The Chinese Wildfire Hoax

Friends and family back in Georgia have been dealing lately with something out of the ordinary and outside my own experience -- a series of big wildfires scattered all across the Southern Appalachian mountains. One of the fires, the Rough Ridge fire in the Cohutta Mountains, is said to be perhaps the largest in North Georgia's history. I've seen satellite images of smoke covering the northernmost third of the state, reaching down to Atlanta and Athens. It seems a bit unreal.

If it's the same Rough Ridge area that I once went camping with my father and brother, then it is some very rugged terrain firefighters have having to contend with.

Of course, in the heavily wooded mountains of Georgia and North Carolina, there have always been the occasional forest fire, though none from the past that really stand out in my mind.

Back in the days when my father was young, there was the habit of burning off the underbrush in the mountains in springtime, all the better for the grazing cattle that farmers let range freely during the summer. But that practice ended long before I was born.

As a kid, I can recall seeing just one wildfire, from a distance at night. It formed a crooked orange line in the dark as it burned on the side of Talona Mountain (which we called Reed Mountain, for some reason), an isolated "monadnock" that rose within easy viewing distance of my family's home.

And when I was in college at Young Harris, essentially at the base of Brasstown Bald, Georgia's highest peak, there was once a fire somewhere in the area. It was serious enough that the Forest Service asked for students to volunteer to help with the fire fighting. My classes wouldn't allow me to join, but some of my friends did and came back to school at the end of the day sooty and looking a bit exhilarated. I did envy them for the experience.

In any case, never when I was living in Georgia would there be so many fires burning at the same time, especially in November. Typically, autumns were coolish, and a bit wet, not what I would think of as fire season. 

The photos and reports that I'm seeing now seems like a smaller-scale version of something out of the American West, where fire is often enough an inescapable part of life. I know a family in Colorado who had to evacuate their house a few years ago due to an approaching fire and can still point to the spot just across the road where the flames thankfully came to a halt. And this is not not far from Storm King Mountain, where 14 firefighters lost their lives in 1994, a grim reminder of the deadly and destructive power of uncontrolled fire. 

A couple of years ago, we were driving across northern Arizona when the news came over the radio that 19 "hot shot" firefighters had similarly died at Yarnell Hill some 60 miles to the south of us. Later that night, we could see a small fire burning on Dean Peak in the Hualapai Mountains near Kingman, the faint smell of smoke noticeable in the car as as we sped down Interstate 40. 

Of course, fire is also a huge concern in Finland, a country made up almost entirely of forests. Fire prevention is taken very seriously here, and a typical feature of the evening news in summer is the latest update on which parts of the country are under metsäspalovaroitus ("forest fire warning"), when open fires in woodlands is strictly forbidden. Sometimes the entire country is under such a warning. That was surely the case in the summer of 2006, which was incredibly dry. Finland avoided major fires then, but even in Helsinki you could sometimes not avoid the smell of smoke reaching all the way from across the border in Russia, where numerous fires burned out of control for days, due to the lack of resources or motivation to extinguish them. 

Luckily, no lives or structures have been lost to the North Georgia blazes, and at the moment smoke is the biggest threat to people. But the smoke, if nothing else, is unpleasant and potentially unhealthy. The Atlanta area was placed under a Code Red air quality alert, indicating the smoke can be harmful for everyone, not only children and those with respiratory ailments. 

And conditions don't seem likely to improve. Apparently, there's a chance of rain this weekend for the area, but before that temperatures are still expected to reach 24 C (75 F), which to me seems unnaturally high for a week before Thanksgiving.

Nowadays, when every little thing gets politicized, I'm amazed I haven't yet seen anyone trying to score political points over these unprecedented wildfires, and I hesitate to do it myself (a bit).

I've always been extremely annoyed by conservative pundits or talk show hosts who poke fun at the notion of global warning wherever there is an usually big winter storm somewhere. Erick Erickson comes to mind, declaring something like, "Well, with all the snow covering Buffalo right now, it sure looks like 'Global Warming' to me. Ha, ha, ha!" Or something like that. Appealing to the common sense of the common man.

Hearing this kind of nonsense always makes me want to pull my hair out, thinking "No you idiot, you have to look at the trend, the overall trend. You can't look at just one isolated event and declare that climate change is bogus." Especially, when the event goes against the prevailing trend.

By the same token, you should also guard against making too much of an unusual weather pattern when it seems to confirm the reality of climate change. You never hear folks like Erick Erickson doing that.

That said, rare drought conditions and historically bad wildfires certainly seem to fit predictions of a rapidly warming planet. You would think the warm, tinder-dry conditions in the Southern Appalachians in late autumn would make local people, many of whom voted for Donald Trump, stop and consider that maybe this is a sign of global warming. Maybe it's not a Chinese hoax after all, despite what Trump has claimed over and over again.

You would think they might finally take the issue seriously and be alarmed that the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency might well be a climate change denier.

Or, maybe not. Maybe they'll just breathe in the pungent smell of burning timber and, with a sense of self-satisfaction, think to themselves, "Ah, nothing to worry about. That smells like Trump's America to me!"

Wildfire in California, 2008. 
Photo: Bureau of Land Management.

Christmas Variability

It’s only a few days before Christmas, and I’m finding it a little depressing.  It’s been raining for days, the river near our house is swollen and brown, and outside it’s inky black by four in the afternoon.  It shouldn’t be this way.  It feels unnatural. 

What’s missing is the snow.  Big fluffy flakes should be falling from the sky, not rain, the river should be almost frozen enough to ski on, and even the long nights should be more luminescent, with white snow covering everything. 

We’ve been suffering unseasonably mild weather the past month, with temperatures hovering just a few degrees above freezing, way too warm for snow.  This time last year, our yard was covered in 60 centimeters (two feet) of the white stuff, though admittedly that winter was the snowiest we’ve had in years.  As it is now, we’re well on our way to a non-white Christmas, only the second or third time that’s happened in the twenty-five years or so I’ve lived here.  The last time was in 2007. 

I’ve heard it’s been unusually warm in some parts of the States as well, despite a freakily early winter storm that hit the Northeast in late October.  Georgia saw highs of about 20 (68 F) last week, prompting one of my Facebook friends to comment that if this was global warming, he was all for it. 

Of course, as with almost everything else these days, “the weather” has become politicized.  My wife, who is a scientist, was recently in a meeting where an agricultural researcher from Kentucky told her how political correctness has forced American universities to change the way they talk about climate change. 

Already some years ago, the term “global warming”, which is in fact a correct description of what is happening to the Earth’s climate, fell out of favor.  This was because “global warming” made it too easy for skeptics to ridicule the idea whenever some part of the world experienced weather that was much colder than normal.  The term “climate change” seemed more acceptable.  But, as the man from Kentucky told my wife, today even “climate change” is not politically neutral enough for the skeptics.  Now the current PC term is climate variability.  It’s like trying to avoid using the word “war” by instead saying “peace variability”. 

When the big storm hit in October, conservative commentator Erick Erickson tweeted something to the effect that major snowstorms at Halloween are not exactly making a strong case for “global warming”.  Being from Georgia, he should know better. 

This past summer, Georgia experienced extreme drought conditions across most of the state.  Temperatures in Atlanta were over two degrees (4 F) above average.  Rainfall for the year has been about 25% below normal, with Atlanta even now having a rainfall deficit of about 12 inches (30 cm).  Water levels in rivers and lakes are significantly down.  Lake Lanier (the state’s biggest reservoir and a major source of water for Atlanta) is currently eleven feet (over three meters) below the “full” level.  The “good” news is that even as low as Lanier has dropped this year, it is still not as bad as during Georgia’s last severe drought, in 2007, the same year we in Finland celebrated Christmas without snow. 

While Erick Erickson was quick to crow about how (in his mind) an unseasonal winter storm helps to disprove global warming, I suspect he didn’t come to the opposite conclusion during the long summer of abnormally hot and dry weather.  Nor should he.

One bad early winter storm or even a whole summer of drought can simply be outliers to the overall trend in the weather.  They are just single data points.  What’s important is the overall trend, based on a lot of such data points, lots of observations over time.  I tend to trust the scientists who have looked at all the data and found the long-range trend clearly pointing to a warmer planet.  But the data point that concerns me the most at the moment is the fact that, once again, there’ll be no snow at Christmas.  

Helsinki's Senate Square, as it should look this time of the year.  Photo by Jonik

Oslo

We are still reeling from the horror of the attacks in Oslo and Utoya this week.  The thought that someone could slaughter innocent young people in such a mechanical cold-blooded manner, it is truly beyond belief.  And the fact that it happened in calm, sleepy Norway added to the shock.  It hits close to home to think that a peaceful Nordic country, much Finland itself, could be the site of such an outrage. 

Our hearts go out to families of the victims and, in fact, to all of Norway.  I can’t imagine the grief they are experiencing right now, especially knowing that it was brought about by one of their own, apparently a lone right-wing extremist. 

Early on, when it was “just” a car bombing, it was completely plausible to suspect it was the work of some international terrorist group, though Oslo doesn’t seem the most obvious target for such an attack.  While the events were still unfolding, the Norwegian foreign minister, speaking to the BBC, however cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that the perpetrators were Islamic jihadists.  He was wise to do so, and we can only wish others in the public space (journalists and bloggers) would have exercised the same kind of fair-mindedness. 

At news of the attacks, the American conservative blogger and Tea Party firebrand, Erick Erickson, immediately tweeted:  “Terrorist bombing in Oslo.  I bet you it was not Lutherans who did it.” 

Though he was not exactly unique in making that assumption, something about his tweet struck me as especially smug.  The next day in his blog, he admitted he was wrong.  But he also objected to criticism he received for his swift judgment, and then took the media to task for insisting on identifying Anders Breivik as a “conservative Christian”. 

I’m not quite sure why he found this so objectionable (he explains it in the blog, but I’m not sure I understand it), and I think he might be missing the point.  I think that the media, by emphasizing Breivik’s religion, weren’t trying to paint Christians with the brush of terrorism, but rather were attempting to counterbalance their initial speculations that al-Qaeda was behind the killings and discourage the kind of prejudice that might lead to knee-jerk reactions against Muslims in Norway.  And by “reaction”, I don’t mean violence.  I can’t imagine that someone in Norway would have retaliated violently against the Muslim community there – but, then again, three days ago I would not have imagined that anyone in Norway would have hunted down and shot nearly 100 happy young people. 

Interestingly enough, two days before the massacre in Norway, the state of Texas put to death a local man who went on a shooting spree of blind vengeance after the terror attacks of 9/11. 

In September 2011, white supremacist Mark Stroman set out to kill “Arabs” in the Dallas area and ended up murdering a Pakistani Muslim and an Indian Hindu.  He also wounded a third man.  None was Arabic, of course, and none had anything to do with the attacks in New York and Washington. 

The sole survivor of Stroman’s shootings, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Rais Bhuiyan, campaigned unsuccessfully for clemency for Stroman.  In pleading that his attacker, who he has forgiven, should not be executed for his crimes, Bhuiyan has said, “In order to live in a better and peaceful world, we need to break the cycle of hate and violence.” 

To which I – though not able to call myself a Christian – can only add “Amen”.