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NASA
satellites are keeping a close watch on the massive wildfires burning
in southern British Columbia.
A
satellite captured today’s space view of the South Coast of the
province: a massive thick blanket of wildfire smoke covers much of
the Lower Mainland, the Strait of Georgia, the southern half of
Vancouver Island and parts of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington
State.
The
smoke caused an eerily orange, Martian sky over the Metro Vancouver
region this morning. Conditions improved by noon, but persisting smog
and high concentrations of fine particulate matter prompted local
officials to issue an air quality advisory.
Germany
broke its all-time heat record on Sunday July 5, when the mercury
soared to 104.5°F (40.3°C) at the official Kitzingen station in
Bavaria. According to the German weather service's Facebook page, the
record is now confirmed as official. The previous official national
heat record recognized by the German meteorological agency (DWD) was
104.4°F (40.2°C), set in July 1983 and matched in August 2003.
Numerous cities in Germany set all-time heat records over the
weekend, including Saturday's 100.2°F (37.9°C ) reading at Berlin's
Dahlem station, which has a very long period of record going back to
1876. Frankfurt beat its all-time heat record on Sunday--both at the
airport (38.8°C) and downtown (39.0°C). Thanks go to weather
records researcher Maximiliano Herrera and Klimahaus' Michael
Theusner for these stats.
Warm,
humid weather gives way to an unsettled forecast.
Scientists
at the UN climate negotiations in Bonn warn that new data about the
melting of the Earth’s permafrost, and projections of a “permafrost
carbon feedback loop,” suggest that the Earth is reaching
thresholds where only a new ice age could reverse the impacts of
global warming.
By
Dahr Jamail
Guy
McPherson is a professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural
resources and ecology at the University of Arizona, and has been a
climate change expert for 30 years. He has also become a
controversial figure, due to the fact that he does not shy away from
talking about the possibility of near-term human extinction.
While
McPherson's perspective might sound like the stuff of science
fiction, there is historical precedent for his predictions.
Fifty-five million years ago, a 5-degree Celsius rise in average
global temperatures seems to have occurred in just 13 years,
according to a study
published in
the October 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. A report in
the August 2013 issue of Science revealed that in the near term,
earth's climate will change 10 times faster than during any other
moment in the last 65 million years.
Prior
to that, the Permian mass extinction that occurred 250 million years
ago, also known as the "Great Dying," was triggered by a
massive lava flow in an area of Siberia that led to an increase in
global temperatures of 6 degrees Celsius. That, in turn, caused the
melting of frozen methane deposits under the seas. Released into the
atmosphere, those gases caused temperatures to skyrocket further. All
of this occurred over a period of approximately 80,000 years. The
change in climate is thought to be the key to what caused the
extinction of most species on the planet. In that extinction episode,
it is estimated that 95 percent of all species were wiped out.
Today's
current scientific and observable evidence strongly
suggests we
are in the midst of the same process - only this time it is
anthropogenic, and happening exponentially faster than even the
Permian mass extinction did.
In
fact, a recently published
study in
Science Advances states, unequivocally, that the planet has
officially entered its sixth mass extinction event. The study shows
that species are already being killed off at rates much faster than
they were during the other five extinction events, and warns
ominously that humans could very likely be among the first wave of
species to go extinct.
So
if some feel that McPherson's thinking is extreme, when the myriad
scientific reports he cites to back his claims are looked at squarely
and the dots are connected, the perceived extremism begins to
dissolve into a possible, or even likely, reality.
The
idea of possible human extinction, coming not just from McPherson but
a growing number of scientists (as well as the aforementioned
recently published report in Science), is now beginning to
occasionally find its way into mainstream consciousness......
In
this hot, dry summer, even the Queets rain forest in Olympic National
Park is burning. It’s a rare spectacle, but one that could become
more common.
Fire
crews call them “cat faces,” deep holes that flames have burned
into the trunks of the centuries-old Sitka spruce and hemlock growing
here in the Queets River valley.
The
trees may smolder for days — spouting smoke from their bases before
finally toppling to the ground with a thunderous crash that sounds
like a bomb has gone off.
“They
are falling down regularly,” said Dave Felsen, a firefighter from
Klamath Falls, Ore. “You can hear cracking and you try to move, but
it’s so thick in there that there is no escape route if something
is coming at you.”
This
year, even the Queets rain forest, a place that typically receives
more than 200 inches of rain annually, is burning.
The
fire started after a warm winter prevented most of the snowpack from
forming, followed by an exceedingly hot, dry spring that primed the
forest for ignition. The result of this unusual alignment is what now
ranks as the largest fire since the park was established, and might
burn through the summer......
As
buses full of evacuees began to roll into Cold Lake, Alta., ash was
falling like snow in the coastal town of Powell River, B.C., and
flames and smoke were threatening La Ronge in Northern Saskatchewan.
Propelling
them all were wildfires, which are burning by the dozens in Western
Canada.
On
Sunday morning, a pall of smoke hung over Vancouver as fans were
hitting the streets for the Women’s World Cup soccer final between
United States and Japan.
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