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<p><font size="+2"><font face="Calibri"><i><b>December </b></i></font></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>30, 2023</b></i></font></p>
<i>[ Our understanding came from looking backwards in a rear-view
mirror. “From this year onwards, we will understand..." the new
record records ]</i><br>
<b>World will look back at 2023 as year humanity exposed its
inability to tackle climate crisis, scientists say</b><br>
Disastrous events included flash flooding in Africa and wildfires in
Europe and North America<br>
Jonathan Watts Global environment editor<br>
@jonathanwatts<br>
Fri 29 Dec 2023<br>
The hottest year in recorded history casts doubts on humanity’s
ability to deal with a climate crisis of its own making, senior
scientists have said.<br>
<br>
As historically high temperatures continued to be registered in many
parts of the world in late December, the former Nasa scientist James
Hansen told the Guardian that 2023 would be remembered as the moment
when failures became apparent.<br>
<br>
“When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of
human-made climate change, this year and next will be seen as the
turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with
climate change was finally exposed,” he said.<br>
<br>
“Not only did governments fail to stem global warming, the rate of
global warming actually accelerated.”<br>
<br>
After what was probably the hottest July in 120,000 years, Hansen,
whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is widely seen as the first
high-profile revelation of global heating, warned that the world was
moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher
than at any point over the past million years.<br>
<br>
Now director of the climate programme at Columbia University’s Earth
Institute in New York, Hansen said the best hope was for a
generational shift of leadership.<br>
<p>“The bright side of this clear dichotomy is that young people may
realise that they must take charge of their future. The turbulent
status of today’s politics may provide opportunity,” he said.</p>
<p>His comments are a reflection of the dismay among experts at the
enormous gulf between scientific warnings and political action. It
has taken almost 30 years for world leaders to acknowledge that
fossil fuels are to blame for the climate crisis, yet this year’s
United Nations Cop28 summit in Dubai ended with a limp and vague
call for a “transition away” from them, even as evidence grows
that the world is already heating to dangerous levels.</p>
Scientists are still processing data from this blistering year. The
latest to state it will be a record was the Japanese meteorological
agency, which measured temperatures in 2023 at 0.53C above the
global average between 1991 and 2020.<br>
<br>
This was far above the previous record set in 2016, when
temperatures were 0.35C above that average. Over the longer term,
the world is about 1.2C hotter than in preindustrial times.<br>
<br>
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration previously
calculated that there was a “greater than 99% chance” that 2023
would be the hottest year in its 174-year dataset. This followed six
record warm months in a row, including the northern hemisphere’s
warmest summer and autumn.<br>
<p>Driven by human-caused global heating and El Niño, the heat
refused to relent. In November, there was an even greater anomaly,
with two days warmer than 2C above the preindustrial average,
according to Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.</p>
It too has already confirmed the annual record, as has the World
Meteorological Organization. In December, many parts of the world
sweltered through the hottest-ever Christmas. With the new year
approaching, monthly temperature records were still being beaten in
central Asia, South America, Europe and Australia.<br>
<br>
Berkeley Earth has predicted that average temperatures in 2023 will
almost certainly prove to have been 1.5C higher than preindustrial
levels. Although climate trends are based on decadal rather than
annual measurements, many scientists say it is probably only a
matter of time before the world overshoots the most ambitious of the
Paris agreement targets.<br>
<br>
Veteran climate watchers have been horrified at the pace of change.
“The climate year 2023 is nothing but shocking, in terms of the
strength of climate occurrences, from heatwaves, droughts, floods
and fires, to rate of ice melt and temperature anomalies
particularly in the ocean,” Prof Johan Rockström, the joint director
of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany,
said.<br>
<p>He said these new developments indicated the Earth was in
uncharted territory and under siege. “What we mean by this is
that we may be seeing a shift in Earth’s response to 250 years of
escalated human pressures … to a situation of ‘payback’ where
Earth starts sending invoices back to the thin layer on Earth
where humans live, in the form of off the charts extremes.”</p>
<p>Rockstrom was among the authors of the 2018 “Hothouse Earth”
paper, which warned of a domino-like cascade of melting ice,
warming seas and dying forests could tilt the planet into a state
beyond which human efforts to reduce emissions will be
increasingly futile.</p>
<p>Five years on, he said that what disturbed him most in 2023 was
the sharp increase in sea surface temperatures, which have been
abrupt even for an El Niño year.</p>
“We do not understand why the ocean heat increase is so dramatic,
and we do not know what the consequences are in the future,” he
said. “Are we seeing the first signs of a state shift? Or is it [a]
freak outlier?”<br>
<br>
In the Antarctic, scientists have also been perplexed and worried by
the pace of change. The new Brazilian scientific module Criosfera 2,
a solar and wind-powered laboratory that collects meteorological
information, measured the lowest extent of sea ice in the region
both for summer and winter.<br>
<br>
“This environmental alert is a sign of ongoing global environmental
changes and poses a daunting challenge for polar scientists to
explain,” said Francisco Eliseu Aquino, a professor of climatology
and oceanography at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and
the deputy director of Brazil’s polar and climatic centre.<br>
<br>
West Antarctica was affected by several winter heatwaves associated
with the landfall of atmospheric rivers. In early July, a Chilean
team on King George Island, at the northern tip of the Antarctic
peninsula, registered an unprecedented event of rainfall in the
middle of the austral winter when only snowfalls are expected.<br>
<br>
In January, a massive iceberg, measuring about 1,500 sq km, broke
off from the Brunt ice shelf in the Weddell Sea. It was the third
colossal calving in the same region in three years.<br>
<br>
Aquino said human influence – through the burning of fossil fuels –
had also created “frightening” dynamics between the poles and the
tropics. Cold wet fronts from the Antarctic had interacted with
record heat and drought in the Amazon to create unprecedented storms
in between. Floods in southern Brazil killed 51 people in early
September and then returned with similarly devastating force in
mid-November.<br>
<br>
Aquino said this “record record” was a taste of what was to come as
the world entered dangerous levels of warming. “From this year
onwards, we will understand concretely what it means to flirt with
1.5C [of heating] in the global average temperature and new records
for disasters,” he said.<br>
<br>
This is already happening. This year’s deadliest climate disaster
was the flood in Libya that killed more than 11,300 people in the
coastal city of Derna. In a single day, Storm Daniel unleashed 200
times as much rain as usually falls on the city in the entire month
of September. Human-induced climate change made this up to 50 times
more likely.<br>
Forest fires burned a record area in Canada and Europe, and killed
about 100 people in Lahaina on Maui island, the deadliest wildfire
in US history, which happened in August. For those who prefer to
calculate catastrophe in economic terms, the US broke its annual
record of billion-dollar disasters by August, by which time there
had already been 23.<br>
<br>
Raul Cordero, a climate professor at the University of Groningen and
the University of Santiago, said the effects of this year’s heat
were being felt across South America in the form of unprecedented
water stress in Uruguay, record-breaking fires in Chile, the most
severe drought in the Amazon basin in 50 years, prolonged power
shortages in Ecuador caused by the lack of hydropower, and increased
shipping costs along the Panama canal due to low water levels.<br>
<br>
Cordero said El Niño was forecast to weaken in the coming year, but
above average or record temperatures were likely to persist for at
least the next three months.<br>
<br>
And, as science has proved beyond any doubt, global temperatures
would continue to rise as long as humanity continues to burn fossil
fuels and forests.<br>
<br>
In the years ahead, the heat “anomaly” and catastrophes of 2023
would first become the new norm, and then be looked back on as one
of the cooler, more stable years in people’s lives. As Hansen
warned, unless there is radical and rapid change, failure will be
built into the climate system.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/world-will-look-back-at-2023-as-year-humanity-exposed-its-inability-to-tackle-climate-crisis">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/world-will-look-back-at-2023-as-year-humanity-exposed-its-inability-to-tackle-climate-crisis</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ "Nothing to see here... move along, everything's OK now..."]</i><br>
<b>Unusually large waves hit the coast of California amid powerful
storms</b><br>
Guardian News<br>
Dec 29, 2023<br>
The storms have left at least eight people needing hospital
treatment. Waves more than 20ft high poured over seawalls and the
tops of low cliffs along the Pacific coast, flooding nearby streets
and leaving many injured. In a video taken on Thursday morning,
people are seen fleeing Pierpont beach – just north of Los Angeles –
as a rogue wave engulfs the area <br>
<br>
Eight people taken to hospital as huge waves pound California coast
<br>
Extreme weather is changing California. These road trips show how<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My41Mcwx4jg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My41Mcwx4jg</a><br>
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</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ "action now" - "remain hopeful" - "fix leaks" - "adapt" -
"collect data" ]</i><br>
<b>How 7 scientists feel after the hottest year on record</b><br>
What it’s like to study a world facing unprecedented changes.<br>
By Umair Irfan Dec 27, 2023,<br>
Umair Irfan is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change,
Covid-19, and energy<br>
<br>
2023 is the hottest year in at least 174 years and recent months
have been the hottest in 125,000 years. All of that warming led to
deadly heat waves, disease outbreaks, floods, droughts, and record
low ice levels around Antarctica.<br>
The extreme weather this year stems in part from natural
variability, including a powerful El Niño warming pattern in the
Pacific Ocean that reshaped weather around the world. But beneath
these cycles, humanity’s ravenous appetite for coal, oil, and
natural gas is driving up concentrations of heat-trapping gasses in
the atmosphere to levels the Earth hasn’t witnessed for 3 million
years.<br>
<br>
This year may be the first time that annual temperatures have risen
1.5 degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above the global
average at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Under the 2015
Paris agreement, just about every country in the world agreed to
keep the planet’s average temperature from rising more than 2°C,
striving to stay below 1.5°C. A single year rising past this level
doesn’t mean this target is toast, but if people keep heating up the
planet, a year like 2023 will become one of the coolest we’ll
experience in the rest of our lives.<br>
<br>
Earlier this month, leaders from around the world wrapped the
largest climate conference in history aimed at preventing this
outcome. The COP28 meeting in the United Arab Emirates produced an
agreement that explicitly called on countries to reduce fossil fuel
use for the first time and provide more money to countries facing
destruction worsened by warming. But the commitments made so far are
still not enough to limit warming to 1.5°C, and greenhouse gas
emissions continue to rise.<br>
<br>
Half a world away, scientists who study this warming and its
consequences gathered at the American Geophysical Union conference
in San Francisco. Climate change is not an abstraction for these
researchers, and many are observing it in real time, often in areas
that have personal stakes for them. Looking back on the hottest year
on record and what little humanity has done about it, some are
reckoning with how their own work fits in. From the retreat of
Arctic ice to rising demand for air conditioning, scientists with
their fingers on the pulse of the planet are experiencing a mix of
optimism, dread, and urgency as they endeavor to make their research
practical in the real world.<br>
<br>
I spoke with seven researchers studying Earth’s changes from
different angles. Their comments below have been lightly edited.<br>
<br>
Daniel Schindler at the University of Washington researches how
climate change affects aquatic ecosystems, including Alaska’s
sockeye, chinook, and chum salmon. He was one of several scientists
presenting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
Arctic Report Card for 2023 at the conference. The Arctic has been
warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, and this
year, the region saw its warmest summer since 1900 (when
record-keeping began), with knock-on effects like Canada’s worst
wildfire season on record. As negotiators in the United Arab
Emirates bickered over the future of the planet, Schindler noted
that the effects of climate change are underway now, and it’s
already reshaping ecosystems and human communities:<br>
<blockquote> I think the reality is, if you look at Western Alaska,
climate change is not something that’s coming down the pipe
somewhere in the future. It is happening now, it’s been happening
for decades. And whether you’re talking about fish or people or
birds, there are real impacts that we need to deal with right now.<br>
<br>
And when you hear about what’s going on at COP28, there may be a
reason to be optimistic. But the reality is, we need action on the
ground right now, not to necessarily turn around climate change
immediately, but to deal with the fact that we’re going to be
challenged by it, now and for decades to come, so we need action
now at local scales.<br>
</blockquote>
Rick Thoman, who studies Alaska’s climate and weather at the
University of Alaska Fairbanks, echoed the call for more immediate
steps to deal with global warming, noting that the Arctic has been
at the leading edge of climate change long before it reached the
extremes seen this year. The communities there may have important
lessons for the rest of the world:<br>
<blockquote> As Alaskans, as peoples in the Arctic, we are living
this change every day. And we have no choice, no choice at all,
other than to work with what’s happening. We need the big picture
solutions, but everyone — Indigenous communities, all the people
of the Arctic — are having to adapt right here, right now. It
didn’t start today. It didn’t start yesterday. This has been
ongoing for years. Listen to the elders. This change has been
happening for decades, century-scale changes. And Arctic peoples
are still here and we’re still going to be here.<br>
</blockquote>
Sarah Cooley, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon, is
studying how climate change is altering ice in places like coastal
Alaska and has found that when you zoom in, the way it affects
people can be quite complicated. How ice melts and the impacts it
has on communities can vary drastically, even in nearby regions.
With COP28 still falling short of global climate goals, Cooley is
also looking into the way the success or failure of international
negotiations will manifest on the ground:<br>
<blockquote> In this broader context of warming climate, loss of
ice, thawing permafrost, threats of coastal erosion, and sea level
rise, that’s kind of this giant signal that each person
experiences differently depending on their interaction with their
environment.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote> I get really excited about being able to do research
that is locally relevant. One of the things we did in this project
is we’re thinking about how Paris climate agreement targets
translate to local on-the-ground experiences. If you tell somebody
that the Earth is going to warm by 1.5°C or 2°C, that’s an
incredibly abstract concept because the difference to us of two
degrees doesn’t mean anything. But if you can translate that
experience of two degrees warming to an actual on-the-ground
experience that’s highly localized — so let’s say a loss of 30
days of ice versus 50 days of ice, which is a huge deal for
someone living in the community to lose a month of ice versus
losing two months of ice — that to me is really exciting work that
we can kind of take large-scale big numbers that are really
abstract and bring them down to a local experience.</blockquote>
Robert Green, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is
leading a project to track mineral dust using instruments on the
International Space Station. This is an important mechanism that can
change air quality, the flow of nutrients across the planet, and the
amount of sunlight hitting the Earth, which can cool the planet.
Green is also keeping an eye on methane, a greenhouse gas with about
30 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. At COP28,
countries made new pledges to curb methane, and Green said
scientists can help them meet their targets:<br>
<blockquote> We can tell people where the point sources of methane
are, where leaks are happening, and give people the information to
address those leaks. And that’s something that is just so
important to do. Nobody wants to waste money out of a leaking
pipeline. Let’s go ahead and fix those leaks, and we also reduce
the impact of methane for climate change.<br>
<br>
I’m excited to be making a difference. I’m an optimistic person,
and we can work together to address this problem. It’s not an easy
problem, but the pieces are coming together. So I’m going to
remain hopeful.<br>
</blockquote>
Stepp Mayes, a doctoral student at the University of Southern
California, studies how people use electricity and the ensuing
consequences for the climate and for health. Lately he’s been
examining the growing demand for air conditioning as temperatures
rise and the stresses that imparts on the power grid. As
temperatures go up, people install more cooling systems, run them
longer, and crank them up during the hottest times of day. That’s
often when the power grid is struggling the most to provide
electricity. The extreme heat this year coupled with record-high
energy demand signals that this work is only going to become more
important:<br>
<blockquote> It makes me nervous. There’s a big intersection because
we’re all about looking at the relationship between temperature
and AC use and AC penetration. I think that people are directly
responding to increasing temperature, and I think we are going to
see that continue as temperatures continue to rise, where our
reliance on AC — as a public health issue, and as a grid issue —
becomes larger and larger.<br>
</blockquote>
Aliyah Griffith, a doctoral student at the University of North
Carolina Chapel Hill, studies coral reef infrastructure around
places like Barbados, from satellites and from the water. Griffith
is also the founder and CEO of Mahogany Mermaids, a nonprofit that
works to encourage women of color to pursue careers in science,
particularly in aquatic fields. The extreme temperatures this year,
including heat waves in the ocean, have renewed her determination:<br>
<blockquote> My family is from Barbados. Not only does that make me
feel more driven to answer questions from a scientist’s
perspective — how can we help the reefs? How can we understand
what they need and what they’re facing? — but also: What do the
communities need? How can we interact with their local
governments, their local institutions, and understand where they
can be elevated? You have to really respect a lot of the work and
effort that they’ve already done to see what can change in the
future.<br>
</blockquote>
Gordon Walker, a researcher at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa,
studies paleoclimate, particularly how past shifts in the climate
and weather influenced historical events. For instance, changing
climate conditions in Africa and the Caribbean were a factor in the
slave trade and may have played a part in uprisings. For Walker, the
role of the climate in historical periods of unrest is adding
urgency for the need to fill in data gaps as the climate breaches
records, particularly in regions experiencing the most acute impacts
of warming today:<br>
<blockquote> For me — my focus being the Caribbean and Africa, and
the transatlantic slave trade, and climate variability associated
with those regions and the historical event of the trade — I think
that it’s important for us to collect data on regions in the
global South — the Caribbean, South America, Africa — because a
lot of the science and research is focused on the global North.<br>
<br>
I think it’s imperative, especially in areas where we don’t have a
lot of data, to start collecting data and applying the powers or
the tools of analysis that we have for climate to the global
South. Because a lot of countries in those regions are not
necessarily resource-poor in terms of raw material but
resource-poor in terms of economies and having the ability to
respond to extreme climate. So I think the greater lead time we
have with projections based on studying the past, the better for
those countries to be able to respond, especially with limited
economies, as compared to countries in the global North.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.vox.com/24008047/2023-warmest-year-cop28-climate-change-science">https://www.vox.com/24008047/2023-warmest-year-cop28-climate-change-science</a><br>
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<i>[ about future feelings and attitudes, the facts of climate
change are not considered here - we must be positive about what
our future is available to our views ]</i><br>
<b>Debunking doomerism: 4 futurists on why we’re actually not f*cked
| Kevin Kelly & more</b><br>
Big Think<br>
Dec 22, 2023<br>
Four visionaries—Kevin Kelly, Peter Schwartz, Ari Wallach, and
Tyler Cowen—share their insights on the future, urging viewers to
consider the impact of their actions on future generations. <br>
- -<br>
/ @bigthink <br>
- -<br>
Explore the future with visionaries Kevin Kelly, Peter Schwartz,
Ari Wallach, and Tyler Cowen. <br>
<br>
While each is looking into the future through a different lens, they
all share a belief in the power of optimism and proactive engagement
as essential tools for overcoming today's challenges.<br>
<br>
Wallach introduces "Longpath," urging long-term thinking, while
Kelly advocates for "Protopia," emphasizing gradual progress.
Schwartz highlights scenario planning's importance, emphasizing
curiosity and collaboration. Cowen reflects on America's progress
and calls for urgency. <br>
<br>
Together, they stress empathy, transgenerational thinking, and
diverse futures to collectively build a better tomorrow. The
message: the future is a continuous creation requiring proactive,
collective action.<br>
Read the video transcript ►
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://bigthink.com/series/the-big-think-interview/progress">https://bigthink.com/series/the-big-think-interview/progress</a><br>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<br>
► About Kevin Kelly:<br>
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at WIRED magazine. He co-founded
WIRED in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor for its first
seven years. His newest book is The Inevitable, a New York Times and
Wall Street Journal bestseller. He is founder of the popular Cool
Tools website, which has been reviewing tools daily for 20 years.
From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth
Review, a subscriber-supported journal of unorthodox conceptual
news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was
involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service
started in 1985. <br>
<br>
► About Peter Schwartz:<br>
Peter Schwartz is an internationally renowned futurist and business
strategist, specializing in scenario planning and working with
corporations, governments, and institutions to create alternative
perspectives of the future and develop robust strategies for a
changing and uncertain world. As Senior Vice President of Strategic
Planning for Salesforce, he manages the organization’s ongoing
strategic conversation.<br>
<br>
Peter was co-founder and chairman of Global Business Network. He is
the author of several works. His first book, The Art of the Long
View, is considered a seminal publication on scenario planning.
Peter has also served as a script consultant on the films "The
Minority Report," "Deep Impact," "Sneakers," and "War Games." He
received a B.S. in aeronautical engineering and astronautics from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.<br>
<br>
► About Ari Wallach:<br>
Ari Wallach is an applied futurist and Executive Director of
Longpath Labs. He is the author of Longpath: Becoming the Great
Ancestors Our Future Needs by HarperCollins and the creator and host
of the forthcoming series on PBS A Brief History of the Future,
which is being executive produced by Kathryn Murdoch and Drake.<br>
<br>
He has been a strategy and foresight advisor to Fortune 100
companies, the US Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the UN
Refugee Agency, the RacialEquity 2030 Challenge and Politico’s Long
Game Forum.<br>
<br>
As adjunct associate professor at Columbia University he lectured on
innovation, AI, and the future of public policy. Wallach's TED talk
on Longpath has been viewed 2.6 million times and translated into 21
languages. Ari was the co-creator of 2008's pro-Obama The Great
Schlep with Sarah Silverman.<br>
<br>
► About Tyler Cowen:<br>
Tyler is the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason
University and serves as chairman and general director of the
Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is co-author of the
popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and co-founder of the
online educational platform Marginal Revolution University.<br>
<br>
He graduated from George Mason University with a bachelor's degree
in economics and earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard
University. He also runs a podcast series called Conversations with
Tyler. His latest book Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives
and Winners Around the World is co-authored with venture capitalist
Daniel Gross.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuAwied4x2Q">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuAwied4x2Q</a>
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<i>[ text or listen to the audio - generally must pay attention to
what we breathe ]</i><br>
<b>Wildfire smoke this year woke up places unaccustomed to its
effects. Now what?</b><br>
DECEMBER 29, 20235:00 AM ET<br>
HEARD ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED<br>
By Alejandra Borunda<br>
This summer, millions of people across the eastern U.S. woke up one
June morning to apocalyptic orange skies and thick, choking wildfire
smoke.<br>
<br>
Over the summer, massive Canadian wildfires blanketed central and
eastern North America with smoke that lingered on and off for
months, sending hundreds of people to the hospital. The
unprecedented smoke, which showed up in parts of the country where
it had never before been a problem, highlighted the growing and
inescapable health risks from climate-related issues. And it showed
how far many places have to go to help people protect themselves
from the risks.<br>
"The research coming out clearly shows that wildfire smoke is more
toxic than air pollution from other sources," says Kristi Ebi, a
climate and health expert at the University of Washington. This
year, she says, underscored the importance of understanding those
risks, but also exposed gaps in current understanding. For instance,
it's still not clear how heavy exposure can affect health years down
the line.<br>
The year of orange skies<br>
In March, wildfires started to burn across Canada, and within months
burned through more than 45 million acres, the most ever recorded in
the nation.<br>
<br>
The fires were likely pushed to those new extremes by human-caused
climate change. The hot, dry weather that settled in over the
country, increasing the risk of wildfires, was twice as likely
because of climate change, according to the World Weather
Attribution group, researchers who quickly assess the relationship
between climate change and extreme weather. In general, fossil
fuel-driven climate change has made wildfires bigger, more intense,
and by extension, smokier.<br>
<br>
Smoke from the Canadian fires spread as far south as Florida and
darkened skies in Iowa. In late June, the smoke's dregs floated as
far as Europe. Waves of smoke passed over North America for weeks,
exposing millions to a dangerous mix of tiny soot particles, ash,
and noxious gasses.<br>
<br>
"We all out here [in the West] have been keenly aware of wildfires
for some time now," says Scott Fendorf, a geoscientist at Stanford
University, who is based in California. But this year, he says, that
awareness spread to people in the middle of the country and the East
Coast. "They really understood what we're facing now–and that
they're not spared from it either."<br>
<br>
<b>How bad is smoke?</b><br>
In early June, the air quality index in New York City hit 460 for
the whole-day average. Air quality indexes measure air pollution:
the higher the number, the worse the pollution. That number shocked
doctors and medical experts. The previous daily record, from 2003,
was 86 – what the EPA considers moderately unhealthy. But during the
smoke event, New York's air quality was nearly off the EPA's chart,
well into the realm it considers an "emergency."<br>
<br>
The smoke sent hundreds of people to emergency rooms in New York and
beyond. Asthma-related visits across the state spiked by more than
80% on June 7, the worst day of smoke; in New York City, emergency
departments took in 44% more respiratory patients than normal over
the course of the smokiest week.<br>
<br>
Tiny pollution particles in smoke can be ten times smaller than the
width of a human hair, so small they can cross into people's
bloodstream once inhaled. Then, the body's immune system reacts,
driving an inflammatory response similar to that seen in cigarette
smokers.<br>
<br>
Smoke makes respiratory problems like asthma worse. But because the
minute particles in the smoke penetrate beyond the lungs, they can
also hurt other parts of the body. "The circulatory system can be
affected. You can get headaches,'' says Sam Heft-Neal, a scientist
at Stanford University who studies wildfire smoke effects. Heart
attacks and strokes are more common on smoky days. "And it's not
just people with preexisting conditions, although they're
particularly vulnerable, as well as children and pregnant women."<br>
"It's really a health crisis," says Kai Chen, a climate and health
expert at Yale University, who led the New York emergency department
study that found increased visits during the smoky week.<br>
The long-term effects of smoke exposure, or how much worse heavy
smoke is than mild conditions, are still open questions. But "we're
slowly moving towards the recognition that wildfires and wildfire
smoke are more hazardous to us than we had recognized," says
Fendorf.<br>
<br>
That toxicity is partly rooted in the changing composition of
wildfire smoke. Wildfires no longer remain solely in wooded areas or
grasslands, where they burn mostly vegetation. Now, as massive fires
burn into human communities, they burn synthetic materials like
housing insulation, plastics, or cars. Recent work from the EPA
shows smoke containing those materials drove more inflammation, lung
problems, and gene mutations in mice exposed to it.<br>
<br>
Fendorf and his colleagues found traces of hexavalent chromium in
wildfire ash in Northern California from fires in 2019 and 2020. The
metal, known as the "Erin Brockovitch chemical," is a known
carcinogen; Brockovitch became famous in the 1990s for fighting a
California utility for polluting her town's groundwater with the
cancer-causing metal. Chromium occurs naturally in some rocks and
soil, but when heated to temperatures characteristic of intense
wildfires, it converts to its toxic form. The researchers say it's
likely it was present in smoke plumes breathed in by people across
California during those fires.<br>
Fendorf, an author of that December study, was alarmed by his own
findings. Before, he'd taken smoke risk lightly. He went running
outside when it was smoky, and didn't feel the need to put on a
particle-filtering mask unless the smoke was heavy. "Now, having new
knowledge of what's in that particulate matter, my calculus is
totally different," he says. "I'm going to be wearing a N95 mask
much, much, much earlier than I would have in the past."<br>
<br>
The health risks of smoke are particularly high for children. They
breathe in more damaging smoke with every breath compared to adults.
But the long-term impacts on their growth and development are still
unknown.<br>
Given the developing science and the increased risks of wildfires
and smoke, Fendorf says it's time to think seriously about how to
protect people. In the short term, people can lower their personal
risk by wearing particle-filtering N95 masks and filtering their
indoor air. But longer term efforts to reduce the explosive,
high-intensity wildfires–the ones that produce the most smoke– are
also necessary, he says.<br>
<br>
Controlled burns, Fendorf says, could help reduce the extra burnable
material in forests, making explosive wildfires less likely. "If
we're really controlling severity, fire severity by doing control
burns, that could end up being a huge bonus in terms of our health
ramifications," he says.<br>
<br>
The other key strategy, he says, is stopping another intensifier of
wildfires: human-caused climate change.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/29/1220114166/wildfire-smoke-this-year-woke-up-places-unaccustomed-to-its-effects-now-what">https://www.npr.org/2023/12/29/1220114166/wildfire-smoke-this-year-woke-up-places-unaccustomed-to-its-effects-now-what</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[The news archive - MediaMatters assails UK
Daily Mail ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <font size="+2"><i><b>December 30, 2013 </b></i></font>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> December 30, 2013: MediaMatters names
the UK Daily Mail the "Climate Change Misinformer of the Year."<br>
<strike><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://mediamatters.org/mobile/research/2013/12/30/climate-change-misinformer-of-the-year-the-dail/197340">http://mediamatters.org/mobile/research/2013/12/30/climate-change-misinformer-of-the-year-the-dail/197340</a></strike><br>
<br>
<p><font face="Calibri"> <br>
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