The future has arrived. These explosive fires are
our climate change wakeup call
Scientists have been warning of the growing threat of
climate change, and now those projections are a reality
Peter
Gleick in San Francisco
@PeterGleick
Fri 11 Sep
2020 11.00 BSTLast modified on Fri 11 Sep 2020 14.53 BST
Like
millions of people in the western United States this week, I woke up to deep
red, sunless skies, layers of ash coating the streets, gardens, and cars, and
the smell of burning forests, lives, homes, and dreams. Not to be too
hyperbolic, but on top of the political chaos, the economic collapse, and the
worst pandemic in modern times, it seemed more than a little apocalyptic.
Too much of
the western United States is on fire, and many areas not suffering directly
from fire are enveloped in choking, acrid smoke.
While fires
in the west are not unusual or unexpected, these fires are different: they’re
earlier, bigger, and hotter than usual. They are expanding explosively,
overwhelming towns and firefighting resources. And there’s no getting away from
them. As of Thursday evening, five of the ten largest wildfires in California’s
history are burning. Seven of the 10 largest fires have occurred in the last
four years. This isn’t normal.
What’s
different now? Human-caused climate change.
We’re
reaping the consequences of more than a century of using the thin, delicate
layer of atmosphere that surrounds the planet as a dumping ground for the major
waste product of burning fossil fuels – carbon dioxide. For more than half a
century, scientists have been warning of the growing threat of climate change.
My own work on climate and water 35 years ago found that rising temperatures
would alter California’s snowpack, water availability, and soil moisture in
ways we’re now seeing in our mountains and rivers. In the early 1990s,
scientists such as Margaret Torn, Jeremy Fried, Kevin Ryan, Colin Price, and
others were evaluating the risks of increases in western wildfire areas and
intensity under scenarios of climate change. The National Climate Assessments
required by federal law have regularly warned that worsening fires were a
likely future consequence of accelerating climate change.
Projections
have turned to reality. The future has arrived. What we’re seeing now, with
massive wildfires, worsening storms, unprecedented heat, and record droughts
and floods is just the beginning of the climate changes to come. On top of
rising oceans, the accelerating destruction of the Arctic ice cap, expanding
water crises, and new health disasters, these climate impacts are something no
human society has ever experienced and for which we remain woefully unprepared.
What we’re seeing now is just the
beginning of the climate changes to come
I’m not
arguing any individual disaster has been caused by climate change, though the
science is strengthening on that as well. I’m saying we are now seeing the
unambiguous influence of climate change on these disasters. What used to be
considered acts of God are now also acts of humans. Hurricanes such as Harvey
in 2017 are stronger and they’re delivering more devastating floods. Heat waves
are happening earlier and they’re longer and hotter than they used to be.
California just experienced its hottest August on record including what may
have been the hottest temperature ever recorded, in Death Valley. The
wildfires, as we’ve seen, are turning into fierce, fearsome, monsters.
The
influence of climate change on wildfires is easy to see. Global warming is
diminishing our mountain snowpack, leading to hotter and drier summers. Eighty
percent of California, 95% of Oregon, and all of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and
New Mexico are currently in drought. Severe droughts over the past decade have
killed hundreds of millions of trees in our forests, adding to the fuels
available to burn. Higher temperatures further dry out forest and rangeland
soils. Unusual lightning storms are igniting multiple fires at a time,
overwhelming our ability to squelch them early.
We’re not
alone. The wildfire signal of climate change is being seen around the world, in
southern Europe, Canada, Australia, South America, and Africa, and other
climate-change impacts are accelerating too, in the form of storms, melting
glaciers, rising seas, and more.
More and
more scientists are speaking out about the connections between these disasters
and climate change. The media is slowly getting better at reporting these
links, though too many stories still fail to do so.
It is also
time for our politicians to lead or get out of the way. For decades both major
political parties in the US ignored the climate problem, putting off decisions
for the next generation and permitting the rich and powerful fossil fuel
interests to hide, misrepresent, and deny the science and the threat. And the
claim that the cost of tackling climate change is too high is complete crap.
The reality is the cost of failing to address the problem is so much higher.
We have no
more time to twiddle our collective thumbs. The bad news is that the long delay
in tackling climate change means that some severe impacts, like the fires we’re
seeing now, are no longer avoidable and we must begin the process of adapting
to them. We must, at the same time, accelerate the complete elimination of
fossil-fuel combustion to slow the rate of future climate changes and prevent
even worse, potentially catastrophic impacts from occurring.
The good
news is that we know how to do both things. Adaptation options include changing
zoning laws, forest management, construction practices and building materials,
insurance policies, and public health strategies. And the amazingly fast growth
in renewable energy options and the dramatic plunge in their costs means that
it makes economic as well as well as environmental sense to get rid of fossil
fuels.
The links
between human-caused climate change and extreme events are real, dangerous, and
worsening. But now that we’re beginning to accept and acknowledge those links,
now that the public is increasingly aware of the problem, now that at least one
political party has embraced the need to act, we have a chance to break these
links. There is no time to waste.
Peter
Gleick is a hydroclimatologist, member of the US National Academy of Sciences,
MacArthur Fellow, and choking, gasping Californian
OPINIÃO
Califórnia. De paraíso a inferno
Em plena crise corona continuamos na
nossa vida quotidiana a não considerar o determinante problema do clima com a
urgência que merece.
António Sérgio
Rosa de Carvalho
27 de Agosto de
2020, 6:06
https://www.publico.pt/2020/08/27/opiniao/opiniao/california-paraiso-inferno-1929394
Em 1970 os The Mamas & The Papas
anunciavam o paraíso da Califórnia.(1) Paraíso
garantido por clima ameno e referências culturais “mediterrânicas” residuais da
antiga colonização espanhola, características largamente apreciadas pelas
classes abastadas, estrelas de cinema e também os hippies de São Francisco.
Na tarde de domingo/16 de Agosto de 2020 o
famoso Vale da Morte na Califórnia registou a temperatura de 130 F, ou seja 55
graus C, talvez a mais alta temperatura jamais registada no Planeta. Ora, este
local é um dos mais inóspitos do planeta, constituído por uma paisagem de
ficção cientifica.
Precisamente, nos filmes desastres/ficção
científica a ruptura do sistema através das alterações climáticas é sempre
imaginada em mega eco-cataclismos, facilmente reconhecíveis pela Humanidade. No
entanto, em plena crise corona onde podemos experimentar um “cheirinho “de
distopia, na qual todas as nossas assumidas seguranças desaparecem
instantaneamente, continuamos na nossa vida quotidiana, apesar dos sinais
progressivamente visíveis e dos avisos permanentes da classe científica, a não
considerar o determinante problema do clima com a urgência que merece.
Na Califórnia, o Verão, devido à conjugação de
altas temperaturas, seca e tempestades tropicais transformadas em trovoadas
“secas”, fontes de ignição de milhares de focos de incêndio em áreas mais e
menos remotas, transformou-a num verdadeiro inferno. Portanto, aqui temos um
exemplo concreto e nitidamente visível, digno de um “filme-desastre” anunciador
de cataclismo/distópico/global, de que a Califórnia se está a transformar num
imenso “Vale da Morte”.
Façamos uma comparação em números do fenómeno:
No mesmo período do ano passado a Califórnia registou 4,292 wildfires nos quais
arderam 56.000 hectares. Este ano o número subiu para 7002 ‘wildfires’ nos
quais arderam 1 milhão e 400 mil hectares com a destruição de 12.000 estruturas.(2) Ora num discurso “normal” de predicados e
atractivos turísticos, é comum comparar Portugal à Califórnia. A 13 de Outubro de
2018, aqui no PÚBLICO (3) eu afirmava “que
segundo as estimativas de alterações do clima, a Península Ibérica vai
transformar-se num imenso deserto inabitável.”
Muitos poderão considerar esta imagem
alarmista, mas basta, por exemplo, consultar a “estratégia” esboçada por Costa
e Silva para a Floresta Nacional, para ficarmos informados sobre o rigor, a
“visão” e a efectividade da qualidade planeadora do mesmo.
Num outro artigo aqui no PÚBLICO (4) intitulado
retoricamente “Coronavírus, o dia seguinte” eu, referindo-me à pausa distópica
provocada pelo vírus, perguntava: “Vamos, finalmente, aprender alguma coisa,
parar para reflectir, durante esta pausa a que fomos obrigados por este ‘factor
externo’, microscópica mensagem emitida pelo macro organismo onde estamos
inseridos?”.
A resposta a esta pergunta fundamental, vamos
obtê-la muito brevemente no determinante resultado das eleições americanas.
Determinante para todo o mundo, quando o actual Presidente dos EUA,
simplesmente, nega categoricamente que o problema do clima existe. Segundo ele
trata-se de mais uma teoria da conspiração.
Historiador de Arquitectura
1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aK6JnyFmk
2-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/aug/24/california-fires-evacuation-orders-bay-area-wildfires-latest-news-updates
3-
https://www.publico.pt/2018/10/13/opiniao/opiniao/apres-nous-le-deluge-1847403
4- https://www.publico.pt/2020/03/16/sociedade/opiniao/coronavirus-dia-seguinte-1908033
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