Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Environment Page 6 of 16

Methane And The Point Where Humans Are No Longer In Control

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On October 4, 2021

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I’ve been talking about methane release from the permafrost (and perhaps arctic) for a long time now. Back in 2013 I wrote:

Various processes are past the point of no return; we are going to see huge methane releases from Russia, for example. We are going to have worse global warming than the worst mainstream predictions.

Climate change will continue to present itself as more and worse extreme weather events, like the nasty hurricanes we’ve been seeing hitting further and further north. We are going to also see changes in rainfall patterns; these will continue to devastate agriculture.

Back in 2013, in theory we could have stopped this, but in practice we weren’t going to because none of the major governments then or now was going to do what it took. In fact, Barack Obama was busy increasing oil production, much of it thru fracking, as fast as he could, as deliberate policy.

“I know we’re in oil country and we need American energy.”

“You wouldn’t always know it ,but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas that was me, people.”

Obama: “Suddenly America is the largest oil producer, that was me people … say thank you.”

The irony here is that he said this just after saying how proud he was of the Paris climate accords, which while they had “targets” had no enforcement mechanism and which EVERYONE with any sense had to know were a dead letter, even if they had been adequate, which they weren’t.

Back to the methane. Every time I talked about this people would tell me I was full of shit, the science didn’t support it, etc… I know it’s considered in bad taste to mention this, but they were wrong, and I was right:

Now, here’s the important thing. Humans have driven climate change BUT there is a point at which we will no longer be doing so. While the number includes underwater methane as well, there is effectively more carbon in permafrost than in the atmosphere.

The more methane and carbon released, the higher temperatures in the arctic are and thus the more carbon and methane is released.

At that point (and it’s not the only feedback cycle, the Amazon is now releasing carbon, not sinking it) humans are no longer in primary control of climate change: the upward spiral takes over. There will be a new equilibrium point, but we don’t know what it is. We can guess, from previous geological eras, but none of that news is good news.

Will humanity survive? Probably. Will civilization as we know it survive? No. We may have an advanced technological society at the other end, but it will look a lot of different from what we have today, and there are good odds of a long decline with most people dropping out of hi-tech society. At the least we can expect mass migrations of literally billions of people, and (while it’s a guess) a drop in world population by half to 80% or so. Extreme climate change will drop the carrying capacity of our world significantly.

The last real chance to mitigate this passed when American and British elites colluded to destroy any chance of either Bernie Sanders of Jeremy Corbyn running America or Britain. By the time we have another shot at non psychopathic leaders (yes, Biden is a psychopath, based on his actions over his lifetime and so is Johnson) it will literally be too late.

But then, it was too late back in 2013, really, because the politics are what they are. It’s hard to overstate just how hard elites came out against Sanders (every candidate dropping out at the same time, except Biden/Sanders) or Corbyn (lying about him over 80% of the time and smearing him as anti-semite when he’s been an anti-racism campaigner all his life and would be the first to die to stop a new Holocaust.)

Our elites are, functionally, psychopaths. They aren’t, mostly, stupid (though some are deficient, like Bush Jr. and Biden (senile) and Johnson), but many are quite smart (Clinton and Obama were both borderline geniuses.) They just don’t care. They don’t believe that they will personally be effected by severe climate change (remember, they’re OLD) and to the extent they care about their children, they figure money and power will obtain protection. As for you and your children, you matter not at all. You are sheep, to be shorn while your continued living is beneficial to them, and culled when you no longer produce.

Meanwhile, permafrost methane release is real, it’s happening NOW not it in 2090, and it’s going to get worse.

The mainstream consensus forecasts for climate change were all wrong, and all wrong on the optimistic side.

I have been writing about this over and over again, not because I expect to change public policy, I don’t. I am writing about it so that those who read me know what is happening with sufficient warning to take steps to protect themselves and others they care about, to whatever extent they can. For many, who have few resources, there may be little they can do, but almost everyone can do something.

Winter isn’t coming. Summer is. And we are not going to like it.

(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)

Humanity’s Completely Broken Feedback Systems

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On August 10, 2021

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If you want to understand how we got where we are, it’s simple: our strongest feedback systems to our decision making people are telling them “everything’s great, stay on course!”

For over 40 years now the rich have gotten richer. Politicians have gotten richer. Corporate officers, CEOs and executives have gotten richer.

Money is reward, and the reward centers for our elites are going off like a slot machine that constantly pays millions. BLING! BLING! BLING!

Whenever someone says “you should do less of this thing that makes you more money and power”, which is essentially everything that needs to be changed from Covid (making them richer) to climate change (still more oil to pump, baby) to ending pharma patents (Bill Gates says NO) to fixing inequality or feeding hungry people or housing the homeless, well, their fortunes (or bribes) come from making these things worse.

Capitalism is supposed to provide a feedback system. It isn’t the best feedback system, but if forced or allowed to work (and only government can enforce it, which is why rich people can’t be allowed, as they always purchase the government) it makes individuals and corporations who can’t even make a real profit go bankrupt.

But in 2008, Bernanke, whose entire intellectual opus was “how do we make sure another FDR doesn’t happen by making sure the rich never lose their money and power again” started the process of shoveling money down the gullets of the rich. (Greenspan had been piping it in too, but maintained some pretense he wasn’t and tried not to actually print money obviously.)

Every major central bank in the world followed course and all the economic feedback systems broke. No matter what rich idiots did, they would never as a class be allowed to go bankrupt, or even not keep getting richer. Vast money funneled to the rich and inflation showed up exactly where one would expect it, in things the rich were bidding up (yachts, art, luxury apartments) and in whatever they were buying up to get a new revenue stream (housing, most recently, so rent will soon /really/ go thru the roof.)

Now, as I pointed out at the time, the problem with all of this is that the real world exists, and so does a real economy in which items must be manufactured, food grown and products delivered. All of that has to be done in a world with weather, climate, animals, plants and an atmosphere.

Since all the feedback systems put in place by humans had broken (no one in power cared or cares about UN climate reports), we then had to wait for the world to start smacking us around.

That has started, with wildfires and northern hurricanes and so on (and Covid, to some extent), and the logistics system has proven itself to be fragile and easily disrupted exactly as many of us pointed out, while power and water systems and so on show their fragility as well.

But it’s not enough yet, this is all stuff the rich can ignore: have more than one home, have them off the grid, travel by private jet, etc, etc…

So the feedback will continue until it becomes so severe either the Proles do a Versailles on unresponsive elites or the elites feel more endangered than their bank accounts can make up for. (A hundred million+ dollars can buy a LOT of immunity. You may be dead before they feel it.)

This story isn’t new to regular readers, though, but I want to splice it with another thread.

Incentives.

I hate incentives. Loathe them. Every place I ever worked, the incentives did more harm than good. But it’s the mantra, the mindless ideology of our age that incentives work and you should align incentives.

Since we re-engineered our entire society to appear to do that, our societies have gone to shit for everyone but the one to three percent or so, but since feedback to anybody but them doesn’t matter, we continue.

I recently read John Ralston Saul’s “The Unconscious Civilization.” Or, rather, re-read it, but last time I looked at it was in the nineties.

Saul wrote a bunch of non-fiction books and they’re all bad except “The Unconscious Civilization”, which is brilliant. (They’re bad because Saul is of the old humanist tradition that insists on putting in as many references to the greats of the past as possible.)

But Unconscious Civilization is the publication of a series of five lectures by Saul and the limited time forced him to get to the fucking point. So, read it. (It’s scarily right about almost everything.)

One point Saul makes over and over again is the “value of disinterest”. Social decisions cannot be made properly by people who have an interest in them. Cannot be. We have run a 40 year (arguably 200 to 500 year) experiment on this, and it has failed and failed and failed. Elites need moderate negative feedback and to be insulated from the effects of their decisions which benefit groups.

Our society, as Saul points out, is all organized into interest groups, which half the audience is probably thinking is insane, because they think of interests group as things like environmentalist and people who want food aid, and not as corporations. (Though NGOs are definitely corporatist by Saul’s definition.)

People who have a strong interest can’t make good decisions for anyone but themselves about anything they have a strong positive interest in. It’s that simple.

If we want out of this mess, we have to break strong positive incentives. No stock options, for example. No surgeons flying around in private jets.

When someone’s interest is so strong it makes sense for them to burn the world down (and be clear, it did, because most wouldn’t still be here, and many figure their wealth will protect them), interest has failed. Incentives have failed.

Elites must be subject to the effects of their decisions, yes, but primarily on the downside.

It’s hard to see a way out of this now, because there isn’t one.

Instead the way out will be forced. When fear rises to the necessary level, those who betray society as a whole for their own interest will be dealt with. If they’re lucky it will be thru democratic norms, if they aren’t lucky, it will be the justice of the mob. In either case it will be too late to stop the worst of climate change and ecological collapse.

For you, a reader, the point is to internalize what went wrong and why, so you understand the conditions in which it will change and do not waste time on actions which won’t help. Moral ‘suasion will not work. The elites will respond to power and fear and nothing else.

If you can’t apply enough of that, or any movement asking for your help indicates their strategy doesn’t involve power and fear, then you need to prepare in other ways. In fact, as an ordinary person, you just need to prepare, because while you can do  your bit you do not have enough power to be determinative.

Politics is unlikely to save you and what you do will not determine if it does. So you must, with others, save yourselves.

(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)

How The Metaphysics Of Capitalism Destroyed The World

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On July 22, 2021

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Back in 1968 the book “Limits to Growth” stormed the world. Computer models predicted that humans would run out of almost every resource, overshoot carying capacity, then crash.

It was well known and widely discussed and combined with the oil crashes, made the 70s a ferment of practical and theoretical work on alternative energy, different ways of farming and so on.

Almost all of that came to an end in the 80s, with Reagan. Carter had put solar panels on the White House, Reagan had them torn down. A decision was made to crush wages and thus the oil consumption of ordinary people, while bringing new sources online as fast as possible. Obama, with fracking, made the same decision, by the way, but even more successfully, turning the US back into a HUGE producer of oil.

But what’s important today isn’t all of that, which I’ve discussed at tedious length in the past.

Instead I want to discuss the basic argument against the “Limits To Growth”.

“We will substitute away.”

In other words, alternate energy will step up and we’ll move away from oil and coil. We’ll find substitutes for steel and nickel and rare earths and anything else in short supply.

BUT what matters is the metaphysics of the argument. When the people making this argument said it would happen, they assumed “the market” would do it.

Which, it sort of has, but too late. Much too late.

There was a strong assumption that prices were information which stored in them all known information about the past and the future, and that therefore prices would drive self-interested people to make the necessary substitutions or find new sources.

To market disciples, the market’s “free hand” was like God, all-knowing and all-powerful and weirdly benevolent. All we had to do was let the market run and it would solve all our problems.

So why didn’t that happen?

Well, to start, the market doesn’t price the future well at all. Never has, and never will. People making decisions in 1970 will mostly be dead before all this stuff matters, and the same is true of people making decisions in the 2010s. Even if they aren’t dead, is there anything in human history which makes us believe humans are good at making very long term plans, over decades to generations?

Why would you believe the market would do it based on a discipline which suggests humans are rational and know what is good for them and act rationally to get what is good for them? (If you believe all of that, you are more of a fantasist than some fanatic whipping himself while screaming for God to save him.)

Now I’m not concerned here with the hypocrites: the people who knew this was all bunk but expected to get rich off it (they were, in a real sense, very rational. A bad future they don’t see or don’t care about, “I get 50 good years and die rich when the bad times come, whatever” isn’t a reason not be rich now, if you don’t care about future people.)

But many many people really believed this bunk and the issue is that by believing that the “market” and “price signals” and *vague hand waving* would solve the problem: by saying “we have a system that solves these problems automatically by giving correct feedback” they made it impossible to solve to the extent that they were believed. (And remember, huge amounts of money were run on the markets for decades based on these ideas. People believed and put their cash on the line.)

In fact, of course, we could have taken the warning of “Limits To Growth”, “Peak Oil” and “Global Warming” and used them to make changes.

Ironically a lot of those changes would be exactly what the disciples of hand-wavy “market” crap suggested would happen automatically.

Use markets and public policy: massively subsidize alternative energy and research so that where we are with solar today is where we would have been in the 90s. Massively research alternatives to bottleneck resources. Stop over-fishing, by force if necessary. And, of course, put sharp limits on “planned obsolence” backed with death sentences for executives.

If you’d rather get more resources or if you want more than one strategy, massively fund space exploration with an eye to mining rather than defund NASA in waves (Obama, classically, did the worst cuts to NASA ever so that private industry/billionaires could make money, but NASA funding should have been increased in the 70s.)

Warnings only serve those who heed them and when you believe in metaphysical entities which don’t have the attributes they think they do (God, Markets), then you don’t act to save yourself. Markets were never, by themselves, going to miraculously do what needed being done in time. Oh sure, price feedback has eventually gotten us some decent solar, and so on, but decades later than we needed it.

Markets are human creations, like God, and to work correctly they have to be tuned for the problem at hand or, even (heresy) one has to consider that there are things that Markets or Gods can’t do, or are bad at, and find other solutions.

So here we are, and markets have not made everything good and the world’s forests are burning and we’re about to have another oil boom, as best I can tell.

Like God, mis-using markets or assigning them powers they don’t have, leads to terrible consequences, so get ready for the invisible hand to slap us silly.

(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)

Hot Enough to Die

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On July 9, 2021

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So, the temperatures in the Pacific Northwest probably cooked around a billion sea animals.

Dead.

A billion.

The town of Lytton, which reached Canada’s hottest ever temperature, later burned down: 90 percent of the buildings gone. (Back in the 80s, I drove through Lytton a few times, can’t say I know it, but I spent a lot of time in the country around it.)

We’ve already hit high enough temperatures to kill some animals outright.

Humans can get there as well: It’s known as the wet bulb temperature.

The wet-bulb temperature (WBT) is the temperature read by a thermometer covered in water-soaked cloth (wet-bulb thermometer) over which air is passed.

This is to see what temperature it is with evaporation. If the wet bulb temperature hits 35 celcius, humans can’t lose heat, even if they drink water, and will die.

This corresponds to 95 percent humidity, and 88 F (31.1 Celcius.) The lower the humidity, the more heat you can take before dying, a.k.a., “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”

These are ideals, though, a lot of people die at lower wet-bulb temperatures, because they aren’t perfectly healthy or the heat just keeps going and going.

A researcher noted that just how bad high wet-bulb is:

“Even if they’re in perfect health, even if they’re sitting in the shade, even if they’re wearing clothes that make it easy in principle to sweat, even if they have an endless supply of water,” Horton said. “If there’s enough moisture in the air, it’s thermodynamically impossible to prevent the body from overheating.” 

Coming to somewhere near you?

Most of these wet bulb conditions were concentrated in South Asia, the coastal Middle East, and southwest North America… A growing number of other regions are nearing this point: The Southeast US, the Gulf of Mexico and Northern Australia, all denoted by green on the map, are seeing higher daily maximum wet bulb temperatures. 

Obviously air conditioning can protect you, but what if your AC goes out, or worse, there’s a brown or black out? A few hours later, you’re dead. Willing to bet your life on over-stressed power grids?

And, while a little misleading (they aren’t here in any great numbers, yet…), this is normal:

Originally, conditions like this weren’t expected until the mid 21st century, according to climate models. But they are actually already here.

Fun stuff, but what makes it even more difficult is climate instability; after all, much of the Pacific Northwest, especially along the coast, was known for its mild temperatures. (I grew up there, and can attest.)

The core thing to understand is less about heat specifically, and more that climate will keep getting more dangerous, and that you can’t count on government or corporations to keep you safe. You shouldn’t, if you can avoid it, put your life at risk by assuming “the power grid won’t go out when I need it most” or “there’ll always be a continuous supply of food.”

Expect that the highly-taut, over-efficient, no-slack, and unmaintained systems that run our society. optimized for maximum profit and not for resilience, will fail under shocks they were never designed to withstand — especially as our elites now expect such shocks, like Covid, to make them even richer and more powerful.

You aren’t precisely on your own, but don’t count on the normal of the past few decades to predict the future — except the normal of “no one with any power actually cares if you live or die or suffer, if they can make some money from your suffering.”

(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)

 

 

 

 

 

Siphon the System Thinking Doesn’t Work Against Nature

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On July 5, 2021

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We live in a very, very rich society.

Oh, many people are poor, and real poverty, whether in the “Global South” or first-world backwaters, but our society throws off vast wealth. We could, essentially trivially, feed, house, and clothe everyone and give them a decent life. We have that sort of surplus, and far, far more.

In healthy societies, or societies where elites are scared of outside forces (whether human or natural), the emphasis is on growing the pie, on making the society stronger and richer so that it can survive the forces of which the elites and the population (perhaps) are wary. Unproductive use of resources is frowned on, something you can find even in English common law, where if land or property wasn’t being used, after a time it could be taken by someone who would use it productively.

In fantastically wealthy ages, where elites are sure they are secure from all enemies, they concentrate on fighting over the wealth, or, the pie.

The Gilded Age is a good example. The Americans and Brits of the early to mid 1800s were concerned with growing the pie; they didn’t feel invincible or untouchable. But after Britain had secured its second Empire, and painted more of the map than any other nation in history, and after the US had its civil war, broke the natives, and crushed the Spanish and Mexicans, the US and Britain felt they had it made. There were no real threats left.

So, the countries turned inside. They concentrated on taking from others, on amassing wealth. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire was created by by buying out (often at terrible prices) the existing oil industry. It wasn’t creation of something new; it was consolidation in one man’s hands, of what was already there, so that he could reap the benefits.

England’s middle class in 1850 was the envy of the world. By World War I, the average Englishman had been so impoverished that huge swathes of potential soldiers had to be turned away from service in the armed forces. The rich imtiserated the middle class, crushed the farmers as best they could, and fought amongst each other to see who would rule the roost. (In this, they were less collegial than our rich are — far more willing to throw former members of the elite out entirely.)

To put it simply, there was far more money and power to be gained by grabbing a bigger slice of the pie than by growing it.

In the US, this wasn’t fatal; there was a lot of stolen land, and there was still plenty of room for elites to grow new things, even if it wasn’t the emphasis.

In Britain, it led to a fatal decline which is still ongoing; we can see now that Britain probably won’t even stay the “United Kingdom” —- odds are good Scotland will leave, and to add insult to injury, they’ll lose Northern Ireland as well. It is even possible, in the next 40 years or so, that Wales might leave.

From the behemoth astride the world, to a pathetic country that can’t even keep its heartland together.

For our purposes, however, the point is simpler: If you want to rule over other people, you must, in the words of Lois McMaster Bujold, rule their imagination. The greatest of men and women could lose everything tomorrow if their subjects simply stopped believing in their subjugation — and who has how much is entirely a matter of convincing other people to give it to you and let you keep it. Even when it’s a matter of force, you must convince the enforcing class to do what you say and to point the guns and use the prisons on the “right’ people.

It is true that growing the pie requires a fair bit of ruling over other people’s imaginations, but real increases in societal wealth require actually dealing with the world as it is; conquering people who resist, inventing and building steam engines, figuring out how to grow more food on the same land, and so on.

Just getting people to give you more of what already exists, what was created by other people and is produced by a system created by humans of the past, however, is pure imagination work. If people believe it is true, it is. You’re only dealing with human psychology and mass psychology.

Of course, a real world still exists; sometimes its people who don’t buy into your story. This is why China and the US are going to cold war and maybe real war, because neither is willing to live in the world created by the others fictions and ideals.

Then there is nature. It doesn’t matter if you believe that carbon and methane heat up the planet. They do and they will. It doesn’t matter what you think about Covid, if you un-mask and don’t quarantine people who have it, or came in contact with those who do, and if you don’t contact trace, and so on and so forth, then it will act like any other pandemic disease and keep mutating and spreading.

You can’t just manipulate other people’s beliefs about Covid and expect it to go away.

And so, people who have spent their entire lives doing nothing but manipulating other people’s beliefs are incapable of dealing with Covid or climate change. Covid doesn’t “listen to them.” Covid doesn’t care what they say.

Same with climate change. The forest will burn, regardless of what you say to the trees or to the weather.

Our elites, trained only to manipulate other people, are incapable of dealing with real-world events that can’t be controlled simply by controlling other people’s beliefs.

And so we will burn, and cough, and Covid will become endemic as the world slides towards collapse.

(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)

Reminder: Prepare for the Forest Fire/Smoke Season

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On June 29, 2021

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These temperatures from the West coast of Canada last weekend were absolutely insane.

I grew up in Western BC, Vancouver, and Victoria, in the ’70s and ’80s. These temperatures are crazy. Victoria, in particular (bottom right) is (or was) noted for mild temperatures. Hardly anyone has air conditioners. My parents retired there, and I visited regularly right up to about 2010. It was retirement paradise.

Anyway, if you live in the west of Canada or the US (and the West now extends far past the coast, almost to the mid line, in many cases), please be sure to buy a respirator mask (with extra filters) and an indoor air purifier, and do it NOW. The fire season is likely to hit early and hard this year, and after the rush you won’t be able to find any anywhere.

Make other preparations, including getting ready to leave, as necessary. If you are asthmatic, see about stocking up on meds, and so on. Don’t leave this, please. I know I’ve written this before, recently, and it’s a bit boring to write it again, but I want to be sure people hear this.

As for the West, I am in mourning. I love the coast; the rain forests dripping with water, the ferns looking like jewels in the dew, the deep, dark forests where decaying leaves soften each step and old trees shelter you as you walk. Much of that is going to go away. Future generations along most of the West coast will never know the beauty and ease of the temperate rain forest.

For this and many other crimes, those who chose to do nothing about climate change are guilty. We are losing so much, and will lose so much more, that should never have been placed at risk.

Some of what will go is no loss, mostly human things. But the animals and plants did nothing to deserve this, and my sorrow is even more for them than the humans who will suffer.

Only fools ask for what they deserve, but ask or not, we are going to get it. It’s just a pity that so many of the most responsible won the death bet, and so many of those who will suffer did nothing to warrant it.

Meanwhile… get prepared for fire season, so your suffering is reduced and less is added to the toll, at least these years.

Update: Barely ahead of it, wildfires have started in BC. Get the gear you need tomorrow, Wednesday. Don’t wait.

(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)

Yes, Virginia, Permafrost IS Going to Release Carbon and Methane

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On June 25, 2021

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So, for years I’ve been saying that a great point of concern was methane/carbon release from permafrost. Every time I brought this up, I was told by someone that studies said it was unlikely.

This summer in the Russian arctic:

Arctic Temperature 2nd last weekend June 2021.

Feel free to take a break from reading to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

There is more carbon stored in permafrost that there is carbon in the atmosphere. When permafrost thaws, it comes out as a combination of carbon and methane.

The greatest concern for climate change has always been, “When do we hit the self-reinforcing spirals?” Put another way, “When does it stop mattering if humans reduce emissions?”

The problem is that we really don’t understand the climate very well; our models are crude. Almost everything is actually coming in faster than we anticipated — Arctic ice is clearing faster than expected, Antarctic ice is calving sooner than we thought it would, glaciers are retreating faster than expected, etc, etc.

This, again, was easily predictable, in the sense that, for decades now, consensus forecasts have always come in “under” the actual results. So the smart bet was always on the over, and that’s the bet I’ve made and shared with my readers for many years now.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT GOING TO BE STOPPED.

Even if it is still possible to do, we are not going to do it — our political masters aren’t doing anything significant enough to even nudge the curves. Our populations are not voting primarily on climate change, or Sanders would be President of the US and Corbyn Prime Minister of the UK.

You must plan for climate changed based on the assumption that government will be of little help — it’s you and your friends and any other people you can find who want to prepare with you.

This means assuming breakdowns in the supply chain. It means assuming hotter weather in general, BUT more variable weather also — cold waves and so on will also become more frequent. Hurricanes and other extreme weather events will continue their trends of being more common and more powerful.

Assume a marine inundation event sooner than expected; if you aren’t at least a couple feet above sea level, don’t assume you have forever do something about that — a couple decades, maybe, and extreme weather could easily cause a flood before that.

Remember that water is going to be harder and harder to get; as the glaciers go away and as there is less snow pack, rivers will be fed far less. A vast amount of groundwater has been polluted by farm runoff, fracking, and other stupidity.

I also expect that oxygen concentration in the air will decline, and air quality will be worse.

This is an accelerating trend. It has moved very slowly, but it is speeding up and will continue to speed up. Think about how Covid curves have gone in incompetent countries: slow, slow, slow — VERTICAL. We’re a ways from vertical yet, but the lines for effects are no longer in “looks flat” territory.

It may be that your circumstances allow you to do little, but do what you can. And turn your efforts towards triage: Saving, or helping, yourself and those you want to save. The political battle is lost, was lost, and until absolute catastrophe hits, nothing of significance will be done.

That’s the future. Plan for it, please.

(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)

Huge Western Wildfire Season Far Beyond California

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On June 8, 2021

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So, this is the drought map for 2020:

Here’s the drought map for this year:

Yeah.

Expect wildfires all through this region and beyond. You should prepare NOW if you live in these areas (check for Mexican or Canadian maps if you live in those countries). Remember, you buy NOW because if you wait everything will be out of stock.

You may need (not a complete list):

  • Respirators
  • Air filters, have extras, especially for any air conditioners
  • A “go bag” in case you’re forced to evacuate.
  • Some sort of back-up electricity, even if only some batteries for your small items.
  • Tape to tape over your doors and windows. Painters tape, perhaps.
  • Internal air filtering fans. (Tutorial on how to make from box fans.)
  • Standard stuff like water and staple foods in case supply chains are disrupted.
  • Asthmatics and other people with breathing problems should make sure they have enough meds, if they can.

 

Larger scale preparations may include:

  • Non-flammable roofing and keep the roof clean of flammable materials like leaves and needles;
  • Change your lawn to something non-flammable; a rock garden perhaps.
  • I hate chopping down trees, but you may wish to consider any too near your house.
  • Be sure any flammable vegetation is not touching your house nor can fall on it.

I’m sure no expert on this sort of thing, so please leave suggestions for preparing in the comments and do your own research.

BUT the main thing is to do your research and preparation NOW. (Really ,it should have been sooner, and I apologize for not writing this article earlier.)

This is, yes, a result of climate change, exacerbated by bad forestry and soil management. But without climate change it wouldn’t have happened. This is how the ecology of local areas is changing to match the new climates. Unfortunately, that means the destruction of what is there now.

(In that vein, we are coming up on a period of serious food inflation. If you can store it, buy food now.)

Be well, be safe.

(The more people subscribe or donate the more I write and the happier I am. So please consider doing so if you like my writing.)

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