The article below mirrors a letter submitted to the Bernardsville News today, except that the letter does not include the charts. Bill Allen, 06-27-16
The letter was posted on the paper’s web site on 07-12-16 and in the print edition today. Bill Allen, 07-14-16
EDITOR:
Fire and flood led the evening news this past weekend. Fires in California, that are not yet under control, have killed at least two people and destroyed 200 homes. Flooding from the greatest rainfall in 100 years has claimed at least 26 lives in West Virginia. (This is written on June 27.)
A fire began in Alberta in early May. It raged for several weeks and became the most costly natural disaster in Canadian history. There was severe flooding in Texas in late May.
Scientists believe global warming is contributing to the severity and frequency of these events. Fire and flood are two sides of the same climate coin. My focus here is on fire.
I recently finished the book Tipping Point for Planet Earth by Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly, a husband and wife team who have dedicated their professional lives to the study of ancient climates and their effects on living organisms. Hadley was doing field work in Yellowstone National Park in 1988 and had to evacuate her site when the huge forest fire of that year got too close.
Looking back she believes that this signaled a tipping point. Since then large fires have occurred more frequently and more acreage has been burned. Let’s look at some data reported for the U.S. by the National Interagency Fire Center.
In the 28-year period ending in 1987, there was only one year in which total burned acres of “wildland” exceeded 7.1 million acres. In the 28-year period that followed there were nine such years. The worst year of record was 2015 with 10.1 million acres. This is 2.2 times the size of New Jersey.
Burned acres vary greatly from year to year, so it’s best to group results and look at averages. Below are averages for 10-year periods.
- 1966 to 1975 3.7 million acres burned per year
- 1976 to 1985 3.3 million acres burned per year
- 1986 to 1995 2.9 million acres burned per year
- 1996 to 2005 5.5 million acres burned per year
- 2006 to 2015 7.0 million acres burned per year
Click here for charts with above data.
Over the first 30 years the trend was slightly down. But in the past 20 years the average burned acres have more than doubled. The trend is strongly up.
We are on a path for another record year. The National Research Council reports that 1.6 million acres were burned through May of this year, compared to 0.4 million acres for the same period last year.
Scientists cite these factors to explain what they see:
- Rising global temperatures bring earlier springs.
- Snow melts earlier.
- Higher temperatures dry out the land and vegetation, making it easier to burn.
- The fire season starts earlier and lasts longer.
They estimate that a rise in one degree Celsius (equal to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increases burned acreage in our West by a factor of four.
I enjoyed talking with people about climate at our Citizen’s Climate Lobby booth at Charter Day, and at similar events in Bridgewater and south Hunterdon. I found that about half have some concern for climate change. But very few understand that it is happening now and already producing costly and potentially very dangerous impacts.
Many are acting in their own lives to conserve energy and use alternative energy, like solar power. This reduces the burning of fossil fuel and the production of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
But these individual actions are not enough. We need a worldwide effort to phase out fossil fuels. The U.S. should lead. Sadly, today it is lagging.
I repeat here a recommendation I have made several times in this space: Congress should enact legislation to implement a system of carbon fee and dividend.
More discussion of this proposal, and charts that display the data used above, are on my website JerseyGrandpa.com.
Bill Allen 06-27-16