosphere, so some plots have tubes that release extra CO2 into the atmosphere around the growing plants, and also warming, we have infrared heat lamps over some plots to make them warmer. Extra nitrogen deposition - some plots get an extra dose of nitrogen simulating higher industrial activity and its effect on the atmosphere in the future. And also rainfall, some plots have sprinklers that simulate more rain. So we had each of these changes by itself, and then in every possible combination with the other global changes - it was really complex.
And then a downed power line caused a fire that burned part of it. At first we were really worried about damage to the experiment, but it turned into an opportunity. The fire burned only part of it, so we still had controls to quantify the impact of the fire along with the background of all these global environmental changes. So instead of losing the experiment, we got an even more complex experiment - very complex, but also interesting and exciting, with these new results.
GELLERMAN: So this accidental fire leads to this surprising finding that you can have accelerated global warming due to the nitrous oxide in the soil being released, essentially.
HUNGATE: Yeah, that’s exactly right, it was a surprising result. When we looked at each of these things by itself, we wouldn’t have been able to predict the result we got.
GELLERMAN: So you get this intense burst of nitrous oxide - so it’s not long lasting? Or…
HUNGATE: Well, actually it is. It was a delayed reaction. The pulse of nitrous oxide after fire lasted about three years. And that was another surprising finding, because past work on fires and nitrous oxide emissions haven’t shown quite as long lasting an effect. We think that might have to do with a combination of the global environmental changes along with the fire that really promoted nitrous oxide production.
GELLERMAN: So, Professor, let me play out the scenarios. So if you have a wildfire it releases this nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, it affects climate change dramatically, it gets warmer and causes the conditions for more wildfires - you’ve got a feedback loop here.
HUNGATE: That’s exactly right. It’s where climate change leads to more fires, which in turn lead to more climate change. And it’s not just nitrous oxide, these fires also produce carbon dioxide and methane, so they’re important sources of greenhouse gasses.
More at the link.Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense, lasting on average 78 days longer... more
-
-
Fresh evacuations as southern Arizona fire jumps highway, canyon
By the CNN Wire Staff
June 19, 2011 10:30 p.m. EDT
Read more about the fires from CNN affiliates KVOA, KOLD, KGUN, KMSB and KTVK.
(CNN) -- Hundreds of firefighters fought to control several dangerous blazes in Arizona, fighting to make progress even as expanded evacuations and power outages signalled that the battle was far from over.
The Monument fire -- which U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell has deemed the nation's "number one priority," putting it first in line for any air, ground or other resources -- jumped Highway 92 late Sunday afternoon at Carr Canyon heading east, according to the Cochise County website.
"We've had a hard day today, with things that we didn't want to happen," fire spokesman Bill Paxton told CNN on Sunday night. "The bull came out of the pen."
Thanks to dry, windy conditions, the fire broke through four different contingency lines, including going over to the other side of the highway, said Paxton, part of the national Interagency Incident Management Team.
"Everything aligned for a massive push," he said. "It's really hard on the community here."
The county sheriff's office broadened the evacuation zone soon thereafter east to the San Pedro River, reports InciWeb, an online interagency database that tracks fires, floods and other disasters.
On Sunday evening, that website noted that the fire had burned at least 20,956 acres and was 27% contained. More than 1,000 personnel -- as well as 100 engines and nine helicopters -- were battling that blaze, which had burned 44 homes and 18 other structures from its start June 12 through Sunday.
The weather has hardly been cooperating in the fight, with humidity at 7% and temperatures topping 96 degrees. The National Weather Service forecast winds should weaken somewhat in the early part of this week, to between 7 and 13 mph in Sierra Vista, Arizona, though temperatures were still expected to remain in the 90s all week.
"The conditions that we're dealing with here are as bad as we can get," Tidwell said Saturday. "It just can't get any worse."
People living in Sierra Vista were ordered to leave Sunday while firefighters conducted burn-out operations in an attempt to stop the fire moving that way, CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reported from the area.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has issued emergency declarations for the Monument fire and another blaze, Horseshoe II, making Cochise County eligible for $100,000 toward response and recovery expenses.
This is just one of dozens of wildfires affecting the southwestern United States, where red flag warnings were in effect for most of Arizona, all of New Mexico, much of north Texas and portions of Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and Utah for Sunday. A red flag warning means weather conditions -- mainly high heat, low humidity and strong winds -- pose an extreme fire risk.
"The winds certainly will be very gusty and strong," said Ken Daniel, weather service meteorologist in Flagstaff, Arizona. "Any new fire starts would have the potential to have explosive growth."
Nationwide, wildfires have burned almost as many acres in the first half of 2011 as were recorded by the National Interagency Fire Center for all of 2010. The agency reports on its website that 3.1 million acres in the United States had been ignited by wildfires as of May 31, compared to 3.2 million burned acres cited in the organization's year-end report in November 2010.
One Arizona blaze that started May 29 has mushroomed into a historically large wildfire. Known as the Wallow fire, it has burned 511,118 acres and was 44% contained as of Sunday.
This fire has caused power outages Sunday in Arizona cities Blue and parts of Alpine, Nutrioso and Greer, the Navopache Electric Cooperative reported on its website. Generators are powering some of the company's New Mexico customers, as well as those in Alpine, Arizona.
Residents of Luna, New Mexico, were ordered to evacuate Saturday afternoon after the blaze jumped containment lines along U.S. 180, according to InciWeb.
But fire public information officer Rich Szlauko had some good news, telling CNN that in terms of bringing the Wallow fire under control, "everything is starting to look pretty good."
Some 3,600 people continue to battle the blaze, in the face of winds Sunday measuring 20-30 mph, he said.
Tidwell said Saturday that he was "very optimistic" that damage from future wildfires could be minimized by thinning forests and clearing out biomass -- which did occur, to some extent, in parts of eastern Arizona. He noted that 3.2 million acres were "treated" nationwide last year.
Sen. John Kyl, R-Arizona, noted Saturday that the estimated $64.1 million price for the Wallow fire would more than double after the costs of mitigation efforts to prevent mudslides from the summer monsoons.
"Just think that what we could have done using those funds to treat those forests in advance," Kyl said.
But government budget strains have limited the amount of money going to such efforts. "The only way we are going to get these (forests) thinned is through greater participation of private enterprise," Sen. John McCain said, adding that the government should try to facilitate such initiatives, including by allowing limited logging in national parks.
"There is simply not enough tax dollars to get the job done without them," the Arizona Republican said of private companies.
CNN's Greg Botelho contributed to this report.Fresh evacuations as southern Arizona fire jumps highway, canyon
By the CNN Wire... more
-
-
The devastating string of tornadoes, droughts, wildfires and floods that hit the United States this spring marks 2011 as one of the most extreme years on record, according to a new federal analysis.
Just shy of the halfway mark, 2011 has seen eight $1-billion-plus disasters, with total damages from wild weather at more than $32 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Agency officials said that total could grow significantly, since they expect this year's North Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1, will be an active one.
Overall, NOAA experts said extreme weather events have grown more frequent in the United States since 1980. Part of that shift is due to climate change, said Tom Karl, director of the agency's National Climatic Data Center.
"Extremes of precipitation are generally increasing because the planet is actually warming and more water is evaporating from the oceans," he said. "This extra water vapor in the atmosphere then enables rain and snow events to become more extensive and intense than they might otherwise be."
But for some kinds of extreme weather, teasing out a contribution from climate change is more difficult.
The second half of April brought a swarm of tornadoes that leveled parts of the Midwest, including the twister that killed 151 people in Joplin, Mo. So far, 2011 has seen the sixth-highest number of tornado deaths on record, prompting many people to wonder whether climate change has played a role. So far, scientists say there's no good evidence for or against a climate change influence on tornado behavior.
Meanwhile, computer models predict that droughts -- like those that have scorched large swaths of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona this year -- will become stronger and more frequent as climate change continues. But because patterns of drought vary widely from decade to decade, that makes it "very difficult and unlikely that we're going to be able to discern a human fingerprint, if there is one, on the drought record in the foreseeable future," Karl said.
cont.The devastating string of tornadoes, droughts, wildfires and floods that hit the... more
-
-
Last month, 350.org founder Bill McKibben published a must-read op-ed about the failure of the media and others to connect any dots between recent extreme weather events and climate change. Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia has combined McKibben’s words with striking images.
Underscoring McKibben’s point is an uber-lame New York Times story today, “As Arizona Fire Rages, Officials Seek Its Cause,” which, you guessed it, is dot free. Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters wrote Friday, “The return of critical fire conditions this weekend means that the Wallow fire will likely become Arizona’s largest wildfire in history.”
Before taking on the NYT piece, let’s look at the video:
McKibben’s piece is a nice work of rhetoric. After April saw records set for most tornadoes in a month and in 24 hours, I examined the climate-tornado link in great detail here, looking at the data, the literature, and expert analysis. That piece concluded:
1.When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.
2.Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.
The NY Times has been doing some very good science reporting recently (see NY Times Bombshell: “The latest scientific research suggests” climate change is “helping to destabilize the food system”). But their overall reporting team is not connecting the dots (see, for instance, my May piece “New York Times blows the Dust Bowl story“).
The NYT had promised two years ago to do more coherent reporting, as the Columbia Journalism Review noted at the time:
Environmental S.W.A.T. Team
On Thursday, The New York Times will launch a new, crack environmental reporting unit that will pull in eight specialized reporters from the Science, National, Metro, Foreign, and Business desks in a bid for richer, more prominent coverage.
Not.
The more prominent coverage simply never happened, as I detailed in the second half of my January piece, Silence of the Lambs: Media herd’s coverage of climate change “fell off the map” in 2010, which shows that in all of 2010 none of “the largest lead headlines” in the paper dealt with climate. As professor Robert Brulle, an expert on environmental communications, wrote me at the time:
Apparently, the editorial board of the NY Times has yet to fully grasp the importance of global climate change to our collective survival. As the science becomes stronger and more dire, the editors of the NY Times bury their head deeper into the sand.
Today’s Arizona story is a case in point. Now I don’t necessarily think that every single story written on the record Arizona wildfires must focus on or even mention climate change. But the NYT story is quite specifically on the “cause” of the fires. Worse, the newspaper has no difficulty repeating dubious right-wing myths as to the cause of the fires
Many wildfires are caused by humans — and investigators say this one may have been started by two unattended campfires — distinguishing them from hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes….
Residents heaped plenty of blame on Mother Nature as harsh winds spread the flames and low humidity left the forest full of fuel. But residents and experts also pointed their fingers at a variety of policies that they said had contributed to wildfires that seem to have grown in intensity over the years.
Some complained that it was environmentalists who had caused the forests to become tinderboxes by preventing the thinning of trees as they sought to protect wildlife. Others, like William Wallace Covington, a forestry expert at Northern Arizona University, countered that the leading factor was the grazing of forest grass for generations. The government’s longstanding practice of quickly extinguishing forest fires was also seen as adding to the thick clusters of highly combustible trees.
Seriously.
You would never know from the NYT that this standard right-wing talking point has actually been examined in the scientific literature and found wanting. Back in 2006, Science magazine published a major article analyzing whether the recent soaring wildfire trend was due to a change in forest management practices or to climate change. The study, led by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, concluded:
Robust statistical associations between wildfire and hydroclimate in western forests indicate that increased wildfire activity over recent decades reflects sub-regional responses to changes in climate. Historical wildfire observations exhibit an abrupt transition in the mid-1980s from a regime of infrequent large wildfires of short (average of 1 week) duration to one with much more frequent and longer burning (5 weeks) fires. This transition was marked by a shift toward unusually warm springs, longer summer dry seasons, drier vegetation (which provoked more and longer burning large wildfires), and longer fire seasons. Reduced winter precipitation and an early spring snowmelt played a role in this shift.
That 2006 study noted global warming (from human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide) will further accelerate all of these trends during this century.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCY-3XnqS0&feature=player_embedded
continuedLast month, 350.org founder Bill McKibben published a must-read op-ed about the... more
-
-
And we have to stop allowing the same people to shut this conversation down. We are no where near prepared for adaptation and what this will bring in the future, nevermind the present. Even if we completely stopped greenhouse gas emissions today, what we have already put up in the atmosphere over the last century would continue to play out. And yet, we continue to spew out 70 million tons of this every day as if it doesn't matter and continue listening to those whose political and economic lives depend on making this a rote issue. Well it isn't rote, and it is now upon us. And this government is doing nothing. And that is simply unacceptable. And that will be a consideration when I vote in any election.
____
excerpt:
"Joplin, Mo., was prepared. The tornado warning system gave residents 24 minutes’ notice that a twister was bearing down on them. Doctors and nurses at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, who had practiced tornado drills for years, moved fast, getting patients away from windows, closing blinds, and activating emergency generators. And yet more than 130 people died in Joplin, including four people at St. John’s, where the tornado sucked up the roof and left the building in ruins, like much of the shattered city.
Even those who deny the existence of global climate change are having trouble dismissing the evidence of the last year. In the U.S. alone, nearly 1,000 tornadoes have ripped across the heartland, killing more than 500 people and inflicting $9 billion in damage. The Midwest suffered the wettest April in 116 years, forcing the Mississippi to flood thousands of square miles, even as drought-plagued Texas suffered the driest month in a century. Worldwide, the litany of weather’s extremes has reached biblical proportions. The 2010 heat wave in Russia killed an estimated 15,000 people. Floods in Australia and Pakistan killed 2,000 and left large swaths of each country under water. A months-long drought in China has devastated millions of acres of farmland. And the temperature keeps rising: 2010 was the hottest year on earth since weather records began.
From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone. Which means you haven’t seen anything yet. And we are not prepared.
Picture California a few decades from now, a place so hot and arid the state’s trademark orange and lemon trees have been replaced with olive trees that can handle the new climate. Alternating floods and droughts have made it impossible for the reservoirs to capture enough drinking water. The picturesque Highway 1, sections of which are already periodically being washed out by storm surges and mudslides, will have to be rerouted inland, possibly through a mountain. These aren’t scenes from another deadly-weather thriller like The Day After Tomorrow. They’re all changes that California officials believe they need to brace for within the next decade or two. And they aren’t alone. Across the U.S., it’s just beginning to dawn on civic leaders that they’ll need to help their communities brave coming dangers brought by climate change, from disappearing islands in Chesapeake Bay to dust bowls in the Plains and horrific hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet only 14 states are even planning, let alone implementing, climate-change adaptation plans, says Terri Cruce, a climate consultant in California. The other 36 apparently are hoping for a miracle.
The game of catch-up will have to happen quickly because so much time was lost to inaction. “The Bush administration was a disaster, but the Obama administration has accomplished next to nothing either, in part because a significant part of the Democratic Party is inclined to balk on this issue as well,” says economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “We [are] past the tipping point.” The idea of adapting to climate change was once a taboo subject. Scientists and activists feared that focusing on coping would diminish efforts to reduce carbon emissions. On the opposite side of the divide, climate-change deniers argued that since global warming is a “hoax,” there was no need to figure out how to adapt. “Climate-change adaptation was a nonstarter,” says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. “If you wanted to talk about that, you would have had to talk about climate change itself, which the Bush administration didn’t want to do.” In fact, President Bush killed what author Mark Hertsgaard in his 2011 book, Hot, calls “a key adaptation tool,” the National Climate Assessment, an analysis of the vulnerabilities in regions of the U.S. and ideas for coping with them. The legacy of that: state efforts are spotty and local action is practically nonexistent. “There are no true adaptation experts in the federal government, let alone states or cities,” says Arroyo. “They’ve just been commandeered from other departments.”
cont.And we have to stop allowing the same people to shut this conversation down. We are no... more
-
-
For months, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has berated President Obama and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for not giving the state more federal money to combat historic wildfires that have so far burned 2.5 million acres. Despite the fact that the administration has offered 26 different kinds of federal assistance to combat the fires, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) claimed that Obama is waging “a war on Texas.” After months of blaming the President for not doing enough, Reuters reported yesterday that Perry is poised to sign a budget that slashes funding for the state agency that is battling the wildfires.
Republicans control all three branches of government in Texas and are close to an agreement on a budget that makes deep cuts to the Texas Forest Service during an unprecedented and destructive wildfire season:
----The Texas Forest Service faces almost $34 million in budget cuts over the next two years, roughly a third of the agency’s total budget. The cuts are in both the House and Senate versions of the proposed state budget. [...]
Assistance grants [for volunteer fire departments] are likely to take the biggest hit. Volunteers — two of whom were killed in fighting this year’s fires — make up nearly 80 percent of the state’s fire-fighting force and are first responders to roughly 90 percent of wildfires in Texas.----
Chris Barron, executive director of the State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association, says the funding on the chopping block is indispensable. Many volunteer fire departments already have worn-down equipment, and without funding for new equipment, “response times will almost certainly increase.”
Perry’s recent boast that Texas is “a model for the nation in disaster preparedness and response” is especially ironic in light of his approval of cutting Forest Service funds when the agency most needs them. Meanwhile, the governor, who one Texas political columnist notes “has made almost a religion of blasting everything Obama does and doesn’t do,” has accused the president of pursuing a political vendetta against Texas.
“Why are you taking care of Alabama, why are you taking care of other states,” Perry said at a press conference this month, adding, “The letter [requesting federal aid] didn’t get lost in the mail.” Perry carried his public blame game so far that he even refused to meet with the president when he visited Texas last week to deliver an immigration address.
One recent Fort Worth Star Telegram editorial called out Perry for his posturing:
----Their feigned outrage and indignant messages to the White House about recent Texas wildfires and the administration’s refusal to declare practically the entire state a disaster area are acts of political grandstanding rather than true concern for the safety and welfare of fellow Texans. [...]
[Perry] knows full well that his request for a disaster declaration was overstated and that his insistence that FEMA is denying help is a gross exaggeration. [...]
Even if we assume, or desperately want to believe, that the federal government has not done enough to help Texas in this crisis, does anyone believe that all but two of Texas’ 254 counties should be declared a disaster area because of wildfires? That’s preposterous.----
Despite the fact that FEMA’s manpower and money have been stretched thin by a series of disasters, they’ve been deeply involved in the effort to fight the Texas fires and have given the state aid that “covers 75 percent of Texas’s costs for emergency response work, such as evacuations, equipment, field camps and meals for firefighters.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/21/tx-gop-obama-fires/For months, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has berated President Obama and the Federal... more
-
-
The genetically engineered tree (GE tree) company ArborGen, a joint project of timber corporations International Paper (NYSE: IP), MeadWestvaco (NYSE: MWV) and Rubicon (NZSE: RBC.NZ), decided suddenly yesterday to change its plans and not sell shares in ArborGen publicly on the NASDAQ exchange. [1]
On July 1, 2010, three member organizations of the STOP GE Trees Campaign ( Global Justice Ecology Project, Dogwood Alliance and Sierra Club) teamed up with attorneys at the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety to sue the US Department of Agriculture over their approval of a series of field trials involving more than a quarter of a million GE cold tolerant eucalyptus trees because the Environmental Assessment the USDA used to approve the field trials was inadequate. The lawsuit demands that the USDA prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement regarding the field trials because of their potential impacts on forests, ground water, wildlife and endangered or threatened species. [2]
The groups that filed the suit charge that GE trees carry serious social and ecological risks; and that these risks were either downplayed or outright ignored in the USDA's Environmental Assessment.
"This lawsuit against the USDA over their approval of GE eucalyptus trees is just one of a series of lawsuits that has been filed against the USDA by the Center for Food Safety, the Sierra Club and others," stated Dr. Neil Carman, a plant scientist with the Sierra Club. "The USDA's Environmental Assessments on GMO plants are shams. Their science is completely flawed. Litigation has revealed this time and time again in court. I think ArborGen has good right to worry that they will never get commercial approval for their GE trees, based on the legal precedents so far," he added.
Even industry is acknowledging the chilling effect of the numerous lawsuits against GMOs. In an article from April 29, 2011 in Biomass Power and Thermal Magazine, Karen Batra, director of communications for the Biotechnology Industry Organization stated, "Obviously, the litigious environment we have seen in the past couple years is representing a tremendous deterrent to investment in [biotechnology]..." Batra says. "It's making it very hard to get investments and to see their way through what could be five and 10 years in development of a product, if when you finally do get to a point where you're close to commercialization, you're going to have to deal with litigation. It is creating a huge barrier." [3]
"According to the CEO of Rubicon, one of ArborGen's parent companies, ArborGen plans to sell half a billion GE eucalyptus trees annually just in the US South," stated Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project and North American Focal Point of The Netherlands-based Global Forest Coalition. "This could devastate forest ecosystems, especially when you consider that one of ArborGen's eucalyptus species is an engineered variant of a species known to be invasive in Florida. In addition, eucalyptus trees are both explosively flammable and extremely water intensive. And now they've modified them to be cold tolerant, so they can spread throughout the US South. It's a disaster waiting to happen. GE eucalyptus trees are like kudzu, only flammable." [4] There are also several engineered species of native trees that are in the field trial stage-like poplar and loblolly pine that could irreversibly contaminate native forests with their engineered traits. [5]
In September 2009 the USDA rejected ArborGen's initial application for permission to release millions of their GE eucalyptus trees commercially.
"In addition to the detrimental impacts of escape or contamination of forests by GE trees is the fact that International Paper stated that they anticipate the use of GE trees will vastly expand the acreage of tree plantations in the South," stated Scot Quaranda, Campaign Director of the Dogwood Alliance. "Where is all of this land going to come from? Native forests will have to be clearcut to make room for GE tree plantations. Commercial release of GE eucalyptus trees will devastate the biologically rich native hardwood forests of the South, which is why Dogwood Alliance is so strongly opposed to them." [6]
Organizing to stop the commercialization of genetically engineered trees has been going on since 2000, with The STOP GE Trees Campaign founded in 2004 by thirteen groups including Global Justice Ecology Project, Dogwood Alliance and Sierra Club. The Campaign has since grown to include 145 organizations worldwide-with many based in Latin America. [7]
The court is expected to produce a ruling shortly on the lawsuit to stop ArborGen's eucalyptus field trials.The genetically engineered tree (GE tree) company ArborGen, a joint project of timber... more
-
-
-
Wildfires continued to burn rampantly across the state of Texas on Tuesday and are approaching Dallas, as the Forest Service struggles to keep on top of the situation.
So far, more than 1,500,000 acres have been scorched by several different fires and have been relegated to the southeastern portion of the lone star state but that might soon change.
Fires have hit Young County, where 2,000 acres have already burned, the forest service said. Young County is around 25 miles south-southeast of Dallas-Fort Worth. The town of Bunger and some nearby cities have been evacuated over the past several days due to the so-called Possum Kingdom fire.
The Possum Kingdom fire has increased from around 60,000 acres, which was initially reported on Monday to more than 100,000 acres on Tuesday.
In Young county and nearby areas, more than 600 homes are threatened, said the Forest Service.
Austin, the capital city and located in the center-southern part of the state, suffered due to a fire in the Oak Hill neighborhood. Accidental arson was blamed as the cause.
More than 200 counties in the state have initiated burn bans as the hot and dry weather continues to persist, essentially making portions of the state a tinderbox. Authorities say that they have responded to more than 7,800 fires in the state so far this season.
Forest officials noted that “historic drought and critical fire weather conditions” have made it extremely difficult for firefighters to contain the fires. Excessive wind has only aggravated the problem.
On Monday, five new firefighting aircraft were deployed to help contain the blazes. However, as officials noted, a persistent lack of manpower has severely hampered efforts to slow the fires.
Texas Governor Rick Perry sent a letter to the Obama administration, requesting that a major disaster declaration be proclaimed.
Related Articles
â– Tornadoes Could Hit Southern US Again
"As wildfires continue to rage across our state, Texas is reaching its capacity to respond to these emergencies and is in need of federal assistance,” he said in a statement. “I urge President Obama to approve our request quickly so Texans can continue receiving the resources and support they need as wildfires remain an ongoing threat.”Wildfires continued to burn rampantly across the state of Texas on Tuesday and are... more
-
-
httA massive range fire has been spreading in West Texas Saturday, and firefighters have been bracing for the possibility the situation could worsen due to dry, windy conditions.
p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhzEaoZ3Xk0&feature=player_detailpagehttA massive range fire has been spreading in West Texas Saturday, and firefighters... more
-
-
Residents of Australia's biggest city, Sydney, sweltered through a sixth straight day of more than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) heat on Saturday, the longest stretch on record.
The weather bureau said temperatures have been in the mid- to high-30s since last Sunday, the most enduring heatwave since records began 153 years ago in 1858.
"We've had runs of hot weather for three or four days but you get a southerly change that keeps it below 30 then it warms up again," said Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Neale Fraser.
Fraser said the heatwave, dubbed the "big sweat", was set to continue into Sunday before cooler weather arrives.
Temperatures hit 41.5 degrees C (107 F) in central Sydney on Saturday, sending thousands to beaches and swimming pools to cool off. Meanwhile firefighters have battled scores of bush blazes.
Others parts of the country are battling extreme weather, after a category five cyclone hit Queensland this week following devastating floods which hit three-quarters of the vast northeastern state.Residents of Australia's biggest city, Sydney, sweltered through a sixth straight... more
-
