Global warming threatens our White Christmases with winter heatwaves. And our Halloweens with poor pumpkin crops. And our Arbor Days with record wildfires. And our immoral myopia threatens Father’s Day. At this rate, the only holiday left will be the gas tax holiday — for oil companies!
But I digress. Last year, Independence Day fireworks fizzled out for many thanks to ever worsening droughts. And the droughts have done it again this year:
Authorities scared of setting off wildfires in drought conditions have imposed new bans on fireworks displays across a swath of the West and the Southwest.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pleaded with residents this week not to buy or use fireworks in California, where wildfires sparked by lightning are burning up hundreds of thousands of acres in the northern part of the state.
“Don’t buy the fireworks, don’t go out and play with fireworks, because it’s just too dry and too dangerous to do those things,” Schwarzenegger said.
Fires in many counties in eastern North Carolina led authorities to include holiday fireworks in their bans on outdoor burning. Similar bans have been declared in parts of Oregon, Idaho and Utah.
Have a happy and fire-free 4th!
Related Posts:
- Sorry, delayers & enablers, Part 2: Climate change means worse droughts for SW and world
- The rain in Spain … ain’t
- Dry me a River: Climate change and drought
- Australia today = U.S. southwest by 2050
- Australia faces the “permanent dry” — as do we
- Warming Will Worsen Water Wars
- 2007: A record-setting U.S. drought year
- And the drought goes on
- Brutal Drought Where It’s Normally Wet
- Los Angeles: Worst Drought Ever Recorded
- USA Today Almost Gets the Drought Story Right
- The NY Times Blows the Drought Story, too.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
If it is all right to do so here, there are two questions I would like to ask.
As almost everyone knows but few openly discuss, wealth and power buy freedom. What is all too obvious but often cloaked in silence is this: A small minority of individuals in the human family with great fortunes and virtually all large corporations exercise their great wealth and the power it purchases in ways that allow all of these self-proclaimed masters of the universe to live lavishly as well as to willfully refuse assumption of the responsibilities which necessarily come with freedom.
1. How do rich and famous people, who live large and have huge ecological footprints, as well as corporate `citizens’ that cast giant shadows over the Earth today, so easily get away with socially irresponsible behavior?
2. The exercise of freedom without the requisite assumption of responsibility by citizens can lead to psychopathic behavior; the exercise of freedom by those individuals and corporations with great wealth who consensually-validate each others refusal to accept responsibility for their excessive, pernicious and amoral behavior is sociopathic, is it not?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
Steve, what you’re describing is human behaviour rather than the behaviour of a minority.
A strategy of:
“first change human nature, then get the necessary CO2 behaviour”
is guaranteed to fail.
We need to work with the flow of basic human desires and incentives and pyschology, not against it.
Steve,
Didn’t you ask about this yesterday?
And haven’t the answers to these questions been chewed over for generations now?
If society requires sudden and true (of a sort) “enlightenment”, as your comment seems to suggest, for us to save our climate, then we are clearly, in the words of David Benson, “toast”.
I prefer to think that we can muddle along how ever “flawed” and “simply” transform our mode of energy consumption and use – not the human psyche per se.
Steve,
I should add – I have more than a little sympathy for where, I think, you’re coming from. To overstate things, I think Richard Branson is likely the quintessence of the horror of the moment – a bit back I wrote this rant on him/them/it:
http://checklisttowardzerocarbon.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/richard-branson-jim-jones-separated-at-birth/
You might enjoy it. Be warned, it is a rant! ;)
Why go see fireworks when one can see real fires, live in the wild …
Meanwhile global temperature is cooling having erased all of the warming that has occured in the last 30 years. But the debate is over right?
Cities have canceled fireworks displays and prohibited the public from using fireworks because of dry conditions for decades. Like the climate, there’s nothing new there. It’s only new to people who have been in a coma, not paying attention or are too young to know any different.
Global Warming Propaganda works best on the young, just as any propaganda does. They do not have the experience base from which to make judgments, and accept what their elders tell them on faith. If it conflicts with what their parents believe, so much the better!
I am old enough to remember the “global cooling” scare of the 1970s. I remember being told in school that “scientists” were concerned about an approaching ice-age, and that mankind’s pollution played a part.
I also remember that there have been perennial droughts in California, where water has been a problem since the first settlers founded cities there (c.f. Cadillac Desert, Mark Reisner). When you live on the edge of water availability, you live in drought conditions – period.
I look at weather events and remember the tornadoes in Kentucky in 1974. I remember Hurricanes hitting America and cutting wider swaths of destruction than anything Katrina ever did.
I don’t accept these “anecdotal” examples as “proof” of climate change, any more than I accepted the “death of European Ski Resorts” last year as proof the Alps would be snow free in 5 years! (They opened early and stayed open late this year…gee, imagine that.)
We were freezing this winter (global warming) drowning this spring (global warming) and now it’s warm and dry this summer (global warming). If we have a cold, wet fall, or a hot dry one, that will be (global warming) too! If we have no hurricanes or 100, that will be global warming’s fault as well.
I’m getting a bit worn out…aren’t you?
StanB, “Global Cooling” was not science, but a popular press sort of thing. Global warming is very much based in science. For more about global cooling please see
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm
Troy, please see
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
and click on #7.
Earl,
AGW is based on flawed computer models not science. Satellite evidence indicates a downward trend over the past couple of decades. Please see:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3231
I would also argue that today’s “climate change’ hysteria is also driven by the media, as well as politics, only to a much larger degree.
Troy, you are just repeating long ago debunked denier arguments. See
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
#31
I very much doubt you are in a position to judge whether a computer model is flawed or what is or is not science. Have you eve read the IPCC WG1 document? If you haven’t, how would you know whether it is science or not? Moreover, GW is based on much more than computer models.
Satellite records are not evidence? They indicate no warming and all in the last 20 years flying in the face of GW alarmists predictions. So who’s the denier?
Computer models can be (and are) designed to produce a desired result. It doesn’t take an engineering degree to figure that out. The fact that their predictions never materialize is evidence of that. As fas as the IPCC, it ‘s largely a political an bureaucratic animal not a scientific one.
Troy, if you’d read the Satellite info on the link that Earl Posted, you’d find out that satellite records are in agreement with all other warming data.
The original report that showed no warming was based on erroneous math.
How did you come to the conclusion that model predictions never materialize?
Troy said: “AGW is based on flawed computer models not science. ”
No, it is not. It is based on well established physics and real world observations. Computer models of the atmosphere are only a tool used to help understand how the atmosphere works in the real world now and in the future.
Troy also said: “Satellite evidence indicates a downward trend over the past couple of decades”
Your linked source shows nothing of the sort. Are you literally, numerically and visually illiterate?
Troy — Here is the satellite temperatures though the end of 2007 CE:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_browse.html
As a scientist who has read the IPCC WG1 document I can tell you the conclusions regarding anthropogenic CO2 contributions to elevated temperatures are indeed summarized from physics integrated into climate models, and the models are weighted by the section’s authors and editors. (I say “weighted” because the authors clearly included a greater number of models that fit a positive correlation even though the models were not independent; this kind of multiplication of supportive data points is known in statistics as weighting). While some of the physics are supportable the planetary integration of warming physics requires some guesswork in the form of GCMs. Obviously a few important things were left out of the models that project warming.
The near certainty of causality represented in the Summary for Policymakers is not present in the science summarized by the WG1 report, rather it is a “selected” certainty that is only possible when a small group of proponents dismiss contradictory publications and viewpoints in favor of a pet theory.
Meanwhile CO2 production and temperature are travelling in opposite directions, leaving those who claim CO2 to be responsible for things like forest fires and drought cycles and unhappy children on Independence Day to look a bit emotionally/religiously attached to their dogma. Or just young and ignorant of the climate cycles Nature has always produced.
But most people don’t learn about “climate change” from the science or scientists, or from the most basic source, observation. They learn from their favorite blog, celebrity, politician, “journalist” or headline and don’t question much beyond the popular viewpoint. End-of-of-the-world stories have always been socially-derived fantasies. Always. Their propagation has always been made possible by natural human imagination/entertainment/fear and has been fueled by those seeking wealth or power.
Human nature hasn’t changed. Nor has Nature.
[JR: If this is your idea of "love" then I suspect "Nature" wants a divorce. The climate cycles were produced by outside forcing -- the Sun, natural greenhouse gases. Now we are driving the climate with human emissions more than Nature ever did. Temperatures keep going up, just like GHGs, no matter how many times deniers say otherwise.]
[JR: Now we are driving the climate with human emissions more than Nature ever did. Temperatures keep going up, just like GHGs, no matter how many times deniers say otherwise.]
Who is the “denier” here? Are you denying the data from Hadley, UAH, and even GISS? The data from these AGM proponents shows that temperatures are decreasing. This means that your statement is false.
Either C02 is PARTIALLY masking an otherwise drastic cooling that would have taken place over the past twenty years, or whatever joules are provided by our CO2 blanket are insignificant in the context of Nature’s variability and other modes of energy radiation. One or the other. Warming is not a choice as warming is not being observed on a planetary scale.
By the way, if I am the “denier” and I am denying a categorical falsehood, I certainly don’t feel denigrated by your labeling! I am interested to know if your label is a power trip, an attempt to make me feel bad, or if it is just a way to dehumanize my point of view so it’s easier for you to deal with? I’m just curious.
Humans change temperature on a microscopic level every day from the clothes we wear to the windows we open or close to the parking lots we pave and the fields we irrigate. I don’t deny that, but then I don’t think that is bad. But that is not global.
We are not driving the global or local climate with human CO2 emissions, at least to any extent that can be measured. Do you have any credible evidence to the contrary? Do you really have calculations that contradict NASA, UAH and the Hadley Center??? I would be amazed, but if you have your own monitoring network and normalizion software I am open to seeing your data. We know the CO2 is in the air, we just can’t find the heat! If you have found it, for goodness sakes, don’t keep it to yourself.
[JR: You are a denier because you deny well-established observations and climate science. "We are not driving the global or local climate with human CO2 emissions, at least to any extent that can be measured." That is disinformation. It is what makes you a denier. NASA and Hadley data both prove we are warming -- indeed, NASA and Hadley have both made clear that is what their data shows. UAH data is controlled by deniers, so it is hard for me to take seriously. By the way, the temperature data is but a SMALL part of the data that shows GHGs have been altering the climate. Try reading the IPCC reports some day. But if you keep posting disinformation -- I'll have to start moderating your nonsense. Thems is the rules.
You should feel bad spreading disinformation, but I find few deniers do, so that is not the point of using the word. It is a simply an accurate description. Nothing more, nothing less. I personally prefer the term delayer, but it didn't take. But I'm happy to call you a delayer if it makes you feel better.]
Nature Lover — That’s just weather, i.e., natural climate variability. Here is a climate-oriented assessment of the global temperatures through the end of calendar year 2007 CE:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_browse.html
More assertions — The national scientific bodies of 11 of the most advanced nations have all confirmed that humans are warming the earth.
Hadley, NASA, the IPCC, NOAA have all confirmed it …
But gee, Nature Lover, they’re not as smart as you. Please give them a call and let them know they’re wrong, so we can all breathe easier.
[JR: You are a denier ...snip... But if you keep posting disinformation — I’ll have to start moderating your nonsense. Thems is the rules.]
Did accidentally I drift into some kind of private club where members are expected to post off of a script?
[snip]
I’m sure you wouldn’t want others who stumble upon your site, friendly people with newer information or knowledge different from yours, to accidentally get the wrong impression about your club and post scary new progressive ideas.
[Snip.]
[JR: My apologies, Nature Lover, I left out the phrase "long-debunked." I don't allow long-debunked disinformation in comments because either I have to waste time debunking it again -- and the deniers win by wasting my time -- or I don't, and then people who "stumble upon" my site are left reading undebunked disinformation. As the TOU clearly state: "Although CAPAF has no obligation to monitor the Submissions, you acknowledge and agree that we may do one or all of the following: (a) monitor the Submissions; (b) alter, edit, or remove any Submission; or (c) disclose any Submissions."]
This is a spectacular waste of time of course – I once got into a tedious argument about whether an upward sloping temperature line on a graph was indeed upward sloping. The denier repeated over and over that it was falling since 1998!
That was when I came up with the tactic of never pointing to a graph, instead pointing to the underlying numbers.
Simply present the NASA GISS data (or Hadley, or whatever) as a string of numbers – e.g. annual temperature anomoly, smoothed in some simple way – and ask the denier if the series is going up or down.
Even they find it hard to claim that 2.3 is lower than 1.8!
Perhaps I’ll try it with Nature Lover.
Nature Lover, you said: “Are you denying the data from Hadley, UAH, and even GISS? The data from these AGM proponents shows that temperatures are decreasing.”
Here is a series of twenty numbers. Please state whether you think this series is decreasing or increasing:
0.32
0.35
0.39
0.40
0.36
0.26
0.22
0.33
0.39
0.42
0.51
0.53
0.53
0.48
0.56
0.64
0.65
0.68
0.67
0.72
After you state whether you think it’s increasing or decreasing I’ll say what the series is (but you can probably guess!)
Decreasing. No doubt about it.
0.40 -> 0.36 -> 0.26 -> 0.22
Must be decreasing – it’s going down the page.
I stood on my head, and it was obviously decreasing.