California Fires
Sep. 30th, 2018 01:38 pmThe Mendocino complex of fires is now the largest in California's history. This sort of thing will only get worse as global warming advances. For a while, anyway. Eventually the backlog of flammable material built up by unwise policies will be exhausted, leaving only the small amounts of annually accumulated fuels. Deserts are much less flammable than forests.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-30 07:14 pm (UTC)So the trend was already there, Climate Change has made it worse. Deepening the drought and so on... although, it's quite possible that it might not bounce back, leading to drought without end.
Thoughts
Date: 2018-09-30 07:34 pm (UTC)That makes sense.
>> So the trend was already there, Climate Change has made it worse. Deepening the drought and so on... although, it's quite possible that it might not bounce back, leading to drought without end. <<
Well, that depends on the definitions. Drought is a temporary shortage of rainfall. This isn't. It's a shifting baseline. The water has left and she's not coming back. The change is permanent.
That's on a human scale, though. Geologically, the planet has temperature swings measured in tens of thousands of years or longer. Eventually, it will cool off and the water will return.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-09-30 07:39 pm (UTC)But yeah, in terms of human scales, say hello to the new desert.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-09-30 07:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-01 03:13 pm (UTC)I've wondered about that, working through the backlog of fuel. My area's impacted, although not as severely as California, and we're dealing with the megafires that come from half a century of willful mismanagement.
...relatedly, I saw a roadrunner yesterday. The furthest north I'd seen those was previously about two hundred miles south of here. o.O