Lessons From a Genocide Can Prepare Humanity for Climate Apocalypse

Catastrophic global climate change, however, is not an event at all, and we’re not waiting for it. We’re living it right now. In August 2018, in a summer of forest fires and shattered heat records, the strongest, oldest ice in the Arctic Sea broke up for the first time on record, presaging the final throes of the Arctic death spiral.

The fantasy version of apocalypse always begins with the longawaited event — a missile launch, escaped virus, zombie outbreak — and moves swiftly through collapse into a new, steady state. Something happens, and the morning after you’re pushing a squeaking shopping cart down a highway littered with abandoned Teslas, sawed-off shotgun at the ready. The event is key: it’s a baptism, a fiery sword separating past and present, the origin story of Future You.

In September 2018, the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, gave a speech warning: “If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change.” The months following saw the US government crippled by a fight over whether to build a wall on the southern border to keep out climate change refugees, news that greenhouse-gas emissions have not decreased but in fact have accelerated upward, and a populist revolt in France sparked by opposition to a gas tax.

Read the story from MIT Technology Review by Roy Scranton - “Lessons From a Genocide Can Prepare Humanity for Climate Apocalypse.”

The Coming Climate Change War

Current global warming is real, it is man-made, and its consequences will be profoundly negative over time. The significant loss of polar ice, damage to the coral reefs, increased flooding along coastlines and other waterways, more frequent heatwaves, and an increased risk of forest fires are among the most likely consequences as the earth continues to warm.

A lone polar bear on a shrinking island
of ice- a symbol of climate change.

Theory and empirical data support these predictions, unequivocally.

That reality, however, is being cynically weaponized by an unqualified chattering class that seeks partisan advantage, even at the risk of war.

Reactions to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate change exemplify this problem…

Read the Medium story by Kent Kroeger - “The Coming Climate Change War.”

Could the heat and extreme weather shift climate change denial?

London: Huge, deadly wildfires in Greece and California, forest fires out of control across Sweden, a record-setting heatwave in northern Europe, heatstroke deaths up fourfold in a baking Tokyo … and British academic Dr Rupert Read got a call.

The heatwave grips the UK - will it budge
 the thinking of climate change deniers?

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire wanted the Green House think tank chairman to debate climate change on air with a climate science denier.

He's done it before. This time he got a bit hot under the collar.

"I said NO," Read said, in a Tweet that has since been retweeted tens of thousands of times.

"I told them it was a disgrace that they still give climate deniers airtime at a time like this. I won't be part of such charades any longer.”

Read the story from The Age by Nick Miller - “Could the heat and extreme weather shift climate change denial?”

Huge forest fires in Portugal kill at least 57 people

At least 57 people have been killed in huge forest fires in central Portugal, many dying in their cars as they tried to flee the flames.

Portugal ablaze.

Portugal’s prime minister, António Costa, described the blazes – which have injured dozens more people – as “the greatest tragedy we have seen in recent years in terms of forest fires”, and warned the death toll could rise.

Several hundred firefighters and 160 vehicles were dispatched late on Saturday to tackle the fire, which broke out in the municipality of Pedrógão Grande before spreading fast.

Spain dispatched two water-bombing planes on Sunday morning to aid the Portuguese fire service, while France sent three aircraft.

The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, promised to provide any assistance necessary, tweeting: “Stunned by the tragedy in Pedrógão Grande. The Portuguese people can depend on our solidarity, support and affection.”

Read the story by Sam Jones on The Guardian - “Huge forest fires in Portugal kill at least 57 people.”

Climate change has doubled Western U.S. forest fires

Forest fire in the Rocky Mountains.

A new study says that human-induced climate change has doubled the area affected by forest fires in the U.S. West over the last 30 years.

According to the study, since 1984 heightened temperatures and resulting aridity have caused fires to spread across an additional 16,000 square miles than they otherwise would have -- an area larger than the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.

The authors warn that further warming will increase fire exponentially in coming decades. The study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"No matter how hard we try, the fires are going to keep getting bigger, and the reason is really clear," said study coauthor Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "Climate is really running the show in terms of what burns. We should be getting ready for bigger fire years than those familiar to previous generations."

Read the Science News story - “Climate change has doubled Western U.S. forest fires.”

Killer haze from forest fires brings on 100,000 premature deaths

Indonesians were the worst affected with an
estimated 91,600 excess deaths, the report found.

Killer haze from forest fires that raged across Indonesia last year may have caused more than 100,000 premature deaths in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, according to a new report that suggests a drastically higher death toll than Indonesian government figures.

Harvard and Columbia University researchers used air pollution readings to calculate exposure to the deadly smoke.

"We estimate that haze in 2015 resulted in 100,300 excess deaths across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore," says the report, which was published in Environmental Research Letters journal on September 19.

It says this is more than double the estimated number of deaths as a result of haze in 2006, with much of the increase due to fires in Indonesia's South Sumatra province.

Read Jewel Topfield’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Toxic haze from Indonesian forest fires may have caused 100,000 deaths: report.”

The [Olympics] Year the Rain Forest Burned

This month, hundreds of millions worldwide had their TV eyes tuned to the Olympics. But this season might be remembered not solely for the gold medal count but for foreboding events now unfolding just a thousand miles northwest of the Rio games.

With a camera on a NASA satellite that circles over Earth’s poles, University of California, Irvine professor James Randerson has spotted a near-record number of early-dry season fires burning on the southern and western perimeter of the Amazon forest, including in seven Brazilian states and swaths of lowland Peru and Bolivia.

Randerson, a biologist, has created a computer model for forecasting forest fires. Evidence from various satellites indicate that the rainy season just ended shed unusually little precipitation. “It’s the driest we’ve observed in the last 15 years at the onset of the dry season,” he says. Several weeks ago, he forecast a chart-busting conflagration later this month. The many blazes already detected appear to bear out his prediction.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story - “The [Olympics] Year the Rain Forest Burned.”