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Robertscibbler is becoming one of those who is too frightened to tell the truth. I shall continue to repost his articles where I think they are not too much off the mark (a more frequent happening).
“For One Month We Are Suffocating From Smoke” — For Russia, Climate Change is Already Producing Fires that are Too Big to Fight
“For
one month we are suffocating from the smoke. The weather is hot, and
there is a strong smell of burning…”
— Residents
of Bratsk, northwest of Lake Baikal, in
a petition to Vladimir Putin pleading
him to fight the fires now raging there.
*****
28
September, 2016
For
a moment, let’s take a snapshot in time of where we are from the
climate change perspective. This year, global temperatures will
probably hit between 1.2 and 1.25 C hotter than 1880s averages. This
new heat, in a range likely not seen in 115,000 years, is catapulting
us swiftly into dangerous new climate states. We’re starting to see
the hard changes happen. Weather is growing more extreme, wildfires
are worsening, the seas are rising, the glaciers are melting, and
ocean health is declining. Threats of destabilization and disruption
are ramping up. But compared to what we will see in the future if the
world continues to warm, if we continue to burn fossil fuels, the
seemingly rough changes we are experiencing now due to human-forced
warming are minor and easy to manage.
These
are the early, easy outliers of human-forced climate change. But for
some, even for a nation as powerful as Russia, certain events have
already overwhelmed certain emergency response capabilities.
****
(Fire
season should have ended by late August around the region of Lake
Baikal in Russia. However, due to climate change related influences,
massive fires continued to burn throughout September. The above image
is from today — September 28. Bottom edge of frame is approximately
600 miles. Lake Baikal is visible to the right side of frame. Smoke
from large fires currently covering approximately 2.5 million acres
is visible throughout the shot. Image source: LANCE
MODIS.)
Climate
Change Spikes Fire Incidence in Siberia
Over
the past decade or so, a rapid warming of Siberia has resulted in a
dramatic increase in fire incidence. The vast boreal forests were
being thrust into hotter, drier conditions by a human-forced warming
of the globe. Meanwhile, permafrost thaw added its own massive and
growing volumes of peat-like fuel for burning. As the years
progressed, very large fires have erupted with rising frequency.
Mostly under-reported, according
to Greenpeace and independent satellite analysis by experts,
these fires have covered millions of acres year after year after
year.
“If you look at the whole area over the past 30 years, there’s a significant increase in burned area that is very clear by the early 2000s,” said Susan Conrad, a former U.S. Forest Service scientist who has spent decades researching the impact of fire on Siberia, in an interview with ClimateWire.
Often,
fighting such fires has required the effort of thousands of emergency
responders supported by hundreds of pieces of equipment. And, as a
result, the growing size of these fires and the lengthening of the
season in which they burn has put a strain on the coffers of an
already cash-strapped Russia. Firefighting has thus been cut or set
aside for instances when a city, town or vital piece of
infrastructure required defending. So, more and more often, these
great fires have expanded even as they have been abandoned to burn on
— uncontrolled.
2016
Lake Baikal Fires Too Dangerous to Fight
This
year, an unrelenting (climate change related) drought around the
region of Lake Baikal Russia combined with abnormal heat to produce
massive fires. The fires raged and flared throughout summer. But as
the typical wildfire season came to an end during late August, the
fires continued to burn and to spread. According to Greenpeace, the
fires burning during September in this region alone covered nearly 5
million acres.
That’s an area about the size of Massachusetts. Satellite shots of
the massive fires were dramatic — revealing plumes of dense smoke
spewing out over hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles.
Meanwhile, residents of cities and towns around Lake Baikal
experienced terrible conditions due to a suffocating pall of dense
smoke covering the area.
Despite
the risk to public health and increasing cases where
schools, communities and infrastructure were threatened by the fires,
the Russian Emergencies Ministry has claimed that such large fires
are now increasingly uncontrollable. Spokesmen with the agency note
that the fires are so intense that they present an unmanageable
danger to firefighting personnel. According to Radio
Free Europe:
Aleksandr Bruykhanov, senior researcher at the Forestry Institute in Krasnoyarsk, told the Siberian Times that massive wildfires have become more frequent and cannot be fully controlled by the government. He said they will only be extinguished when rain returns to the region.
“The Emergencies Ministry won’t be able to help here but will only cause some extra work for foresters, who will have to rescue rescuers. (emphasis added)”
For
One Month We Are Suffocating From Smoke
All
that said, hundreds of firefighters have been deployed throughout the
region in isolated efforts to stem the more eminent blazes. Near the
city of Bratsk, 600 firefighters and about 123 pieces of heavy
equipment were
reported to be engaged with the fires on September 23rd.
But the firefighting has, thus far, been mostly unsuccessful.
(High
carbon monoxide readings north and west of Lake Baikal, Russia on
September 28 of 2016. This expansive plume of carbon monoxide is
coming from very large fires burning in the region. Residents in a
nearby city recently complained of carbon monoxide poisoning in a
petition to Vladimir Putin to fight the fires. But Emergencies
Agencies spokespersons have claimed that the fires are increasingly
un-containable and that the best hope for stopping the fires is when
rains return to the area. Image source: Earth
Nullschool.)
Failure
to control the massive burning has resulted in abysmal air quality
for the region. In some cases, life-threatening conditions have been
reported — with adults and children hospitalized. In Bratsk, a city
of 250,000 people, thousands
of residents are complaining of stifling smoke and incidents of
carbon monoxide poisoning.
A heavy pall of dense smoke has hung over the city for more than a
month. The conditions there are so bad that 3,000 people have signed
a petition to Vladimir Putin, urging him to deploy more resources to
fight the fires, and stating
that:
‘For one month we are suffocating from the smoke. The weather is hot, and there is a strong smell of burning and smoke. It is not possible to open windows, we cannot go out because we soon feel dizziness… Some adults and children are in hospital with severe carbon monoxide poisoning. We are for clean air! We want to breathe. We have that right. Do not remain indifferent to our health and our future!’
Signs
of Exhaustion At The Start of a Rough Climate Future
Exhaustion
of emergency response resources is one of the big threats posed by
climate change. In instances where entire regions see extreme weather
conditions that are far outside the norm for an extended period of
time, such as as severe droughts, floods, and fires, instances of
exhaustion are more likely to occur. Exhaustion also occurs when
events appear that are too large or intense to manage. And it appears
that firefighting efforts in Russia are starting to show some signs
of exhaustion. Not good. Especially considering the fact that these
conditions are tame compared to what will happen in future years
without some very serious climate change mitigation and response
efforts.
For
whether they realize it or not, the residents of Bratsk are living at
the start of a much rougher climate future. And they are just now
starting to see a hint of the very bad conditions that will keep
worsening as the world continues to warm and Siberia becomes one of
the places to see the worst of it. It’s a situation caused by the
very fossil fuel burning that Putin currently promotes. A crisis of
warming that will cause more forests to burn, cause the fires to
continue to enlarge, and cause the peat-like thawing permafrost to
become increasingly involved in that burning.
The
only way to stop this trend is to halt global temperature rise. And
that requires a very heavy lift. An international effort on a scale
which the world has not yet managed to fully commit to. An effort
that would inevitably result in the fossil fuels Putin seeks to
exploit being left in the ground in favor of far more benevolent
energy sources.
Links:
Hat
tip to mlparrish
Hat
tip to Colorado Bob
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