Yesterday, we saw who Rush Limbaugh blamed for the wild fires in California: Liberals. Today let’s look at the cause a climate scientist suggests is the real culprit for the current extreme fire storms in California:
PITTSBURGH-As global temperatures rise, people should brace themselves for more of such crises as the fires ravaging California and the drought conditions fueling them, says University of Pittsburgh paleoclimatologist Michael Rosenmeier.
Although the current wildfires across Southern California cannot be directly linked to climate change, scientific models of a warmer Earth show that weather extremes akin to the heavy winds and dry, hot weather driving the flames will be more common, Rosenmeier said. Scientists have predicted that in a warmer world extreme weather-from heavy rainfall to blistering heat waves and freezing conditions-will occur frequently and erratically. These fluctuations could bring an increase in catastrophic conditions such as the wildfires in California and the water shortage currently gripping drought-stricken Georgia.
“Decades ago, droughts were considered anomalies,” Rosenmeier said. “Now, I would argue that drought should be considered more of a norm. We need to be consistently prepared for fire in the American West each year. What we consider extremes are going to become more common occurrences. All of the models predict that.”
As an assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Planetary science in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences, Rosenmeier studies the interaction of humans and climate throughout history. His research includes the possible role of climate change on the fall of the Mayan Empire and its impact on the local environment.
We saw horrendous wild fires in Greece earlier this year, so it’s safe to say that as more and more of the globe suffers from drought conditions, we are likely to see an increase in catastrophic fire storms such as the ones threatening Southern California. Consequences predicted by computer models of climate change based on the fact (not the fiction) of global warming.
By the way, those climate models are probably very, very wrong. Why do I say that? Because based on a new study it seems the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased at a rate far greater than those computer models predicted. In other words, those earlier computer models were too conservative because they were based on a slower rate of CO2 being spewed into the atmosphere, and retained there. Instead, more human generated CO2 is being produced than expected, and more is being retained in the atmosphere to fuel global warming due to of the lack of the earth’s oceans and other carbon sinks to absorb this excess. In short, things will get worse and will get worse much faster than has been previously predicted:
(cont.)
Scientists warned last night that global warming will be “stronger than expected and sooner than expected”, after a new analysis showed carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than predicted.
Experts said that the rise was down to soaring economic development in China, and a reduction in the amount of carbon pollution soaked up by the world’s land and oceans. It also means human emissions will have to be cut more sharply than predicted to avoid the likely effects. […]
The study worsens even the gloomy predictions of this year’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC, which shared the Nobel peace prize this month with Al Gore, said there were only eight years left to prevent the worst effects of global warming, by acting to curb emissions.
Dr Le Quere said: “We are emitting far more than anticipated when the IPCC scenarios were drawn up in the late 1990s.” Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning has risen by an average 2.9% each year since 2000. During the 1990s the annual rise was 0.7%.
The new study explains abnormally high carbon dioxide measurements highlighted by the Guardian in January. At the time, scientists were puzzled why dozens of measuring stations across the world were showing a CO2 spike for 2006, the fourth year in the last five to show a sharp increase in the greenhouse gas. […]
The new study, published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), says three processes have contributed to this increase: growth in the world economy, heavy use of coal in China, and a weakening of natural “sinks” – forests, seas and soils that absorb carbon.
Do you understand now, people who believe Rush is right when he says we need to “dominate” the planet even more than we are doing already, that his his rhetoric about “environmentalist wackos” is as rancid and venomous as his attacks on “phony soldiers” or any of his other favorite liberal targets? The world is really in a crisis, and fashioning a pretend reality out of the hot air emitted by radio talk show hosts and Exxon approved global warming denialists, isn’t going to make that crisis go away.
It’s the environmental scientists (not “wackos,” but people with real science degrees, unlike college dropouts such as Mr. Limbaugh) who are the objective truth tellers here. We may not like their message, but we better start paying attention to it, as soon as [expletive deleted] possible, or we will see tremendous loss of life over the course of the next 20 to 50 years from the consequences of our continuing to pump greenhouse gases into the earth’s atmosphere. And I’m not just talking about plant and animal life, where mass extinctions are already a foregone conclusion, but human lives (from famine, diseases, wars and other calamities), the ones you “Culture of Life” folks are supposed to care so much about.
I hate being the Cassandra around here, always preaching of the doom that anyone with half a brain can see coming (and I know our regular readers here possess far more intelligence and common sense than most people), but I keep hoping that the occasional reader who still buys into the “controversy” over global warming and climate change manufactured and promulgated by the energy industry (i.e., Big Oil and Energy Utilities which burn fossil fuels to generate electricity) will take his or her blinders off and realize we are living in desperate times. And then do something about it. A feeble hope, I know, but when all appears lost, hope is what we have left.
