[✔️] November 2, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | SoCa wildfires, China's high pollution, Farmworkers at night, Ice Sheet loss unstoppable, Stoic response - book, Alaska permafrost, 2014

[Richard Pauli]

/*November 2*//*, 2023*/

/[ Southern California wildfires  ]/
*SoCal fire evacuates thousands*
Kelly Andersson
October 31, 2023
Santa Ana
A wildfire fueled by gusty Santa Ana winds raced across rural land 
southeast of Los Angeles and has forced 4,000 people from their homes. 
The Highland Fire started not long after noon Monday in dry brushy hills 
near the community of Aguanga in Riverside County, about 60 miles south 
of Palm Springs. The Associated Press reported today that the fire has 
grown to 3½ square miles, or 2200 acres with zero containment.

Cal Fire reported that resources included 5 airtankers and 5 
helicopters, along with 52 engine companies and 6 ground crews.

NBC Los Angeles reported that evacuation orders are in effect for 
thousands after the fire doubled in size overnight.

The brush fire started Monday in the Aguanga area of Riverside County, 
about 60 miles southwest of Palm Springs.

KTLA5 has video from yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_h1J4XaLIU
At least 1,300 homes and 4,000 residents were under evacuation orders, 
which were still in effect this morning. The fire burned across a 
sparsely populated area that includes horse ranches and a large mobile 
home site; Cal Fire said this morning that only 15 or so homes were 
threatened.

Southern California Edison was reportedly looking into cutting power to 
nearly 150,000 customers in six counties — to prevent new starts from 
downed trees or wind-damaged electrical equipment — but fewer than 300 
customers thus far were affected by power shutoffs.

The NWS issued a wind advisory for the region through Tuesday night, 
predicting winds of 15 to 25 mph and gusts up to 50 mph, particularly in 
the foothills and adjacent valleys.

These are the first major Santa Anas of the season; the strong, hot, 
dry, dust-bearing winds typically blow down to the coastal areas from 
inland desert regions in the fall. Santa Ana winds have fueled some of 
the largest and most devastating wildfires in California history.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2023/10/31/socal-fire-evacuates-thousands/

- -

/[ NBC News ]/
*Thousands evacuate as wildfire burns in Southern California*
NBC News
Oct 31, 2023  #California #Wildfire #Fire
Hundreds of firefighters are battling a wildfire in Riverside County, 
California, that's being fueled by unpredictable Santa Ana winds and 
some residents say they had just minutes to get away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pytxQuHf4m0

- -

/[ winter season - fire season ]/
*California wildfire puts 1,300 homes at risk as Santa Ana winds whip 
flames*
About 4,000 residents were evacuated southeast of Los Angeles as the 
blaze remained completely uncontained
Louise Boyle
Senior Climate Correspondent, New York
October 31, 2023
A wildfire that erupted in Southern California has grown to 2,200 acres 
overnight and remains completely uncontained, according to emergency 
officials.

The Highland Fire started around 12.30pm on Monday in Aguanga, a tiny 
town located in a rural, hilly area of Riverside County, southeast of 
Los Angeles.

Around 1,300 homes and 4,000 residents were under evacuation orders, Cal 
Fire said. There is a continued threat to structures with road closures 
and evacuation orders in place.

An evacuation center was opened 20 miles away at a high school in Temecula.

The flames were being whipped by 20-25mph Santa Ana winds. The blustery, 
dry gusts, which blow out of the desert in Southern California, are at 
their worst from October to January. The fire conditions are being 
exacerbated by low humidity.
The fire had already ripped through a handful of buildings in the area 
but it was unclear if any homes were destroyed. No injuries were reported.

Officials were hopeful that winds would ease on Tuesday, and that they 
could “box in” the wildfire with 300 firefighters, bulldozers, three air 
tankers and three helicopters.

The Highland Fire is one of the few large and active blazes in 
California in 2023, where fire season has failed to reach the monstrous 
proportions of recent years.

More than 315,000 acres have burned in California this year, according 
to Cal Fire, a significant drop from the 1.1million acre five-year average.
In part, this has been due to historic rains from at least 30 
atmospheric rivers which have impacted the state this year and led to 
catastrophic flooding.
Fire season in California used to run from May until October, however 
the impacts of the climate crisis have now made wildfires a year-round 
possibility.

Larger, more intense fires are fuelled by extreme heat and drought. 
These conditions are driven by a climate crisis caused largely by carbon 
emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Beyond California, 2023 has been broken records for the scale of 
wildfires across the Northern Hemisphere.
The US witnessed its deadliest wildfire in more than a century in Hawaii 
this summer after large parts of the historic town of Lahaina on Maui 
was destroyed.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/wildfire-california-map-riverside-santa-ana-b2439152.html



/[  Reuters ]/
*China's smog-covered north on highest pollution alert as visibility drops*
By Liz Lee
October 31, 2023
BEIJING, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Authorities issued their highest warnings 
for fog and haze on Tuesday as smog enveloped major cities in northern 
China, warning the public that visibility could drop to less than 50 
metres (164 feet).

Northern province Hebei launched an anti-pollution emergency response, 
listing traffic safety controls for when necessary including suspending 
flight takeoffs and landings, temporarily closing highways and 
suspending ferries, China's meteorological bureau said in a notice.
Authorities also warned road users to stop in safe parking areas when 
conditions required and asked people to stay indoors.

Beijing said it would implement traffic control measures if the capital 
activates its highest air pollution warning.

Heavy smog has engulfed the country's north for a few days while autumn 
temperatures soared to typical early summer levels close to 30 degrees 
Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas.
Experts said weak cold air currents from the north pole were a key 
factor behind the unusual weather.

As air pollution levels in the wider Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area and 
northern part of Henan province reached moderate to severe, pollution 
control experts said increased industrial activities, heavy trucking and 
crop fires had contributed to the haze, state media CCTV reported.

Regional power consumption in late October was up 5% compared with first 
half of the month, more significantly in the cement, brick and tile 
industries, worsening conditions, CCTV said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-smog-covered-north-highest-pollution-alert-visibility-drops-2023-10-31/



/[ We all eat our vegetables and we do thank you ]/
*Extreme Heat Pushes More Farmworkers to Harvest at Night, Creating New 
Risks*
Working in the dark may help agricultural workers keep cool, but safety 
advocates worry the trend could also be causing more accidents and 
compromising worker health.
By Kristoffer Tigue
October 31, 2023
American farmworkers are increasingly at risk of heat-related illness 
and death as climate change drives temperatures around the world to 
record highs. That’s pushing more and more workers to harvest crops at 
night to avoid extreme heat, according to recent reports, which is 
creating a host of new risks that experts say need to be more thoroughly 
studied.

More than 2 million U.S. farmworkers, who typically toil outdoors under 
a hot summer sun, are exceptionally at risk of succumbing to 
heat-related illness, the Environmental Defense Fund warned in a July 
report, with heat-related mortalities 20 times higher for crop workers 
than in other private industries, as well as employees in local and 
state government. About three weeks of the summer harvest season are now 
expected to be too hot to safely work outdoors, the report’s authors 
added, and that number will only increase as global warming continues.

Government data and other studies have found that an average of 43 
farmworkers die every year from heat-related illness. But top officials 
with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees 
U.S. working conditions, say that number is significantly undercounted, 
largely because heat doesn’t get factored into deaths from cardiac 
arrests and respiratory failures. One advocacy group estimated that heat 
exposure could be responsible for as many as 2,000 worker fatalities in 
the U.S. each year.

In fact, this summer was the hottest on record for the entire northern 
hemisphere, federal scientists announced in September, in large part 
because of climate change. Parts of the Midwest and large regions of 
Europe are also experiencing record hot Octobers.

As the daytime heat has gone up, a growing number of agriculture 
workers—many of whom are Latino and undocumented—now work while it’s 
still dark out. But that could be trading one risk for a set of others, 
labor and safety advocates are warning.

“What concerns me most is the negative impacts on workers,” Heather 
Riden, program director at UC Davis Western Center on Agriculture Health 
and Safety, said in an interview with Civil Eats. “What does it mean to 
have a person work three or four hours in the morning, then come back in 
the evening to work another three or four hours? And what does that do 
for their sleep schedule, their family life, and their ability to stay 
awake when they’re driving at two in the morning? That is where we don’t 
have data; we don’t know the bigger-picture implications.”

The UC center published a report in 2019 that pointed to the increasing 
trend of nighttime crop harvesting, noting that such work could be 
causing more accidents due to poor visibility and tired employees. 
Working at early hours is especially dangerous for farmworkers who 
operate machinery, the report said, and the practice could even lead to 
disrupted sleep and hormone cycles that contribute to long-term health 
issues for workers, including an increased chance for miscarriages.

Lorena Abalos, who harvests cherries and blueberries in Washington state 
with her teenage son, told NPR that they began starting their shifts at 
3 a.m. or earlier after an especially severe heat wave killed hundreds 
of people in 2021 across swaths of the Pacific Northwest. Harvesting at 
night, however, proved to be its own danger, she said, so she stopped 
bringing her son along.

“I no longer wanted to take him when we started to go in at 3 a.m. 
because it was very dangerous,” she said. “We would run into snakes, 
other animals and we pick blindly because they gave us a little lamp and 
we barely see our hands.”

Some states have passed safety standards for outdoor agricultural work 
that takes place at night. California, for example, approved standards 
in 2020 that require adequate lighting that minimizes glare, rear 
lighting for self-propelled equipment, pre-shift safety meetings and 
reflective safety gear for workers to wear. But it’s unclear how well 
those standards are being enforced, and because there are no federal 
regulations, many other outdoor workers in states without requirements 
remain unprotected.

Advocates have been calling for such federal protections for years, but 
to no avail. That means—at least for now—many farmworkers will be stuck 
choosing between which threat they want to face: the heat or the dark.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102023/todays-climate-extreme-heat-farmworkers-harvest-at-night-climate-change/



/[ Nick Breeze ClimateGenn ]/
*Dr Kaitlin Naughten, British Antarctic Survey - Ice sheet Loss 
Acceleration Now Unstoppable*
Nick Breeze ClimateGenn
Oct 31, 2023
Full interview available for Youtube and Patreon members to view. Will 
be available in summary version soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5N-HxDfNxA&list=PL_KA9gR6zLeE7J45lQlr2HBJx-zXRi8MD



/[ OK -- time for a book -- this text from Amazon ]/
*Reasons Not to Worry: How to Be Stoic in Chaotic Times
*In this heartfelt and soul-searching work, brimming with warmth, humor, 
and insight, the beloved Guardian columnist spends a year exploring how 
to pursue a rich and meaningful life, turning to the wisdom of the 
Stoics for insights into the deepest questions of existence.

Like many people today, Brigid Delaney was searching for answers to 
timeless questions: How can we be good? Find inner peace? Properly 
grieve? Tame our insecurities, such as the fear of missing out? 
Determine what truly matters?

Centuries ago, the Stoics pondered many of these same questions. And so, 
at an important inflection point in her own life, Brigid decided to let 
these ancient philosophers be her guide. Brigid is rash where the Stoics 
are logical; she runs on chaos, while the Stoics relinquish control of 
things beyond their reach. Over the course of a year, she dedicated 
herself to following the wisdom of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus 
Aurelius. She hoped to discover how best to live—how she could use the 
wisdom of these ancient thinkers to navigate life in the modern world.

In Reasons Not to Worry, Brigid shares what she learned, showing us how 
we, too, can draw on the Stoics to regain a sense of agency and 
tranquility and find meaning in our lives. From learning to relinquish 
control to cultivating daily awareness of our mortality to building 
community, Brigid’s insights are very funny and very wise.

Stoicism can be a tough medicine to swallow, but no longer. Thoughtful, 
timely, surprisingly practical, and filled to the brim with ways to 
learn how best to be in the world, Delaney’s guide provides compelling 
and sensible reasons not to worry.
https://www.amazon.com/Reasons-Not-Worry-Stoic-Chaotic-ebook/dp/B0BRY86QSS/ref=sr_1_1



/[ wonderful show-and-tell from permafrost scientists - video ]/
*Alaska's Permafrost in Warming Arctic*
National Science Foundation News
May 30, 2023
Did you know that much of the water in Alaska is not above ground, but 
frozen in the ground under your feet? However, as air temperatures rise 
with climate change, this frozen ground known as permafrost is thawing. 
How do you even study water that is underground, if you can’t see it? 
Using a novel blend of field measurements, satellite data, and 
mathematical models, scientists are trying to piece together how water 
is changing in the warming Arctic.

Join a team of researchers and educators live from the Toolik Field 
Station (https://www.uaf.edu/toolik/), as they explore how the water 
cycle in the Arctic is changing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIlG0L5WHUI&t=7s




/[The news archive - IPCC ]/
/*November 2, 2014 */
November 2, 2014:
• The New York Times reports:

    "The gathering risks of climate change are so profound they could
    stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and
    hunger if greenhouse emissions continue at a runaway pace, according
    to a major new United Nations report.

    "Despite rising efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the
    overall global situation is growing more acute as developing
    countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, the
    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said here on Sunday.

    "Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other
    experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee
    crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass
    extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically
    altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside
    during the hottest times of the year."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/03/world/europe/global-warming-un-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change.html



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