11 ms·

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 m

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.
munk-a 6y ago
> It's somewhat frustrating to see the governor jump to climate change if only for its convenient exculpatory power Eeeeeh. Sure, fair I suppose. Except that the US political arena is currently composed of people that want to address climate change and environmental stewardship responsibly and those that deny it's existence while toting snow balls onto the senate floor. It's fine to reasonably say that California & the feds are underfunding efforts to maintain fire breaks and forest management in the state. It's not fine to say that carbon sequestration will solve everything magically one day - we need to be doing both, addressing excessive carbon generation and looking into carbon sequestration. Also, as far as I've seen, carbon sequestration isn't really a renewable process - the idea is to lock that carbon outside of the natural cycles, that's a great way to reset things, but it doesn't effect the velocity with which we continue to make the problem worse. Lastly, we're a pretty rich society - if we can do something about this why don't we. I think most people would be happy to go without the next generation of iPhone if it means solving climate change - maybe we can just slightly slow down the economic engine and produce a more sustainable existence.
- fataliss 6y ago
  > I think most people would be happy to go without the next generation of iPhone But it's been a while that people are not at the centre of our economy anymore (have they ever been?). The issue is political. Politicians, backed up by economists, sell the dream of ever-increasing growth as a way to maintain peace. It's not reasonable in a finite, and like OP mentioned, chaotic world.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ancarda 6y ago
  >I think most people would be happy to go without the next generation of iPhone if it means solving climate change Don't you also have to go vegan, stop flying, switch to an EV car, stop using disposable plastic, switch to green electricity, avoid businesses that aren't carbon neutral, consider the environment before you print that email, and so on ... ? The scale of change required is seriously overwhelming and I fear without a solution to that, we aren't going to fix this problem anytime soon :(
julienchastang 6y ago
This sounds like a cogent, well-reasoned argument, but it is not. The summer 2020 fires in the western US are largely a man-made disaster [1]: 1. Suppression of fire over the last century has led to an excessive build-up of biomass fuel. 2. The woodland urban interface has become more crowded in recent decades leading to difficulties in forest management (e.g., controlled burns) and safety. 3. Anthropogenic climate change leading to warmer and drier conditions in forests around the world. Yes, large fires burned in the past and are a natural part of the forest ecosystem, but their severity has vastly increased (e.g., sterilization of soils, re-burning of forest that had burned just a few years ago). Yes, the climate changes but at no time in recent or medium-term geologic history has it changed so quickly. [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/inside-the-megafire/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/inside-the-megafire/
- darkerside 6y ago
  We're on a thread about an article where New England was blacked out for 24 hours because of wildfire. How can you claim that severity has increased vastly since then? Edit: I'm sorry this goes against the zeitgeist, but we still need evidence for backing up our claims
  - nend 6y ago
    Here's a source[1]. It also shows that in the US, yearly acreage burned is rising in addition to the intensity of fires. [1] - https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/climate-change-and-wildfires#:~:text=Western%20US%20wildfires%20on%20the,observed%20increases%20in%20wildfire%20activity https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/climate-change-and-wildfire....
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  Every single argument you just made failed to refute anything the parent comment said. Furthermore, despite linking to sources specifically stating how fires in the past could regularly be vastly bigger, you simply state that the opposite is the case now..... just because... And this last bit is a bit of nitpikcing but depending on how you'd like to define "medium-term" geologic history yes, the climate has changed very quickly and drastically in even moderately recent history. It's a conciet to think we really affect the earth so much that it has rarely dealt with equal problems. Quite the contrary, it has many times dealt with far worse catastrophes than man-made climate change.
jka 6y ago
Apparently no documented megafires occurred in California before 1970, according to NASA: https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2830/six-trends-to-know-about-fire-season-in-the-western-us/ https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2830/six-trends-to-know-about-... While yes, the earth is unpredictable and humans should aim to be adaptable, if we have identified trends that look dangerous then ideally we want a political and value system that rewards steering away from them.

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.

munk-a 6y ago

> It's somewhat frustrating to see the governor jump to climate change if only for its convenient exculpatory power Eeeeeh. Sure, fair I suppose. Except that the US political arena is currently composed of people that want to address climate change and environmental stewardship responsibly and those that deny it's existence while toting snow balls onto the senate floor. It's fine to reasonably say that California & the feds are underfunding efforts to maintain fire breaks and forest management in the state. It's not fine to say that carbon sequestration will solve everything magically one day - we need to be doing both, addressing excessive carbon generation and looking into carbon sequestration. Also, as far as I've seen, carbon sequestration isn't really a renewable process - the idea is to lock that carbon outside of the natural cycles, that's a great way to reset things, but it doesn't effect the velocity with which we continue to make the problem worse. Lastly, we're a pretty rich society - if we can do something about this why don't we. I think most people would be happy to go without the next generation of iPhone if it means solving climate change - maybe we can just slightly slow down the economic engine and produce a more sustainable existence.

fataliss 6y ago
> I think most people would be happy to go without the next generation of iPhone But it's been a while that people are not at the centre of our economy anymore (have they ever been?). The issue is political. Politicians, backed up by economists, sell the dream of ever-increasing growth as a way to maintain peace. It's not reasonable in a finite, and like OP mentioned, chaotic world.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ancarda 6y ago
>I think most people would be happy to go without the next generation of iPhone if it means solving climate change Don't you also have to go vegan, stop flying, switch to an EV car, stop using disposable plastic, switch to green electricity, avoid businesses that aren't carbon neutral, consider the environment before you print that email, and so on ... ? The scale of change required is seriously overwhelming and I fear without a solution to that, we aren't going to fix this problem anytime soon :(

julienchastang 6y ago

This sounds like a cogent, well-reasoned argument, but it is not. The summer 2020 fires in the western US are largely a man-made disaster [1]: 1. Suppression of fire over the last century has led to an excessive build-up of biomass fuel. 2. The woodland urban interface has become more crowded in recent decades leading to difficulties in forest management (e.g., controlled burns) and safety. 3. Anthropogenic climate change leading to warmer and drier conditions in forests around the world. Yes, large fires burned in the past and are a natural part of the forest ecosystem, but their severity has vastly increased (e.g., sterilization of soils, re-burning of forest that had burned just a few years ago). Yes, the climate changes but at no time in recent or medium-term geologic history has it changed so quickly. [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/inside-the-megafire/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/inside-the-megafire/

darkerside 6y ago
We're on a thread about an article where New England was blacked out for 24 hours because of wildfire. How can you claim that severity has increased vastly since then? Edit: I'm sorry this goes against the zeitgeist, but we still need evidence for backing up our claims
- nend 6y ago
  Here's a source[1]. It also shows that in the US, yearly acreage burned is rising in addition to the intensity of fires. [1] - https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/climate-change-and-wildfires#:~:text=Western%20US%20wildfires%20on%20the,observed%20increases%20in%20wildfire%20activity https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/climate-change-and-wildfire....
shadowprofile77 6y ago
Every single argument you just made failed to refute anything the parent comment said. Furthermore, despite linking to sources specifically stating how fires in the past could regularly be vastly bigger, you simply state that the opposite is the case now..... just because... And this last bit is a bit of nitpikcing but depending on how you'd like to define "medium-term" geologic history yes, the climate has changed very quickly and drastically in even moderately recent history. It's a conciet to think we really affect the earth so much that it has rarely dealt with equal problems. Quite the contrary, it has many times dealt with far worse catastrophes than man-made climate change.

jka 6y ago

Apparently no documented megafires occurred in California before 1970, according to NASA: https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2830/six-trends-to-know-about-fire-season-in-the-western-us/ https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2830/six-trends-to-know-about-... While yes, the earth is unpredictable and humans should aim to be adaptable, if we have identified trends that look dangerous then ideally we want a political and value system that rewards steering away from them.