Despite what the paid for professional climate change deniers keep trying to convince us, climate change is not an academic issue restricted to the lab or think tank. Climate change is playing out in the real world with devastating effects. Here in the west it has come in the form of very hot dry summers that turn our forests into massive bonfires with growing frequency.
This is the current map of wildfires in BC, keep in mind that many fires have been put out already. http://governmentofbc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=a1e7b1ecb1514974a9ca00bdbfffa3b1
In 2009 there were also massive wildfires that covered much of the province, at that time I was living in central Alberta. One summer morning leaving my home I was greeted with smoke so dense it was like dirty fog, it was hard to see 50 feet ahead. I assumed that it was due to brush and grass fires that sometimes occur in the area. It turned out that the fires were in BC and the smoke eventually reached 3,000 miles to cover much of Quebec on the east coast of Canada.
Later that year we could see the high altitude smoke from wildfires in Siberia, this is also a bad year for fire there.
Australia has also experienced catastrophic wildfires in recent years.
This is a global issue, the conditions leading to these massive fires are not limited to one region.
Even if climate change was a purely academic issue the evidence is still overwhelming in support of catastrophic climate change as almost all climate scientists doing valid peer-reviewed research agreeing that it is in fact underway, will continue to worsen and is largely the result of massive fossil fuel use that is continuing unabated despite yet another international agreement to stop emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide a year.
All this consensus does is confirm what millions of us are experiencing already, whether it’s increases in the frequency and extent of devastating wildfires. Flash flooding, rising sea levels, droughts, massive super-cell systems that spawn unprecedented numbers of tornadoes and more.
It’s all in agreement, the only people who don’t get it are sitting in a boardroom somewhere at Koch Inc. or ExxonMobil and calling up any of a 100 or more front PR firms they’ve set up to discuss the next tactic in how to delay taking any responsibility for what is already a catastrophe for many of us.
We’re being told to get used to having huge parts of this province on fire every summer as the hot dry summers become the norm and get even more extreme as the entire globe continues to heat up.
And the amount of heat being added every second to the Earth’s surface due to the radiative imbalance created by increasing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide so much so rapidly is huge. It’s equivalent to the heat from 4 Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs. That’s every second of every day until the balance is re-established. The longer we put off phasing out fossil fuels the longer the globe will continue to heat up and the more catastrophic the consequences will be. Impacts that are already catastrophic for millions of people around the Earth.
This isn’t a game, real lives are being destroyed already along with crucial parts of the Earth’s biosphere like coral reef systems. People aren’t disposable and neither is the planet. Despite what the people running the fossil fuel corporations might think and what their paid for mouthpieces might claim.
Anytime someone is trying to claim that climate change isn’t real, it isn’t serious or it isn’t us, think of it as code for, “you are all disposable garbage”. Because that is exactly how we are all being treated by some of the most cynical, self-centered and sociopathic individuals in human history.
This is the current map of wildfires in BC, keep in mind that many fires have been put out already.
http://governmentofbc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=a1e7b1ecb1514974a9ca00bdbfffa3b1
In 2009 there were also massive wildfires that covered much of the province, at that time I was living in central Alberta. One summer morning leaving my home I was greeted with smoke so dense it was like dirty fog, it was hard to see 50 feet ahead. I assumed that it was due to brush and grass fires that sometimes occur in the area. It turned out that the fires were in BC and the smoke eventually reached 3,000 miles to cover much of Quebec on the east coast of Canada.
Later that year we could see the high altitude smoke from wildfires in Siberia, this is also a bad year for fire there.
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-images-capture-worst-siberian-wildfires-in-10-000-years
Australia has also experienced catastrophic wildfires in recent years.
https://phys.org/news/2016-01-climate-fuels-bushfire-australia.html
This is a global issue, the conditions leading to these massive fires are not limited to one region.
But wait, there's more
Yeah Greenland
The real fire and fury is in Greenland right now, and it’s super scary
JOE ROMM - AUG 9, 2017
https://thinkprogress.org/a-rare-and-unusual-wildfire-has-hit-greenland-heres-why-thats-terrifying-2de794570798/
Thousands of acres of permafrost are burning in what appears to be Greenland’s biggest fire on record. And climate scientists are freaking out not just because the massive fires are unusual, but because they release large amounts of greenhouse gases and speed up the melt of the ice sheet and the carbon-rich permafrost.
Greenland is almost entirely covered in an enormous ice sheet, but grassy, carbon-rich peatlands along the coast are heating up and drying out. “These fires appear to be peatland fires," wildfire expert Prof. Jessica L. McCarty told Wildfire Today. “They are likely occurring in areas of degraded permafrost, which are predicted to have high thaw rates between now and 2050."
Peatlands, also known as bogs and moors, are the earliest stage in the formation of coal. A 2015 study noted, “Globally, the amount of carbon stored in peats exceeds that stored in vegetation and is similar in size to the current atmospheric carbon pool."
Peat fires are difficult to stop, often burning until all the organic matter has turned to ash. A coauthor of the 2015 study noted, “Smouldering peat fires already are the largest fires on Earth in terms of their carbon footprint." ...
(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stef_Lhermitte)
Climate change is global in extent and totally scary because conditions that were mostly stable are now becoming more and more extreme all the time.
Instead of wildfires, storms, tornado outbreaks, killer heat waves, massive flooding and anything that used to be a 1 in 50 or 100 year occurrence now starts to happen with greater and greater frequency and of a greater magnitude.
We can look at the devastating wildfire season here that is still fully underway and that is costing us all huge amounts of money while destroying valuable forests, burning many homes and businesses and is coming closer and closer to destroying entire cities and know for a fact these catastrophes aren’t going to abate in the future. Due to ever increasingly extreme conditions from climate change they are going to get worse.
Some of our largest centers like Vancouver are going to get hit hard in the future.
At some point climate change in this region is going to make the supply of fresh water a critical issue as the very glaciers that supply most of our fresh water systems melt away into nothing. In a bad drought year many of our rivers will have reduced flow or stop almost completely.
All this has been enabled by those that started decades ago claiming it wasn’t happening and wasn’t real not because they had definite evidence that told them so, but because someone at ExxonMobil or some other fossil fuel company was paying them to lie for corporate interests not overall social and ecological interests.
We’re rapidly being left with a world that is less and less livable for more and more people and many other life forms because the facts don’t fit conveniently onto someone’s balance sheet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_EzF4k9_QY&t=6s
Jennifer Francis: A New Arctic Feedback
greenmanbucket
Published on Jan 16, 2017
A key idea in climate science is that the system contains multiple feedback loops, that can make warming worse.
For instance, as white, reflective ice is replaced by Dark, absorbing water - more of the sun's warmth is absorbed -
a positive feedback.
Here, Arctic expert Jennifer Francis describes a new, emerging feedback process, as the arctic warms and affects jet stream flow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_EzF4k9_QY&t=6s
Jennifer Francis: A New Arctic Feedback
greenmanbucket
Published on Jan 16, 2017
A key idea in climate science is that the system contains multiple feedback loops, that can make warming worse.
For instance, as white, reflective ice is replaced by Dark, absorbing water - more of the sun's warmth is absorbed -
a positive feedback.
Here, Arctic expert Jennifer Francis describes a new, emerging feedback process, as the arctic warms and affects jet stream flow.
Here is another, more subtle feedback occurring in the oceans.
Giant larvaceans could be ferrying ocean plastic to the seafloor.
POLLUTED POOP Giant larvaceans (Bathochordaeus stygius) appear to eat microplastics when exposed to them in underwater experiments. The sea creatures could play a role in how plastic pollution cycles through ocean ecosystems.
Yup, the first critters that figure out how to turn plastics into body building food, will take over the new world order, when silly petty narcissistic humans leave the stage and the Earth returns to a more realistic pace of living and creation. God be praised. (sarc warning, for the feeble minded.)
Downtown San Francisco hit a suffocating 106 degrees, its highest temperature since record keeping began there in 1874.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/us/california-today-is-this-what-climate-change-looks-like.html?_r=0
http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/san-francisco-smashes-all-time-record-high-temperature-hits-106-degrees-1745388
Microburst caught on camera scaring beachgoers in Santa Barbara
http://abc7news.com/weather/microburst-caught-on-camera-scaring-beachgoers-in-santa-barbara/2373679/
psik
This has been the worst wildfire season in recorded history here, over 1,000,000 hectares have burned and the fires are still blazing all over the province with more to come.
Last weekend I spent the better part of the day listening to and watching a trio of amphibious water-bombers making drop after drop on a fire just a mile north of my home. This is a heavily populated valley.
The largest wildfire in BC right now is almost 500,000 hectares, that’s well over 1,000,000 acres. http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/just-how-big-is-b-c-s-biggest-wildfire-1.22111960
Exactly how big is B.C.'s biggest wildfire? We know it's about 467,000 hectares, but it can be difficult to imagine the area of something, especially if it's big.
Related
To start, one hectare is 2.47 acres or 0.01 square kilometres (inversely, one square kilometre is 100 hectares).
The Caribbean and US south is being hammered by some of the worst hurricanes in recorded history as well.
This and worse is what we all have to look forward to in coming years thanks to the psychopaths that run Exxon-Mobil, Koch industries, the Western Fuel association, Peabody energy, etc... and all the mercenaries that have and continue to work for the climate change denial machine.
We'll have rain tomorrow for the first time in months here, but the fires in this province will burn deep into the fall and some may still be hot by next year. I'm looking forward to seeing the Sun again, life under catastrophic dirty brown smoke filled skies is disgusting, we need to start suing and criminally charging the people behind climate change denial, enough of this insanity.
This has been the worst wildfire season in recorded history here, over 1,000,000 hectares have burned and the fires are still blazing all over the province with more to come.
Last weekend I spent the better part of the day listening to and watching a trio of amphibious water-bombers making drop after drop on a fire just a mile north of my home. This is a heavily populated valley.
The largest wildfire in BC right now is almost 500,000 hectares, that's well over 1,000,000 acres.
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/just-how-big-is-b-c-s-biggest-wildfire-1.22111960
Exactly how big is B.C.'s biggest wildfire? We know it's about 467,000 hectares, but it can be difficult to imagine the area of something, especially if it's big.
Related
To start, one hectare is 2.47 acres or 0.01 square kilometres (inversely, one square kilometre is 100 hectares).
The Caribbean and US south is being hammered by some of the worst hurricanes in recorded history as well.
This and worse is what we all have to look forward to in coming years thanks to the psychopaths that run Exxon-Mobil, Koch industries, the Western Fuel association, Peabody energy, etc... and all the mercenaries that have and continue to work for the climate change denial machine.
We'll have rain tomorrow for the first time in months here, but the fires in this province will burn deep into the fall and some may still be hot by next year. I'm looking forward to seeing the Sun again, life under catastrophic dirty brown smoke filled skies is disgusting, we need to start suing and criminally charging the people behind climate change denial, enough of this insanity.
Are you kidding? They'll start selling clean air in bottles, just like we do with water now. They'll throw in scuba gear and flippers for free.
This has been the worst wildfire season in recorded history here, over 1,000,000 hectares have burned and the fires are still blazing all over the province with more to come.
Last weekend I spent the better part of the day listening to and watching a trio of amphibious water-bombers making drop after drop on a fire just a mile north of my home. This is a heavily populated valley.
The largest wildfire in BC right now is almost 500,000 hectares, that's well over 1,000,000 acres.
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/just-how-big-is-b-c-s-biggest-wildfire-1.22111960
Exactly how big is B.C.'s biggest wildfire? We know it's about 467,000 hectares, but it can be difficult to imagine the area of something, especially if it's big.
Related
To start, one hectare is 2.47 acres or 0.01 square kilometres (inversely, one square kilometre is 100 hectares).
The Caribbean and US south is being hammered by some of the worst hurricanes in recorded history as well.
This and worse is what we all have to look forward to in coming years thanks to the psychopaths that run Exxon-Mobil, Koch industries, the Western Fuel association, Peabody energy, etc... and all the mercenaries that have and continue to work for the climate change denial machine.
We'll have rain tomorrow for the first time in months here, but the fires in this province will burn deep into the fall and some may still be hot by next year. I'm looking forward to seeing the Sun again, life under catastrophic dirty brown smoke filled skies is disgusting, we need to start suing and criminally charging the people behind climate change denial, enough of this insanity.
Are you kidding? They'll start selling clean air in bottles, just like we do with water now. They'll throw in scuba gear and flippers for free.
No doubt, they'll probably start selling all the wonder reef diving opportunities that are coming in Florida, "visit amazing downtown Miami, - shark repellent extra"
last Sunday there were three Cl-415s starting in late morning till dark making constant water drops on a fire a mile from where I live. I could go out in my back yard and watch them make circuit after circuit on the blaze, they’d come in from the hills just to the west, line up on the fire and make their run, with about a five second spacing between planes. Then drop down onto Okanagan lake fill their tanks, climb back up and drop again. Over and over. CL-415 Waterbomber]
It would have been cool to watch if it wasn’t for the fact what this represents, at some point all our efforts to deal with catastrophic climate change are simply going to be overwhelmed because the changes being forced are so significant there is no way to adapt.
Unfortunately none of what you mention matters. Even more unfortunately it’s going to take horrible weather events to change people’s minds. And I think it’s only partially (but still mostly) due to the politization of climate change. If you’ve ever been involved with local politics, so many times things don’t happen, like getting that new stop sign installed, until it’s too late and somebody gets hit or killed. THEN everyone is up in arms as to why it didn’t get done earlier. I guess you call it inate human stupidity and inertia.
The facts of climate change have been intentionally distorted out of all recognition so that nothing effective can be done. Anytime anyone even brings up the subject you have people like Mike Yohe here that show up to drop informational stink bombs that clear the room, it makes it impossible to come to consensus on what needs to be done. So we put it off until the next disaster which keeps getting worse and worse.
This is a progressive process that will ultimately make it impossible for human civilization to exist and quite possibly the human species.
Being in the middle of this chaos it soon becomes apparent that when the catastrophic impacts hit full force it overwhelms our ability to cope. In some cases totally like with Fort McMurray in Alberta a few years ago which was abandoned to the fire and had thousands of houses and buildings burn down. That is the future for everybody if we keep doing what we’re doing in regards to fossil fuels use and ecological destruction in general. If not fire then flood, sea level rise, drought, killer heat waves and more will make life for people less and less survivable, all so Exxon-Mobil, Koch Inc. and a few other massive corporations can continue to survive.
Research has been showing this for decades on a host of issues but the commercial interests that would be financially negatively impacted often just take a small percent of their profits and hire experts in creating informational smoke screens to hide the brutal truth. Now we here in BC live under a perpetual cloud of smoke as much of this province burns and will deep into the fall and early winter.
We haven’t had rain here in the south for more than two months, we’re expecting 1 mm later tonight, what does it say when just the idea of a millimeter of rain is exciting.
Thanks to the catastrophic weather conditions that are now becoming the norm worldwide, not only is the Caribbean being hammered by Irma one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded, there is another one heading in to wreak even more havoc.
Hurricane Irma scraped Cuba's northern coast Friday on a course toward Florida, leaving in its deadly wake a ravaged string of Caribbean resort islands strewn with splintered lumber, corrugated metal and broken concrete.
The death toll in the Caribbean stood at 22 and was expected to rise as rescuers reached some of the hardest-hit areas.
And a new danger lay on the horizon to the east: Hurricane Jose, a Category 4 storm with 240 km/h winds that could punish some of the devastated areas all over again.
Psychopaths like Rush Limbaugh are playing a deadly game with this issue, Limbaugh is telling his listeners to be skeptical of claims of how dangerous Irma will be.
Gaseous airbag]
If they can show that anyone is killed as a result of Limbaugh casting doubt on just how serious Irma is then Rush should be charged with criminal negligence causing death. Using the public airwaves for political purposes that places people at risk is an abuse of those airwaves. They are there to accurately inform people on issues that can mean life or death, not to deceive people in the interests of those funding Limbaugh which include the same groups that fund climate change denial.
What a piece of absolute crap Limbaugh is, he spent the week telling his listeners that Irma was a left wing hoax then fled Florida in his private jet because the hurricane is about to hit.
After spending much of this week telling his listeners that Hurricane Irma was fake news, Rush Limbaugh his fled his home base in Palm Beach, Florida, in anticipation of landfall.
On Thursday, Limbaugh announced he would not “be able" to host his nationally syndicated radio show on Friday due to “the security nature of things," adding that he was heading to “parts unknown."
It's the exact same with other climate change deniers, they lie about the reality and risks then take measures to protect themselves thinking of others not at all.
Hurricane Irma regained Category 5 status late Friday as the core of the storm made landfall in Cuba with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Irma made landfall on the Camaguey archipelago of Cuba, the center said late Friday night.
The massive storm edged closer to US landfall in the Florida Keys after leaving a trail of devastation and death in much of the Caribbean as it advanced toward South Florida.
Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center say the storm's wind speeds will increase after Irma passes Cuba then slips into the extremely warm waters near the Keys.
"Nowhere in the Florida Keys will be safe," the National Weather Service tweeted.
This is an indication of how criminally irresponsible all climate change deniers are. Limbaugh made the totally unsubstantiated claims he did because he's a climate change denier and is paid to lie to people on issues that can mean life and death.
Florida is about to get a real world expression of what catastrophic climate change means and a prime denier of climate change Limbaugh has fled the state abandoning his listeners without even rescinding his earlier lies.
Irma’s storm track has shifted to the west meaning that Tampa not Miami in now in the middle of the storm track.
This has been a truly brutal year for the catastrophic impacts of human created climate change. Wildfire that are still burning intensely across western North America and multiple massive hurricanes tearing up the US, Mexico and the Caribbean.
All this was predicted decades ago, I remember clearly reading about projections of this in 1990.
And this is just the start of a process that will continue to worsen, who cares what the deniers like Limbaugh say when they claim it isn’t happening then take flight to avoid dying.