For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Joined: Aug 26, 2005 Posts: 991 Location: "Mad as Hell !"
Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 6:22 pm Post subject: Wildfire warning: Study sees climate link
Tonight's latest NBC GW warning. More fires, lasting longer and starting sooner due in effect to Global Warming. LINK
Quote:
The scientists also expressed concern that the fires mean forests were releasing more carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, than they are absorbing.
“If wildfire trends continue,” they wrote, “at least initially this biomass burning will result in carbon release, suggesting that the forests of the western U.S. may become a source of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide rather than a sink, even under a relatively modest temperature increase scenario.”
The research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Forest Service and the California Energy Commission.
_________________ The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 6:13 pm Post subject: Re: Wildfire warning: Study sees climate link
Dan Cayan et al wrote:
“We’re showing warming and earlier springs tying in with large forest fire frequencies,” he added. “Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away. But it’s not 50 to 100 years away — it’s happening now in forest ecosystems through fire.”
We had an early summer here in Southern California with an early snow melt in the mountains, and at this moment there is a raging fire on the mountains. This is the biggest fire to occur here in years.
I have a good view of the east end of the San Bernardino mountains, and have been watching the fire sweep northwest towards the mountain resort community of Big Bear Lake. If it hits areas where bark-beetle infestation has killed up to 80-100 percent of the trees, it will not stop until all the fuel has been consumed.
Just last week I rode through the trails that lead from the desert floor to the mountains. The scenery was spectacular, ranging from joshua trees and creosote to juniper and pines. As I write this, I am looking at the same area engulfed in tall smoke plumes. It looks as if several thermonuclear devices have exploded simultaneously over the area, leaving a hellish blackened and smoldering landscape in their wake. And, as a result of climate change, many of the species that once grew in this area will not return.
So this is global warming. The changes seem to be occuring right now in a dramatic and sudden manner, rather than over a period of 50-100 years. Global warming is a very real threat to peoples lives, homes, and way of life. Unfortunately, our current leadership seems to think that terrorism is the biggest threat most people face.
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:39 pm Post subject: Re: Wildfire warning: Study sees climate link
That's exactly why I don't like the term "Global Warming", "warm" implies some gradual increase in temeprature, which may be what happens on a large scale, but not locally. "Climate Change" is much more accurate as it reflects the sudden changes in local climates that may occur as a result of smaller change in the larger system.
Most people won't care if you tell them everything is warming up a bit, but if you tell them their climate may change radically, for better or worse, and then point out that humans historically settle around areas with appealing climates, they'll sing another tune. Especially if you point out how insurance companies are pulling out or raising rates from Florida to New York.
I heard the Yucca Valley fire was hard to deal with because of the increase in the amount of dead brush that'd acculated due to increased rainfall the past few years, probably because of increased activity in the gulf during hurricane season. I can't really say I have many weeds up here, but after watching the fire get within three miles of my house, I think I'll clear out anything within a 20 foot radius of the yard.
Last edited by omgwtfbyobbq on Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
Huh?... really don't understand what Kunstler's stand on Y2K has to do with Global Warming? You might have well said Bush thought there was WMDS in Iraq, same relevance.
Kunstler wrote:
July 10, 2006
Readers all around the the blogosphere have been twanging on me this week on two counts: one, that seven years ago I took the Y2K computer scare seriously, and two, that I have so far failed to correctly predict the end of the world.
For those of you too young to remember, the Y2K scare was about an esoteric little programming glitch that existed almost universally in older "legacy" computer systems around the world. The glitch in essence would have prevented older systems from recognizing the date beyond 12/31/99, and this, it was widely believed, would have pranged the interdependent complex institutions and public services that ran on these computers. There was fear that everything from municipal sewage treatment plants, to international banks, to big electric grids, to government agencies would stumble, that equipment for running these things would be badly damaged in the process, and that financial records would be lost on a broad basis.
As it turned out, very little happened on New Years Day, 2000. Scoffers exulted in their righteous rightness. The truth, though, was that immense sums of money had been spent -- hundreds of billions worldwide -- and countless work hours put in by programmers to avert the problem. It was a problem with a very definite deadline, and they made the deadline.
The Y2K event would have been a harsh lesson in the diminishing returns of technology and especially over-investments in complexity. Ironically, the work done, and the new equipment purchased by companies, institutions, and agencies may have played a major role in the tech boom of the late 1990s -- which, of course, eventuated in the tech bust that immediately followed.
My own involvement in Y2K in the early days of blogging derived from my observation that a lot of knowledgeable tech people were taking the Y2K problem seriously, and yakking about it on the Net, and so I concluded the issue deserved attention. In retrospect, I also suppose that the one thing nobody really knew was how the programmers working on their own individual projects around the world were coming along, because a lot of that work and expenditure was going on in secret -- big government agencies, big companies, and big utilities did not want to scare the public, queer their stock values, or let on about the difficulties involved in fixing the problem. And of course, the inter-connectivity of many of these complex systems -- banks especially -- was precisely the scariest part of the problem, meaning that it would not be okay for some of them to fix their problems and some of them to fail. As it happened, enough of them fixed their problems -- at great cost -- and their were no cascading failures. Score one for advanced civilization.
Oh, and thanks for posting the overused denial list that keeps getting plastered all over that Right Wing haunts at places like HumanEventsOnline.com when ever the subject comes up. _________________ The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
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