Fire!

Today is supposedly Saturday, August 12, 2023.  Rustle of the Prey, according to the Universal Solar Calendar. It is only my second day on an ACE inhibitor, and already my blood pressure has fallen from Stage 2 hypertension to merely "elevated."

As you know, the Hawai'ian Island of Maui suffered from devastating wildfires this week. How is the far right dealing with the wildfires, the 110° heat waves, flooding, and other climate catastrophes?  Glad you asked. By releasing a 950-page plan for the next Republican president to gut the EPA, halt the conversion to clean energy and electric cars, and burn more fossil fuels, that's how.  Great. What could go wrong with that plan?

Regarding Maui, some are arguing that it's not climate change but weather or arson that's to blame - climate change doesn't start wildfires. It's been proposed that the fires were caused by climate activists trying to fake the risks it poses to us.  Or by over-zealous environmentalists trying to clear land for wind turbines or lithium mining.

They are right on one point - climate change doesn't start wildfires. Rather, it intensifies them, increasing the area they burn and making them much more dangerous.

Imagine someone tosses a match into a pile of relatively green, wet wood. What happens? Not much. Now, imagine they toss that same match into a pile of bone-dry kindling. What happens? It sets off an inferno.

What determines the condition of the wood pile? Increasingly, it's climate change. But not to get lost in the metaphor, we're talking about grasslands, forests, and other ecosystems here, not literal piles of wood.

A 2016 study found climate change enhanced the drying of organic matter and doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015offsite link in the western United States. A 2021 study supported by NOAA concluded that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fires in the western United States.

Research also shows that changes in climate create warmer, drier conditions, leading to longer and more active fire seasons. Increases in temperatures and the thirst of the atmosphere due to human--caused climate change have increased aridity of forest fuels during the fire season. These drivers were found to be responsible for over half the observed decrease in the moisture content of fuels in western U.S. forests from 1979 to 2015, and the doubling of forest fire burned area over the period 1984–2015. 

For much of the Western U.S., projections show that an average annual 1° C temperature increase would increase the median burned area per year by as much as 600 % in some types of forests. Modeling suggests increased fire risk and longer fire seasons in the Southeastern U.S., with at least a 30 percent increase from 2011 in the area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire by 2060.

Today, the National Weather Service issued an Excessive Heat Advisory of moderate severity ("possible threat to life or property") for portions of northern and western Georgia, including the Atlanta metro area. The advisory warns of heat index values up to 110° through the weekend and early next week. So far this summer, Georgia has managed to avoid the extreme heat that's gripped much of the rest of the continent, if not the world.  It's been hot, but seasonably so - August in Georgia hot, but now walking-on-the-Sun hot. But those days of relatively seasonal temperatures seem to be at an end with this Excessive Heat Advisory.