Apocalypse now

Projections have turned to reality. The future has arrived.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

  Guardian

Because of climate change denial.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Trumpland wants to increase coal production! We won't get any cooperation from them.  And we're set to withdraw from the Paris climate accord on November 4.

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.

Vote a straight blue ticket in November.  It's not just the presidency that's blocking planetary rescue.