2 weeks Ago
The California fires are nothing new. Notwithstanding the human suffering, hyperbolic newscasting has mischaracterized the events. The only thing new is the attention of the American public.
These fires are a continuation of rampaging, horror show that has been ongoing for decades. They include the blackened noonday sky, the intense winds, the accelerated temperatures, the droughts and the bone-dry forests, the single-digit humidity levels and the embers flickering and gliding on the convection currents, starting spot fires a mile behind the fire line. Emblematic of their power is the evolution of fire tornadoes.
Kenneth P. Burke, MD , lives in New Portland. Paradise, Redmond, Maui.
The devastating Canadian fires few have heard about: Fort McMurray; the Great Chisholm fire; the Lytton Creek fire in British Columbia spurred on by 121 degrees ambient temperature; the innumerable Ontario fires, their smoke darkening the skies of New York City. Greek fire, if you will, licking the porticoes of Athens; the Iberian Peninsula; the extensive Australian bush fires. One of the superb nonfiction works of this 21st century is “ Fire Weather ” by John Vaillant.
Through the telling of the Fort McMurray fire in northern Alberta, Canada, the author illustrates the risk of modern wildfire, especially the innocuous-sounding WUI, Wildland Urban Interface fire, as seen in the Malibu Palisades. As the rampaging wildland fires hit modern communities, the interior of stick-constructed homes, chock-full of synthetic materials derived from petroleum, are incendiary bombs becoming an incandescent nightmare coalescing over a large swath of territory, establishing a massively erupting conflagration nigh impossible to stop. Similarities abound.
In the McMurray fire, the hydrants ran dry in the communities of modestly higher elevation. Due to the dramatic increase in overall water usage, the pumps, never designed for a ferocious burn of such magnitude, failed to supply those hydrants. And thus, Malibu.
And lest we forget, due to the droughts of climate change, this is the precious fresh water that Southern California and the Southwest can ill afford to dispense. Nearly a century ago, in the late 1930s, a Canadian by the name of Callendar hypothesized the warming atmospheric effects of increasing carbon dioxide: the Callendar Effect. Derivative of this work is the famous Keeling Curve of atmospheric carbon dioxide: Temperature follows CO2 trend; CO2 follows the fossil fuel trend.
The mechanism is well understood: the gas, carbon dioxide, allows sunlight to pass through it, but traps the infrared energy rebounding from the Earth’s surface. No mystery, the science is clear. Prefiguring where this is all heading, the new chief denier has on his Cabinet candidate list a bevy of petroleum pushers.
They include: • Doug Burgum for interior secretary: energy dominance through fossil fuels, this from the prospective steward of our public lands. • Scott Bennet for Treasury: expand oil production. • Chris Wright for Energy: an avowed climate denier, the owner of a $6 billion fracking concern; he even attempted to make a moral argument for the burning of fossil fuels.
At his Senate confirmation hearing, you were witness to a miraculous conversion-by-committee: He now believes in human-caused climate change. Is this political fracking of a personality? Or is he simply telling them what he believes they want to hear? Does he not understand he is now positioned at antipodal loggerheads with a boss who unabashedly espouses, “Drill, baby, drill’? We are at the highest temperatures in the history of modern man. The overarching tragedy is this mindless clinging to climate denial, a national behavioral dissonance.
A persistent cluster of Americans still do not understand the true import, the profound magnitude of the danger. And who pays for all this? The more we spend on recompense, resilience and damage control, the less we have for energy system conversion. The more delayed that conversion, the greater the bill.
As the newscasters say, the victims are in our thoughts and prayers, but that is not good enough. We are also obligated to give clear and concise thought to the why. There is no longer any debate over climate change and the consequences of a super-heated planet.
Just as these 21st-century fires rapidly grow out of control, so too does climate change. This incoming administration abdicates its global leadership role while refusing to assume any responsibility for our unctuous addiction to fossil fuels. If Trump actually goes to the devastated areas of LA, I would like to see him look these victims in the eye and tell them climate change is a hoax.
Talk to them about the green scammers, the green hoax. In their relentless pursuit of ignorance, Trump, his cadre and the petroleum industry acquire moral culpability for such disasters. Like a hovering hawk, legal liability awaits.
Have you not seen the misery and suffering on the faces of the victims? Shakespearean in complexity, this is the mask of death and destruction now upon us all. Now imagine this mask on the faces of your children. We invite you to add your comments.
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