western wildfires

Wednesday September 16, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 16, 2020

Wildfires and weather extremes: It’s not coincidence, it’s climate change

Right on the heels of arguably the West Coast’s most intense heat wave in modern history comes the most ferocious flare-up of catastrophic wildfires in recent memory. Meanwhile, just a few hundred miles east, a 60-degree temperature drop over just 18 hours in Wyoming and Colorado was accompanied by an extremely rare late-summer dumping of up to 2 feet of snow.

July 14, 2020

It’s not coincidence, it’s climate change. 

These kinds of dystopian weather events, happening often at the same time, are exactly what scientists have been warning about for decades. While extreme weather is a part of the natural cycle, the recent uptick in the ferocity and frequency of these extremes, scientists say, is evidence of an acceleration of climate impacts, some of which were underestimated by climate computer models.

“This is yet another example of where uncertainty is not our friend,” says Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State. “As we learn more, we are finding that many climate change impacts, including these sorts of extreme weather events, are playing out faster and with greater magnitude than our models predicted.”

July 21, 2020

On Wednesday NOAA released its latest State of the Climate Report, which finds that just during the month of August the U.S. was hit by four different billion-dollar disasters: two hurricanes, huge wildfires and an extraordinary Midwest derecho.

Just one such extreme event can strain emergency resources — a situation West Coast firefighters find themselves in now. However, in two dramatic cases this summer, the nation was hit simultaneously with concurrent catastrophes, some of which had no precedent in modern history. It’s a concept scientists call compound events, and it is necessary to factor these confluences into future projections to properly estimate risk, response and resources.

In mid-August the West suffered through an extended heat wave which saw Death Valley surge to 130 degrees, the hottest temperature ever reliably measured on Earth. The tinderbox conditions caused by the heat, along with a rare lightning outbreak, sparked the first round of major wildfires in California this season, escalating into three of the four largest fires in state history. At about the same time a powerful derecho caused billions of dollars in damage in Iowa and Illinois, and Hurricane Laura plowed into the Gulf Coast of Louisiana as a Category 4 with 150 mph winds and 16 feet of storm surge. (Continued: CBS News) 

 

Tuesday September 15, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 15, 2020

In ‘Hoax,’ Brian Stelter Ventures Where No Author Has Gone Before

Aside from a vague sense that time is now divided into “before the pandemic” and “during the pandemic,” it’s hard to have perspective on the events of the past six months. Brian Stelter’s “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth” is among the first books to explore where we are now — and it’s certainly the first to examine how the president’s preferred news source played a role in the dissemination of misinformation about coronavirus.

August 7, 2020

“Fox’s longest-tenured medical analyst, Dr. Marc Siegel, told Hannity on March 6, ‘at worst, at worst, worst case scenario, it could be the flu,’” writes Stelter, who is CNN’s chief media correspondent, in the book’s prologue. “This was shockingly irresponsible stuff — and Fox executives knew it, because by the beginning of March, they were taking precautions that belied Siegel’s just-the-flu statement. The network canceled a big event for hundreds of advertisers, instituted deep cleanings of the office and began to put a work-from-home plan in place. Yet Fox’s stars kept sending mixed messages to millions of viewers.”

In a phone interview, Stelter explained how he became interested in the president’s relationship with Fox because “it’s the only story of the Trump years that’s left.” He said, “It’s not as if Trump is addicted to the best-researched, most in-depth, meticulously sourced material in the world. If he were, we’d all be better off, right?” The book was late — “I had blown through deadlines” — so, “come February and March, we realized that the pandemic was an essential part of the story because of Fox’s downplaying the disease and President Trump’s failures early on.”

January 24, 2017

“Hoax,” now in its second week on the hardcover nonfiction list, was originally called “Wingmen” because “Trump has wingmen, like Sean Hannity,” Stelter said. “My editor gets all the credit for the title. In this war on truth we are all living in, ‘hoax’ is a potent, malicious, ugly little word and Trump has been using it more every year. So has Fox.”

Stelter has been “over the moon” about the response to the book: “I keep hearing from readers who say ‘Hoax’ helps them understand their own family a little bit better. There are so many families that are divided by Fox and Trump. I think a lot of people have been surprised by just how deep and how corrupt the roots are — how there’s been collusion between Fox and Trump right in plain sight the whole time, and yet it’s not often recognized.” (NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/books/review/brian-stelter-hoax.html

Meanwhile, The president visited California after weeks of silence on its wildfires and blamed the crisis only on poor forest management, not climate change. “I don’t think science knows” what is happening, he said. (NYT)