8 ms·

New England's Dark Day

107 points by samclemens 6y ago

simonsarris 6y ago
Man-made climate change makes for easy storytelling and easier self-flagellation, but the more earth history I read, the less massive climatic events surprise me. Australia was the smoke-filled continent long before Europeans arrived. California fires are nothing new: Pre-1800, about 1.8 million ha burned each year. https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/FireForestEcology/FireScienceResearch/FireHistory/FireHistory-Stephens07.pdf https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/Fi... > Approximately 1.8 million ha burned annually in California prehistorically (pre 1800). Our estimate of prehistoric annual area burned in California is 88% of the total annual wildfire area in the entire US during a decade (1994–2004) characterized as ‘‘extreme’’ regarding wildfires. The idea that US wildfire area of approximately two million ha annually is extreme is certainly a 20th or 21st century perspective. Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period. And: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201... > Many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem [...] however, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. For that matter California can go into drought for hundreds of years at a time which lead to the downfall and forced migration, understandably, of peoples in the area. That's not to minimize man-made impacts, which certainly change the game! But I worry the focus on man-made change leads people to fail to appreciate just how much living on earth, on the geological scale, is riding a wild horse. If we can barely stomach a single weather anomaly without thinking it must be the result of man-made climate change (and would not be there otherwise), rather than a part of a planet with a big history of anomalies, it will lead us to thinking less clearly. (Of course all kinds of denialists aren't helping there, either.) Our job is to steward the earth so we can stave off things like mass death, famines, etc. California should be thinking about the engineering needed to live in a biome that genuinely wants to be on fire, sometimes, and we should be routing around this possibility. It's somewhat frustrating to see the governor jump to climate change if only for its convenient exculpatory power, as if when we are not sequestering carbon, we humans are otherwise helpless.
- ponker 6y ago
  Man-made vs natural isn't a matter of morality or anything, it's just about whether we can do something to avoid our destruction. If an asteroid hits earth then it's not man-made but also inevitable. Climate change isn't a threat to the world -- it's a threat to humans, and if we don't do what's in our power to avert it, we'll wipe a large fraction of us off the planet and precipitate world war. That doesn't mean we still won't have a climate event that wipes out advanced civilization -- but we should do what we can. If there was a natural climate event that would decrease temperatures by 20 degrees and we could only prevent it by clear-cutting forests and polluting our environment then that's of course what we would do.
  - gwright 6y ago
    > and if we don't do what's in our power to avert it, we'll wipe a large fraction of us off the planet and precipitate world war. This is definitely the approach ("avert") that is assumed in almost all discussion of this topic but there is also the choice to mitigate the effects (infrastructure, relocation, technology). I don't think it is at all clear that we can "avert it" without a tremendous cost and I think it is entirely reasonable to discuss ways of mitigating effects and that approach may be much less costly. The costs associated with averting global warming ultimately focus on reducing greenhouse gases, which means reducing fossil fuel use. But accomplishing that means expensive energy (i.e. carbon tax approaches, expensive power grids based on intermittent renewables) or extraordinary economic slowdowns (think COVID-19 global reduction in economic activity permanently, for example). More importantly instituting those changes to an extent that would actually reduce greenhouse gases would require extraordinary global enforcement mechanisms. How are the more industrialized economies going to force less industrialized economies to use less energy? to build fewer fossil fuel plants, etc? The reductions that are required can't be accomplished by a subset of world's economies. All of this assumes that our knowledge of how the global climate systems work is substantially accurate. What if it isn't?
    - ponker 6y ago
      Non-renewable energy is limited... if we don't gradually make it expensive now it's going to get REALLY expensive very suddenly in a couple of decades. That process is where global wars will be fought over what little energy is remaining. Look how many wars even today are fought over oil.
ainiriand 6y ago
I personally lived a situation very much similar, although just a few minutes of full darkness. It was in the north of Spain in the middle of a huge storm. The day went to fully black and it was terribly scary.
- daveslash 6y ago
  I experienced something similar in a snow storm in northern Utah. It was about 2pm in the afternoon in the Winter, but it was darker than night, just from the cloud-cover and precipitating snow. Only lasted an hour, but was weird as all get-out.
- war1025 6y ago
  We had a big storm here in Iowa last month that was very similar. I looked outside at 11am and it looked exactly like midnight. That was a "This can't be good" sort of feeling.
  - ainiriand 6y ago
    I know what you mean. It gave me a deep, primitive dread and fear.
dylan604 6y ago
I'm waiting for some History channel show to drill some core samples and have experts point to the thin layer of soot that they use as proof of the cause for this Dark Day. You'll have to wait for all of the commercial breaks and seasonal cliff hangers with goofy repetitive announcer comments trying to puff up the drama.
- gen220 6y ago
  Has the history channel gone off a cliff? Or has it always been this way, and I just never noticed as a wide-eyed youth? I haven't watched it in years, but nowadays it'd be better described as "The Conspiracy Channel", with generous sides of American Pickers and Pawn Stars.
  - scruple 6y ago
    I remember decent programming in the 90s when I was a kid. I haven't watched the History channel as an adult outside of vacations in places that have cable (have never paid for cable television in my life) but the last time I was somewhere and it was on, probably back in 2017, it was nothing like what I remembered.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Go watch a couple of episodes of one of their flagpole show called "Mystery Of Oak Island". It's produced in such a formulaic fashion that it's mind numbing. 7 seasons later, the people still haven't gotten any closer to their goals.
    - gen220 6y ago
      I just spent 10 minutes trying to squeeze some some sense out of the episode summaries on wikipedia. (like squeezing water out of stone) It reminded me of how I feel after programming for 12 hours straight -- nothing makes sense any more and everything is connected... I can't believe they've made 7 seasons out of this. An example synopsis: > With only two weeks left in the season Rick, Marty and Craig debate what they will do while the crane operators are on strike. They decide to conduct seismic testing in the swamp. At Smith's Cove, another wooden structure is found and excavation of that begins. A rust coloured patch of packed rocks with water flowing out is found. In the war room, members of the team meet with researcher Chris Donah who contacted them about the swamp and its relationship with the constellation Virgo. Eagle Canada returns to the island to conduct seismic testing in the swamp using 2,025 charges and 4,000 geophones. On Lot 27, Gary and Marty metal detect the spoils from a previous excavation of the swamp. They find a button, a coin or token with a square hole in it. In the war room, the dendrochronology results are revealed. The samples date to around 1770 with a 99.99% confidence. This episode had 3.16 million viewers. What.
lisper 6y ago
This description matches almost exactly with what I personally observed on the San Francisco peninsula on September 9. I even wrote about it at the time: http://blog.rongarret.info/2020/09/this-is-what-apocalypse-looks-like.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2020/09/this-is-what-apocalypse-l...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

107 points by samclemens 6y ago

Man-made climate change makes for easy storytelling and easier self-flagellation, but the more earth history I read, the less massive climatic events surprise me. Australia was the smoke-filled continent long before Europeans arrived. California fires are nothing new: Pre-1800, about 1.8 million ha burned each year. https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/FireForestEcology/FireScienceResearch/FireHistory/FireHistory-Stephens07.pdf https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/Fi... > Approximately 1.8 million ha burned annually in California prehistorically (pre 1800). Our estimate of prehistoric annual area burned in California is 88% of the total annual wildfire area in the entire US during a decade (1994–2004) characterized as ‘‘extreme’’ regarding wildfires. The idea that US wildfire area of approximately two million ha annually is extreme is certainly a 20th or 21st century perspective. Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period. And: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201... > Many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem [...] however, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. For that matter California can go into drought for hundreds of years at a time which lead to the downfall and forced migration, understandably, of peoples in the area. That's not to minimize man-made impacts, which certainly change the game! But I worry the focus on man-made change leads people to fail to appreciate just how much living on earth, on the geological scale, is riding a wild horse. If we can barely stomach a single weather anomaly without thinking it must be the result of man-made climate change (and would not be there otherwise), rather than a part of a planet with a big history of anomalies, it will lead us to thinking less clearly. (Of course all kinds of denialists aren't helping there, either.) Our job is to steward the earth so we can stave off things like mass death, famines, etc. California should be thinking about the engineering needed to live in a biome that genuinely wants to be on fire, sometimes, and we should be routing around this possibility. It's somewhat frustrating to see the governor jump to climate change if only for its convenient exculpatory power, as if when we are not sequestering carbon, we humans are otherwise helpless.

ponker 6y ago
Man-made vs natural isn't a matter of morality or anything, it's just about whether we can do something to avoid our destruction. If an asteroid hits earth then it's not man-made but also inevitable. Climate change isn't a threat to the world -- it's a threat to humans, and if we don't do what's in our power to avert it, we'll wipe a large fraction of us off the planet and precipitate world war. That doesn't mean we still won't have a climate event that wipes out advanced civilization -- but we should do what we can. If there was a natural climate event that would decrease temperatures by 20 degrees and we could only prevent it by clear-cutting forests and polluting our environment then that's of course what we would do.
- gwright 6y ago
  > and if we don't do what's in our power to avert it, we'll wipe a large fraction of us off the planet and precipitate world war. This is definitely the approach ("avert") that is assumed in almost all discussion of this topic but there is also the choice to mitigate the effects (infrastructure, relocation, technology). I don't think it is at all clear that we can "avert it" without a tremendous cost and I think it is entirely reasonable to discuss ways of mitigating effects and that approach may be much less costly. The costs associated with averting global warming ultimately focus on reducing greenhouse gases, which means reducing fossil fuel use. But accomplishing that means expensive energy (i.e. carbon tax approaches, expensive power grids based on intermittent renewables) or extraordinary economic slowdowns (think COVID-19 global reduction in economic activity permanently, for example). More importantly instituting those changes to an extent that would actually reduce greenhouse gases would require extraordinary global enforcement mechanisms. How are the more industrialized economies going to force less industrialized economies to use less energy? to build fewer fossil fuel plants, etc? The reductions that are required can't be accomplished by a subset of world's economies. All of this assumes that our knowledge of how the global climate systems work is substantially accurate. What if it isn't?
  - ponker 6y ago
    Non-renewable energy is limited... if we don't gradually make it expensive now it's going to get REALLY expensive very suddenly in a couple of decades. That process is where global wars will be fought over what little energy is remaining. Look how many wars even today are fought over oil.

ainiriand 6y ago

I personally lived a situation very much similar, although just a few minutes of full darkness. It was in the north of Spain in the middle of a huge storm. The day went to fully black and it was terribly scary.

daveslash 6y ago
I experienced something similar in a snow storm in northern Utah. It was about 2pm in the afternoon in the Winter, but it was darker than night, just from the cloud-cover and precipitating snow. Only lasted an hour, but was weird as all get-out.
war1025 6y ago
We had a big storm here in Iowa last month that was very similar. I looked outside at 11am and it looked exactly like midnight. That was a "This can't be good" sort of feeling.
- ainiriand 6y ago
  I know what you mean. It gave me a deep, primitive dread and fear.

dylan604 6y ago

I'm waiting for some History channel show to drill some core samples and have experts point to the thin layer of soot that they use as proof of the cause for this Dark Day. You'll have to wait for all of the commercial breaks and seasonal cliff hangers with goofy repetitive announcer comments trying to puff up the drama.

gen220 6y ago
Has the history channel gone off a cliff? Or has it always been this way, and I just never noticed as a wide-eyed youth? I haven't watched it in years, but nowadays it'd be better described as "The Conspiracy Channel", with generous sides of American Pickers and Pawn Stars.
- scruple 6y ago
  I remember decent programming in the 90s when I was a kid. I haven't watched the History channel as an adult outside of vacations in places that have cable (have never paid for cable television in my life) but the last time I was somewhere and it was on, probably back in 2017, it was nothing like what I remembered.
- dylan604 6y ago
  Go watch a couple of episodes of one of their flagpole show called "Mystery Of Oak Island". It's produced in such a formulaic fashion that it's mind numbing. 7 seasons later, the people still haven't gotten any closer to their goals.
  - gen220 6y ago
    I just spent 10 minutes trying to squeeze some some sense out of the episode summaries on wikipedia. (like squeezing water out of stone) It reminded me of how I feel after programming for 12 hours straight -- nothing makes sense any more and everything is connected... I can't believe they've made 7 seasons out of this. An example synopsis: > With only two weeks left in the season Rick, Marty and Craig debate what they will do while the crane operators are on strike. They decide to conduct seismic testing in the swamp. At Smith's Cove, another wooden structure is found and excavation of that begins. A rust coloured patch of packed rocks with water flowing out is found. In the war room, members of the team meet with researcher Chris Donah who contacted them about the swamp and its relationship with the constellation Virgo. Eagle Canada returns to the island to conduct seismic testing in the swamp using 2,025 charges and 4,000 geophones. On Lot 27, Gary and Marty metal detect the spoils from a previous excavation of the swamp. They find a button, a coin or token with a square hole in it. In the war room, the dendrochronology results are revealed. The samples date to around 1770 with a 99.99% confidence. This episode had 3.16 million viewers. What.

lisper 6y ago

This description matches almost exactly with what I personally observed on the San Francisco peninsula on September 9. I even wrote about it at the time: http://blog.rongarret.info/2020/09/this-is-what-apocalypse-looks-like.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2020/09/this-is-what-apocalypse-l...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]