[D66] The future has arrived

[R.O.]

theguardian.com:

The future has arrived. These explosive fires are our climate change 
wakeup call
Peter Gleick in San Francisco

Scientists have been warning of the growing threat of climate change, 
and now those projections are a reality

Fri 11 Sep 2020 11.00 BST

Last modified on Fri 11 Sep 2020 14.53 BST

459

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