Yesterday, we saw who Rush Limbaugh blamed for the wild fires in California: Liberals. Today let’s look at the cause a climate scientist suggests is the real culprit for the current extreme fire storms in California:
PITTSBURGH-As global temperatures rise, people should brace themselves for more of such crises as the fires ravaging California and the drought conditions fueling them, says University of Pittsburgh paleoclimatologist Michael Rosenmeier.
Although the current wildfires across Southern California cannot be directly linked to climate change, scientific models of a warmer Earth show that weather extremes akin to the heavy winds and dry, hot weather driving the flames will be more common, Rosenmeier said. Scientists have predicted that in a warmer world extreme weather-from heavy rainfall to blistering heat waves and freezing conditions-will occur frequently and erratically. These fluctuations could bring an increase in catastrophic conditions such as the wildfires in California and the water shortage currently gripping drought-stricken Georgia.
“Decades ago, droughts were considered anomalies,” Rosenmeier said. “Now, I would argue that drought should be considered more of a norm. We need to be consistently prepared for fire in the American West each year. What we consider extremes are going to become more common occurrences. All of the models predict that.”
As an assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Planetary science in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences, Rosenmeier studies the interaction of humans and climate throughout history. His research includes the possible role of climate change on the fall of the Mayan Empire and its impact on the local environment.
We saw horrendous wild fires in Greece earlier this year, so it’s safe to say that as more and more of the globe suffers from drought conditions, we are likely to see an increase in catastrophic fire storms such as the ones threatening Southern California. Consequences predicted by computer models of climate change based on the fact (not the fiction) of global warming.
By the way, those climate models are probably very, very wrong. Why do I say that? Because based on a new study it seems the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased at a rate far greater than those computer models predicted. In other words, those earlier computer models were too conservative because they were based on a slower rate of CO2 being spewed into the atmosphere, and retained there. Instead, more human generated CO2 is being produced than expected, and more is being retained in the atmosphere to fuel global warming due to of the lack of the earth’s oceans and other carbon sinks to absorb this excess. In short, things will get worse and will get worse much faster than has been previously predicted:
(cont.)
Scientists warned last night that global warming will be “stronger than expected and sooner than expected”, after a new analysis showed carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than predicted.
Experts said that the rise was down to soaring economic development in China, and a reduction in the amount of carbon pollution soaked up by the world’s land and oceans. It also means human emissions will have to be cut more sharply than predicted to avoid the likely effects. […]
The study worsens even the gloomy predictions of this year’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC, which shared the Nobel peace prize this month with Al Gore, said there were only eight years left to prevent the worst effects of global warming, by acting to curb emissions.
Dr Le Quere said: “We are emitting far more than anticipated when the IPCC scenarios were drawn up in the late 1990s.” Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning has risen by an average 2.9% each year since 2000. During the 1990s the annual rise was 0.7%.
The new study explains abnormally high carbon dioxide measurements highlighted by the Guardian in January. At the time, scientists were puzzled why dozens of measuring stations across the world were showing a CO2 spike for 2006, the fourth year in the last five to show a sharp increase in the greenhouse gas. […]
The new study, published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), says three processes have contributed to this increase: growth in the world economy, heavy use of coal in China, and a weakening of natural “sinks” – forests, seas and soils that absorb carbon.
Do you understand now, people who believe Rush is right when he says we need to “dominate” the planet even more than we are doing already, that his his rhetoric about “environmentalist wackos” is as rancid and venomous as his attacks on “phony soldiers” or any of his other favorite liberal targets? The world is really in a crisis, and fashioning a pretend reality out of the hot air emitted by radio talk show hosts and Exxon approved global warming denialists, isn’t going to make that crisis go away.
It’s the environmental scientists (not “wackos,” but people with real science degrees, unlike college dropouts such as Mr. Limbaugh) who are the objective truth tellers here. We may not like their message, but we better start paying attention to it, as soon as [expletive deleted] possible, or we will see tremendous loss of life over the course of the next 20 to 50 years from the consequences of our continuing to pump greenhouse gases into the earth’s atmosphere. And I’m not just talking about plant and animal life, where mass extinctions are already a foregone conclusion, but human lives (from famine, diseases, wars and other calamities), the ones you “Culture of Life” folks are supposed to care so much about.
I hate being the Cassandra around here, always preaching of the doom that anyone with half a brain can see coming (and I know our regular readers here possess far more intelligence and common sense than most people), but I keep hoping that the occasional reader who still buys into the “controversy” over global warming and climate change manufactured and promulgated by the energy industry (i.e., Big Oil and Energy Utilities which burn fossil fuels to generate electricity) will take his or her blinders off and realize we are living in desperate times. And then do something about it. A feeble hope, I know, but when all appears lost, hope is what we have left.
Think about this. In a little over two years, New Orleans, Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Diego have all been shaken to their core by environmental “abnormalities”. If you had asked me in the early summer of 05 what the probability of these four major metropolitan areas being in the state there are in today, I would have given you long odds against. I would have been wrong. I’m sixty two now. If I make it to eighty, I am afraid that the biosphere will be in a state of collapse.
::SIGH::
I could see this coming.
Southern Cali has ALWAYS had brush fires. It is, after all, a semi-desert.
My wife grew up in Azusa, which is east of Los Angeles, tucked against the San Gabriel mountains. She cannot even remember how many times they had fires as she was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s.
I grew up in the south bay and Palos Verdes and well remember seeing the flames across the bay in Malibu during the 60’s.
What we have around here on our hillsides is sage and manzinita brush. Because we don’t get rain after about March it dries out a LOT before the rains come again on early Dec. This rain pattern is thousands of years old, far before the fossil fuel era. The ‘proof’ of this is the drought tolerate plants that are the natural vegetation of this area (manzinita, sage, oak, etc.). They dry out (turning quite brown) during the winter, then suddenly sprout foilage in Jan.
Another climate feature is the Santa Ana winds that most frequently occur in Sept-Oct (however, you can get them any time). These are fierce west bound winds caused by high pressure over Colorado. As they drop in altitude they pick up speed, gain heat and lose moisture, dropping the overall humidity to around 10% near the coast. These are also not a new weather pattern. As I was growing up you could always depend on a fierce heat wave right after the school year started. No teacher ever tried to even teach during this weather, usually we would gather in the only air conditioned area (the auditorium) and watch movies. This weather usually did not last over 5 days.
These winds, combined with the dry brush, is what causes these fires. In the past they would not be as damaging. The fires would just be allowed to burn them selves out. But now several other factors have come into play. Fires are no longer allowed to burn, causing a build up of combustable material (just like in a forest). People now live in these brush areas in far greater numbers, and I mean in FAR greater numbers.
Global warming has nothing to do with this (I should say, not very much to do with this). In fact I have noticed a LESSENING of the force of our Oct Santa Anas (we did not get one lick of wind from the east at our house this past week) over the last few years. Yes, that is anectodal evidence, but I have worked outside because of my business for the last 35 years. AND I HATE Santa Anas, so I do notice them.
You just as well blame our earthquakes on global warming as blame our brush fires. Anybody who has grown up here knows we have always gotten brush fires. And droughts.
nalbar
What happened there?
Link:
California’s natural landscape is engineered to benefit from periodic fires. Many native plants actually need fires to germinate.
But wildfires are on the rise, in both frequency and intensity, in part because of hotter, drier conditions.
If a fire recurs in an area within five to 10 years, the hardy native shrubs may not get the chance to mature and create seeds. Exotic weed-like grasses that germinate quickly can fill in areas faster than natives can recover.
Because those grasses have shallower roots, the potential for erosion and mudslides increases. […]
Researchers in San Diego have been conducting long-term studies on the 2003 Cedar Fire, which burned more than 273,000 acres and was historic for its size and intensity.
Based on their findings, Spencer and other scientists have made general predictions about how the latest fires could affect the state’s ecology.
“There’s no doubt that it’s going to be converted to a weedier, less pretty, fewer species, simpler environment than the one we inherited when we moved here,” Spencer said.
And another link:
Then, too, there’s climate change. As occurred after Hurricane Katrina, the question of what role global warming might have played in the disaster arose before the fires had even begun to die down. While environmental scientists are careful not to blame the droughts or heat waves of any one season on climate change, the overwhelming majority of climate models point to more of these extreme conditions in the already dry Southwest as the planet warms. A study led by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., and published in Science last year found that as temperatures increased in the West, which is now 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 1 degree Celsius) warmer than it was in 1987, so did the length of the wildfire season and the size and duration of the average fire.
You’re making what seems to be THE fundamental flaw when it comes to climate change.
Climate change does NOT cause instantaneous radical changes in the environment. None of the models say that we’re going to take an area that has never seen a drought before and its suddenly going to become a drought-ridden wasteland.
What the models are saying is that the extremes of the weather are getting MORE EXTREME. So an area that sees short droughts every few years would be expected to see longer droughts more frequently. An area that sees massive rainfall or tsunamis every few years would be expected to see even more rainfall more frequently.
At least in the short term the expectation is that the current climate conditions of an area will become more extreme versions of the climate that is currently in the area – more prone to stay at the extremes than stick to the median. THAT’S what the models say. And that’s what appears to be happening.
Now, I will agree that there’s a danger in blaming every single extreme event that occurs on global climate change – some disasters are just disasters. There have been brushfires out in the desert areas of California and the mountain west for as long as there have been settlers out there. And to some degree all brushfires become more dangerous because population density is constantly increasing – there are more people in the area to be affected by property damage and loss of life so a fire of the same size in the same area would be more disastrous now than a century ago.
But increasing frequency of disastrous weather combined with more extreme versions of said extreme weather conditions is in fact exactly what the models predict. And whether these particular conflagrations are directly caused by human caused global climate change or not, they are exactly the type of behavior that the scientists have been predicting. Eventually, given the number of things that have happened that have fit the climate models, you have to give in to the statistics and say that the models are reasonable and that human sources for global climate change are statistically incredibly likely – even if you can’t pinpoint a single event and definitively say “this was definitely caused by global climate change created by humans”. And that means its time to stop arguing about whether or not humans are causing the problems and to start determining what the most likely behavior changes that we’re going to have to make are to reverse the course (or, I suppose, decide that we’re just going to give up and let the planet kill us off – that’s not really the traditional human way of dealing with existential problems like this, but hey – there’s always a first time for everything. And a last one, I guess.)
Thanks for saying that better than I could.
doesn’t this mean that we should invade China?
The at anytime we may cross the “tipping point” and still the right buries its head in the sand. I work with several wingers some of them very intelligent. Five out of eight believe its all political or that the earth is in a natural warming trend. You know the kind that melts half an ice cap in twenty years. They deny and deny its absolutely crazy.
The wingnuts assume future generation will clean up our debt too. The cost of the environmental meltdown and inflating their way out of debt will be overwhelming to them. When the word tax can be said without a crucifixion then we may be getting serious about climate and debt. Everything has a cost. The Republicans have gotten away with their tax lies long enough. To vote for tax cuts is freaking sinful.
Rush is wrong about the dates (no Malibu fire on Saturday) and what people should do (officials were telling people to stay away). My blog post on the matter.
Good catch. I sent a link to your blog post to Media Matters.