[TheClimate.Vote] November 13, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Nov 13 09:27:59 EST 2018
/November 13, 2018/
[fires from space]
*NASA's ARIA Maps California Wildfires from Space*
<https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7278>
The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, produced new damage maps
using synthetic aperture radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1
satellites. The first map shows areas likely damaged by the Woolsey Fire
as of Sunday, Nov. 11.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7278
[Why fires are so bad]
*How does climate change make wildfires worse?
<https://www.sbs.com.au/news/how-does-climate-change-make-wildfires-worse>*
As deadly wildfires threaten thousands in northern and southern
California, scientists have identified 10 ways climate change can make
wildfires worse.
Deadly wildfires such as those raging in northern and southern
California have become more common in the US state and elsewhere in the
world in recent years. AFP talked to scientists about the ways in which
climate change can make them worse.
Other factors have also fuelled an increase in the frequency and
intensity of major fires, including human encroachment on wooded areas,
and questionable forest management. "The patient was already sick," in
the words of David Bowman, a professor of environmental change biology
at the University of Tasmania and a wildfire expert.
"But climate change is the accelerant."
*Fine weather for a fire*
Any firefighter can tell you the recipe for "conducive fire weather":
hot, dry and windy.
No surprise, then, that many of the tropical and temperate regions
devastated by a surge in forest fires are those predicted in climate
models to see higher temperatures and more droughts.
"Besides bringing more dry and hot air, climate change - by elevating
evaporation rates and drought prevalence - also creates more flammable
ecosystems," noted Christopher Williams, director of environmental
sciences at Clark University in Massachusetts.
In the last 20 years, California and southern Europe have seen several
droughts of a magnitude that used to occur only once a century.
*More fuel*
Dry weather means more dead trees, shrubs and grass - and more fuel for
the fire.
"All those extremely dry years create an enormous amount of desiccated
biomass," said Michel Vennetier, an engineer at France's National
Research of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture (IRSTEA).
"That's an ideal combustible."
*Change of scenery*
To make matters worse, new species better adapted to semi-arid
conditions grow in their place.
"Plants that like humidity have disappeared, replaced by more flammable
plants that can withstand dry conditions, like rosemary, wild lavender
and thyme," said Vennetier.
"The change happens quite quickly."
*Thirsty plants*
With rising mercury and less rain, water-stressed trees and shrubs send
roots deeper into the soil, sucking up every drop of water they can to
nourish leaves and needles.
That means the moisture in the earth that might have helped to slow a
fire sweeping through a forest or garrigue [scrubland] is no longer there.
*Longer season*
In the northern hemisphere's temperate zone, the fire season was
historically short - July and August, in most places.
"Today, the period susceptible to wildfires has extended from June to
October," said IRSTEA scientist Thomas Curt, referring to the
Mediterranean basin.
In California, which only recently emerged from a five-year drought,
some experts say there's no longer a season at all - fires can happen
year-round.
*More lightning*
"The warmer it gets, the more lightning you have," said Mike Flannigan,
a professor at the University of Alberta, Canada and director of the
Western Partnership for Wildland Fire Science.
"Especially in the northern areas, that translates into more fires."
At the same time, he noted that 95 per cent of wildfires worldwide are
started by humans.
*Weakened jet stream*
Normal weather patterns over North America and Eurasia depend heavily on
the powerful, high-altitude air currents - produced by the contrast
between polar and equatorial temperatures - known as the jet stream.
But global warming has raised temperatures in the Arctic twice as fast
as the global average, weakening those currents.
"We are seeing more extreme weather because of what we call blocked
ridges, which is a high-pressure system in which air is sinking, getting
warmer and drier along the way," said Flannigan.
"Firefighters have known for decades that these are conducive to fire
activity."
*Unmanageable intensity*
Climate change not only boosts the likelihood of wildfires, but their
intensity as well.
"If the fire gets too intense" as in California right now, and in Greece
last summer - "there is no direct measure you can take to stop it," said
Flannigan.
"It's like spitting on a campfire."
*Beetle infestations*
With rising temperatures, beetles have moved northward into Canada's
boreal forests, wreaking havoc - and killing trees - along the way.
"Bark beetle outbreaks temporarily increase forest flammability by
increasing the amount of dead material, such as needles," said Williams.
*Positive feedback*
Globally, forests hold about 45 per cent of Earth's land-locked carbon
and soak up a quarter of human greenhouse gas emissions.
But as forests die and burn, some of the carbon is released back into
the atmosphere, contributing to climate change in a vicious loop that
scientists call "positive feedback."
Source: AFP -
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/how-does-climate-change-make-wildfires-worse
[understanding fire]
*Hellfire
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2018/oct/10/climate-change-what-will-happen-hellfire-california-forest-fires>*
by John Vaillant - Photography by Tim Hussin
The worst case scenario plays out the same way everywhere, whether you
are in southern California or northern Alberta. A nascent wildfire -
driven by extreme heat, high winds, drought conditions and a century of
largely successful fire suppression - explodes into a juggernaut and
takes over the countryside.
Any houses in the way are simply more fuel. Preheated to 932F by the
100ft flames of the advancing blaze, homes don't so much catch on fire
as explode into flames. In a dense neighborhood, many homes may do this
simultaneously. The speed of ignition shocks people - citizens and
firefighters alike - but it is only the beginning.
Because the temperatures achievable in an urban wildfire are comparable
to those in a crucible, virtually everything is consumed as fuel. What
doesn't burn, melts: steel car chassis warp and bend while lesser metals
- aluminum engine blocks, magnesium wheels - will liquify.
In turn, the ferocious heat generates its own wind that can drive sparks
and embers hundreds of meters ahead of the fire. Conflagrations of this
magnitude are virtually unstoppable. Ordinary house fires often leave
structures somewhat intact; things can be salvaged. But no one is
prepared for the damage caused by a wildfire when it overruns their town
- not the scale of it, nor its capacity to wipe out everything they have
worked for...
- - -
A home is a kind of memory palace and there is an existential cruelty in
the razing of it. To burn them down by the hundreds and thousands, as
wildfires are doing now in the western US and Canada, is a brutal
affront to the order we live by, to the habitats that give our lives
meaning. Their loss shocks the heart like a sudden death. Left behind
are juxtapositions so surreal and disorienting that to describe them
sounds like the mutterings of an insane person: garbage can puddle;
melted guns on a platter; cars bleeding aluminum; pile of tire wire. Is
this really where I lived, where I raised my children? Where did their
beds go? Their bedrooms?...
- - -
There are videos and they are terrifying: surging up out of a cluster of
burning neighborhoods is a whirling vortex 300 metres across, seething
with smoke and fire. In the annals of firefighting, there is no direct
comparable. No one has ever seen anything this big, this explosive, or
this destructive rise up out of the forest and enter a town. During its
brief existence of approximately 30 minutes, the incendiary cyclone sent
jets of flame hundreds of metres into the sky, obliterated everything in
its path, and generated such ferocious thermal energy that its smoke
plume punched into the stratosphere.
The damage at ground zero, a 300-metre wide, kilometre-long swathe of
scoured earth, annihilated homes and blasted forest running just south
of the Hartman family compound, is hard to comprehend. There, a pair of
40-metre tall steel transmission towers have been torn from their
concrete moorings and hurled to the ground where they still lie,
crumpled like dead giraffes...
- - -
For one, the addition of a new verb to the wildfire lexicon. "Natural
fire never did this," explained Gyves. "It shouldn't moonscape." But now
it does. It is alarming to consider that this annihilating energy
arrived out of thin air, born of fire and fanned by an increasingly
common combination of triple-digit heat, single-digit humidity, high
fuel loads, dying trees and the battling winds that swirl daily through
the mountains and valleys all over California and the greater west.
That this phenomenon may represent something new under the sun has
become a subject of earnest debate among fire scientists and
meteorologists. The only other event that comes close is a full-blown
tornado that occurred in conjunction with the notorious Canberra
bushfires of 2003. With the exception of the Hamburg firestorm, ignited
when Allied bombers dropped thousands of tons of incendiaries on that
German city in 1943, there is no record of a "pyronado" of this
magnitude occurring anywhere on earth.
Painfully clear is the fact that there is no way for firefighters to
combat these all-consuming fires - with or without a tornado in their
midst. Water has little effect on a high intensity wildfire. Among the
structures burned near Redding was a fire station. As one Cal Fire
representative said of the Carr fire's ferocious early days: "It shifted
from a firefighting effort to a life-saving effort."
There was a time not so long ago, when a fire like this one, which
forced the evacuation of 40,000 people and burned nearly 1,000 sq km
across two counties, might have been a monstrous anomaly, but now, says
Jonathan Cox, a Cal Fire battalion chief: "The anomalies are becoming
more frequent and more deadly."
- - -
Eight of the most destructive wildfires in California's fire-prone
history have occurred in the past three years. But as destructive as
others have been - the 2017 Tubbs fire with 44 lives lost and 5,600
structures destroyed; this year's Mendocino Complex fire, the largest
ever - none of them has unleashed the apocalyptic mayhem visited upon
the Hartmans and their neighbors.
Once restricted to weapons of mass destruction and exceptionally intense
forest fires in remote settings, the tornado-sized firestorm is no
longer as unlikely as it was in the 1970s. In 2014, another huge one was
observed in dense forest, just 40 miles east of Redding. As the climate
changes, fires no longer cool down at night as they once did; instead,
they simply grow bigger and more powerful. Meanwhile, human settlement
continues to push deeper into the forest where kilotons of unburned
energy waits for any spark at all.
But most people traumatized by wildfire aren't thinking about that. They
are thinking about getting their lives back. The Hartmans had no
insurance, but Larry is optimistic: "If I have my way," he says,
"there'll be a new house here in a year."
Sarah Joseph was insured, but she is finished with Redding, a place she
has witnessed growing steadily warmer. "I've walked out on everything
two or three times in my life," she said. "I can do it again." There is
a town in Oregon and she is taking her younger brother. That town is as
vulnerable to wildfire as Redding; so are most towns now, from Mexico to
Alaska, but that is not what concerns her.
"I will not cry," she says to herself as she gets a grip one more time.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2018/oct/10/climate-change-what-will-happen-hellfire-california-forest-fires
- - -
[a Firenado gives Tragic - Comic Relief]
*mar.lowskyFire tornado (fire devil) destroyed our line
<https://www.instagram.com/p/BnwjbYfHwkB/>*. It threw burning logs
across our guard for 45 minutes and pulled our hose 100 plus ft in the
air before melting it. That's definitely a first. #firenado
#startthepump #wildfire
https://www.instagram.com/p/BnwjbYfHwkB/
[OK Let's try]
*Would flooding the deserts help stop global warming?
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/would-flooding-deserts-help-stop-global-warming-n934551>*
The idea is "risky, unproven, even unlikely to work," according to Y
Combinator. But if it did work, it could slow climate change.
NBCNews.com
The existential threat posed by climate change requires research into
... Activists and scientists interviewed by NBC News said exploration of
far-out
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/would-flooding-deserts-help-stop-global-warming-n934551
[never too late to say you're sorry]
*South Park Creators Apologize to Al Gore in Global Warming Episode
<https://youtu.be/Y-dvejuss6s>*
BY JOHN ATKINSON - ON NOV 09, 2018 IN TV NEWS
*Please, Mr. Gore <https://youtu.be/Y-dvejuss6s>* video
https://youtu.be/Y-dvejuss6s South Park Studios Published on Nov 4, 2018
The boys beg Al Gore for help, but he demands something in return. Part
of an all-new episode titled, "Time to Get Cereal", premiering
Wednesday, November 7 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central.
South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker apologized to Al Gore in
an episode aimed at Global Warming. Though they're not traditionally
apologists when it comes to the sort of material they feature in the
long-running animated series, this particular episode was a rare exception.
Ever since South Park debuted in 1997, the topics of discussion that its
central characters tackle never shy away from crossing lines, mocking
various social and political issues, or establishing an unapologetically
crude overall aesthetic. As Eric, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny carry through
with their daily lives in the fictional town of South Park, Colorado,
they face a plethora of topical issues in over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek
ways. In past episodes, they've specifically focused on former US Vice
President Al Gore who is otherwise best known for his work as an
environmentalist, as well as his two documentaries, An Inconvenient
Truth and its sequel An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. Now,
however, Stone and Parker have taken a step back from their typically
flippant behavior and issued an apology to Gore in an episode of South
Park's twenty-second season.
According to Salon, the show's creators offered an apology for the way
South Park handled the issue of Global Warming in the past. In the
episode, Stan is led to believe that the fictitious creature known as
"ManBearPig" (a creature that the show's interpretation of Gore refers
to in an earlier episode from 2006) may be real. So, in an effort to
prevent ManBearPig from causing any more deaths, Stan seeks out Gore for
help. Though he's willing to lend them his assistance, his sole
condition is that they apologize for not taking the threat seriously
from the get-go. Desperate for help, the boys apologize. In fact, they
go so far as to admit that the world would have been better off had Gore
become President.
In two earlier episodes of South Park in which Gore was included as a
guest character, he warns other characters about the dangerous
ManBearPig, a thinly veiled allegory for Global Warming. And, though
Gore has revealed in the past that he is aware that the first two
episodes exist, there has been no word yet on whether he has seen the
latest episode or is aware of South Park's apology.
The series has taken comedic jabs at everything from 9/11 conspiracies
to abortion, but there is often an underlying attempt in South Park to
relay some semblance of a positive message. That's not to say that
Parker and Stone don't go well out of their way to push buttons, but
their attempt to apologize within the show itself proves that their
creativity is hardly void of morals. In fact, it's simply one of their
more blatant attempts to make a direct social or political statement
under the guise of something outlandish (in this case, a creature called
ManBearPig).
https://youtu.be/Y-dvejuss6s
[coolants]
*Trump Stalls on Climate-Warming Coolants Amid State, Industry Outcry
<https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/trump-stalls-on-climate-warming-coolants-amid-state-industry-outcry>*
Posted Nov. 9, 2018
Lack of a federal response to limit potent greenhouse gas refrigerants
could allow millions more tons of climate-warming emissions nationwide
by 2030, regulators from California and New York say.
The states say the emissions would be a direct result of the
Environmental Protection Agency's failure to enforce Obama-era rules
banning certain hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), refrigerant chemicals that
are greenhouse gases hundreds of times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The EPA announced in April that it wouldn't implement the limits...
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/trump-stalls-on-climate-warming-coolants-amid-state-industry-outcry
*Experts: Fast warming of Indian Ocean, a worry
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/66563064.cm>*
KOCHI: Marine experts have expressed their concern over fast ..
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/66563064.cms
Sunday, November 11, 2018 1:00 am
*Warmer Indiana to be wetter, Purdue prof says
<http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/20181111/warmer-indiana-to-be-wetter-purdue-prof-says>*
ROSA SALTER RODRIGUEZ - The Journal Gazette
Indiana is likely to become warmer and wetter in the next 20 to 70 years
because of the impact of global climate change - and those differences
have the potential to scramble the state's important agriculture industry.
That's what agricultural hydrologist Laura Bowling of Purdue University
said Saturday afternoon in Fort Wayne during a talk at the Allen County
Public Library.
Bowling reviewed the conclusions of a subsection of the Indiana Climate
Change Impacts Assessment on agriculture. One of a team of 100
researchers examining impacts from potential global warming on areas
from human health to energy and aquatic ecosystems to tourism and
recreation, Bowling served as lead author of the agriculture report.
"The goal is to be nonpartisan and supply objective, science-based
information," she said of the report, which is being rolled out as
sections are finished.
Bowling said that while Indiana's average temperature rose 1.2 degrees
in the last century, it is expected to rise 5 to 6 degrees by the middle
of this century and beyond.
That could make the state's climate more like western Kentucky's under
the best scenario to southeastern Texas' under the worst.
The warmer weather would continue to increase rainfall amounts, which
have gone up 5.6 inches over the last century. Rainfall may rise 6 to 8
percent in upcoming decades because warmer temperatures encourage more
evaporation, the report found.
Warmer temperatures likely will result in longer growing season, with
the minimum soil temperature for planting being pushed back up to 27
days earlier, Bowling said.
But a shift in precipitation patterns may cancel out benefits.
Springs and winters will likely be wetter, with more precipitation
falling as rain rather than snow, Bowling said. So, although the soil
might be warm, it will also be Too wet to put crops in the ground, she
said.
Bowling said it's anticipated that both corn and soybean yields will be
lower, although soybeans may be less affected.
Raising animals will also be affected, Bowling said.
Forage will tend to be of lower quality, with more fiber and less
nutrition, she said. Warmer temperatures will mean more heat stress on
animals, unless farmers are willing to spend money to install more air
conditioning and ventilation in barns.
Climate change also is likely to allow more weeds, including invasive
species, and pests to flourish. The change also could encourage more and
different diseases, she said.
Certain popular and successful varieties of apples, peaches and grapes
"may no longer be grown because of increasing pest impacts," Bowling
said, adding that a researcher colleague already has seen increasing
numbers of unusual apple diseases.
Even labor capacity may dip because of more days with high heat and
longer heat waves, she added.
Breeding advances and using different strains of crops, better soil and
water management and innovative farming techniques such as cover crops
or no-till agriculture may mitigate some of the changes, the report
concludes.
Bowling said she expects agriculture to remain a viable Indiana industry.
Indiana is 11th in the nation for agricultural products sold, which make
up $31 billion of the state's economy, according to Purdue experts.
Bowling said she sees the report as "a wake-up call."
"Our message is that there are a lot of challenges ahead," she said.
http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/20181111/warmer-indiana-to-be-wetter-purdue-prof-says
[letter to the editor]
*Why is the environment not the top priority?
<http://www.minotdailynews.com/opinion/letters/2018/11/why-is-the-environment-not-the-top-priority/>*
I find it incredible that we fight over social issues and economic
issues when our very survival is at stake. If we continue to support the
Republican Party who have basically fought against any kind of
environmental processes that will save this earth, we do so at our peril.
The Democrats have not done much better, but at least they have some
belief in science and the fact that global warming is happening, and it
is changing our habitat. The drive by the present administration to
destroy any kind of protections and regulations that will limit global
warming is making the world unsafe and is going to mean that our future
generations will no longer have what we have. Everyone should be very
alarmed, but for most people, it is all about their own jobs and
security and belief that it is all going to work out because it always
has. We elect politicians that are only concerned about how to inflame
their base without regard that the earth is changing and when will it
change to a point where it is unlivable. We fight each other over
abortion, immigration, jobs, guns when we should all be screaming that
what we need to do, is save our environment. Because without a livable
planet, all those things are going to be completely meaningless.
Norton Lovold
Bismarck
https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1043118/Time-travel-proof-real-time-traveller-year-6491-global-warming&ct=ga&cd=CAEYAioTOTIzNDA2OTI5MTUyMTA5MDQ3MzIaYmJhYjdjZDMxNGYyYTdjYTpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNGsPjXYowFxxGPK2gBXXJMelvcG5w
The disguised man who introduced himself as James Oliver, claims to be
from another galaxy and is supposedly stuck on Earth in the year 2018.
*This Day in Climate History - November 13, 2005
<https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2012/10/24/timeline-fox-news-role-in-the-climate-of-doubt/190906>
- from D.R. Tucker*
November 13, 2005: Fox News Channel airs "The Heat is On: The Case of
Global Warming," a special that reportedly (and surprisingly,
considering Fox's track record) does not feature any climate-change
deniers. After fossil-fuel-industry front groups attack Fox for not
including their viewpoint, Fox runs a special several months later
featuring the views of climate-change deniers.
https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2012/10/24/timeline-fox-news-role-in-the-climate-of-doubt/190906
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