We didn't start the fire

You must leave now, take what you need
you think will last
But what every you chose to take,
you'd better garb it fast

    - Bob Dylan (Baby Blue)

I am the god of hell fire
And I bring you FIRE

      - Arthur Brown (Fire)

Greetings

      In case you haven't heard, northern Canada is on fire .  Its pretty amazing .  Yesterday, I read that they are trying to put together a convoy to get out of town, but were turned back by a 200 foot wall of flames . see here     Here's   a few sites to take a look at : NASA,  Elizabeth Colbert take from the New Yorker.,    Roberts Scribbler has very good coverage especially in the comments .

       The situation is not limited to Alberta.  BC has turned down requests to send fire fighters to Alberta becasue their own early fire season.  see here   Of course it's been well known that the Canadian boreal forests were a likely victim of climate change .   Here's a study from the the National Academy of Sciences from 2013.  

       So, what to make of this?

       Here's an interesting spin.   Humans are not likely to act until they get hit with a two by four "up side" the head..    Here David Goldstein  suggests that this type of disaster has a good side, in that it may finally inspire action, and forestall even worse things later. He says:

>>>

   "Your first wish may be that humanity wake up and take responsible climate action soon. Great. That is my first wish as well. But, sadly, sometimes first wishes do not come true. So what is your wish assuming that only wider and deeper suffering will wake us to change our unhealthy behaviors? What is your wish, knowing that any further damage we incur is cumulative and not reversible for many decades? Though it hurts my heart more than I can say, I can no longer escape this conclusion: If, as it seems, we are set on pushing the climate out of balance to the point where it becomes unbearable, then the quicker the better. “Burn, baby, burn”, so that maybe, possibly, hopefully... the healing can begin.".

     Its one way to make a silk purse .

     One thing about this theory , is, of course, that it only works if the person getting hit by the two by four has the ability to make the necessary changes.  So far this has not been the case.     Last week, I went to a presentation on how the health folks are trying to get a handle on their role in the new climate changed world.   The presenter pointed out one unfortunate fact about the situation.   That is , that while the problem is caused by the super consumers , the impacts are initially felt primarily by the poor - such as day laborers who must work outside in the heat, or the elderly who suffer in hot apartments.

     The same principle applies internationally.     For instance see this report from Robert Scribbler's blog on the situation in India.

     

>>
>>
>>
>> "Throughout April and into early May temperatures have soared to well above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 C) and to sometimes higher than 122 F (50 C) all across the broad plains at the feet of the Himalayas. There, water stress now affects more than 330 million people. There, water trains are now necessary to keep whole towns from suffering dehydration. Farmers who have seen fields transformed into a baked white hard-pan are migrating to the cities in search of food, water and work. And armed guards now patrol the local water sources in regions hardest hit by the drought — preventing private farmers from stealing public water supplies for their crops.

>>
>>
>>
>> The temperatures are so high that more than 300 people have now perished as a result of heat injuries. And Indian officials have now banned cooking during the day in an effort to reduce loss of life. But today the forests themselves are cooking as the air is filled with the smoke of more than 21,000 fires burning upon the flanks of India’s great mountain ranges."

          

     see also   Major wildfire outbreak In Central and Western Africa As Drought, Hunger Grow more widespread.   Se also  How Climate Change Affects the Poor

             So who has the power to make a change.   Well, the 1%, I suppose.    But bear in mind that it only takes $34,000 in income to be in the global 1%.

             I wonder, if  "we" didn't start the fire, who did?

For information about the Break Free From Fossil Fuels see here

Red sun in the morning

Wheels on fire

Rolling down the road
    - the Band

I have only one burning desire
Let me stand next to your fire
       -Jimi Hendrix

Greetings

       You've probably noticed that the smoke from Siberia has given us some pretty spectacular sun rises and sunsets.  Here's some pretty amazing shots of the burning..   From here  

“The Dry Land Burned Like Grass” — Siberia’s Road to a Permaburn Hell

(Residents of the Trans Baikal region of Russia flee through a raging permafrost fire on April 13 of 2015. Video Source: The Road to Hell Recorded by: Vladislav Igorevich.)

The script reads like a scene from some post-apocalyptic disaster film.

Frigid Siberia begins an epic thaw — a thaw set off by an unstoppable dumping of heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere by human fossil fuel industry. Finally, after years of warming, the thawing land itself becomes fuel for fires. A thick layer of peat-like organic material that serves as kindling to the heat-dried trees and grasses atop it.

Immense blazes ignite in April — fully 100 days before the usual fire season in late July. The fires explode to enormous size, doubling in area in less than a day, covering scores to hundreds of square miles. Residents flee or face off against walls of raging flame in bucket and hose brigades. Military units descend on the regions affected to fight blazes and prevent looting. The fires are freakish, starting from nowhere at a moment’s notice. Eyewitnesses at the scene of one fire describe the surreal situation saying: “… the dry land burned like grass.”

(A wall of fire confronts residents of Chita, Russia this week as local townsfolk prepared to defend their homes and livelihoods from the inferno. Image source: The Siberian Times.)

But for two regions of Russia, that’s exactly what happened this week.

In Khakassia, a region of southern Siberia bordering Kazakhstan and Mongolia, massive blazes ripped through a broad permafrost thaw zone, impacting 39 villages, killing 29 people and leaving thousands homeless. By Thursday, many of these massive fires were finally extinguished — leaving miles wide scars over a smoldering and blackened land.

Hundreds of miles away in Trans Baikal, the story was also one of hellish inferno. There, wildfires erupted from the thawing permafrost zone — engulfing forests, burning dry land, destroying hundreds of homes in more than 9 villages, and killing four people. One wildfire alone surged to nearly 400 square miles in size and threatened numerous settlements near the city of Chita. There, locals are still fighting the blaze in a desperate effort to preserve life and property.

(Satellite image of fires and large burn scars in Chita, Russia on April 17 of 2015. For reference, bottom edge of frame is 120 miles. Note that some of the burn scars in this satellite shot stretch for 20 miles at their widest point. Image source: LANCE MODIS.)

In total, nearly 50 villages and towns have now been affected, 33 lives have been lost, four more have gone missing, nearly 7,000 people are now homeless, and more than 6,000 domestic animals have been lost to the fires. These are the first, early casualties in a fire season stoked by climate change that will flare off and on for at least the next five months. A fire season that will likely see immense plumes of smoke covering broad sections of the Northern Hemisphere, involve Canadian and Alaskan permafrost zones, and see wildfires burning all the way through Siberia to the shores of the Arctic Ocean.

And so we are just at the start of a long road through another hellish Arctic fire season, one enabled and made far, far worse by a current and very rapid rate of human-forced warming.

Links:

Fire Rages on as Death Toll Reaches 33

LANCE MODIS

The Road to Hell

Vladislav Igorevich

Unprecedented Early Start to Perma-Burn Fire Season

Siberia Ravaged by Forest Fires

Hat tip to Alexander Ac