California Fires: This is Not the New Normal

Yesterday cbsnews.com showed two videos about recent California fires: here and here.

I heard people say "This is the new normal" but it isn't.  Instead, conditions are likely to get much worse. This 2010 post by Alan Marshall at skepticalscience.com noted "With 40 years between cause and effect, it means that average temperatures of the last decade are a result of what we were thoughtlessly putting into the air in the 1960’s. It also means that the true impact of our emissions over the last decade will not be felt until the 2040’s. This thought should send a chill down your spine!"

In contrast, Brian Kahn on December 3rd, 2014, at climatecentral.org noted "CO2 Takes Just 10 Years to Reach Planet’s Peak Heat." Kahn wrote "The research, published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters, provides policymakers and economists with a new perspective on how fast human carbon emissions heat the planet. Back-of-the-envelope estimates for how long it takes for a given puff of CO2 to crank up the heat have generally been from 40-50 years. But the new study shows that the timeframe for CO2 emissions to reach their maximum warming potential is likely closer to 10 years."

To magnify the challenge, global carbon and methane emissions increased again in 2017 and 2018.

Criminally insane vested interests, and their political puppets, accelerate us toward this "train wreck."

Specifically, there is a brutally honest scene in the film Before the Flood where astronaut Piers Sellers is interviewed by Leonardo DiCaprio the same year Sellers died of of pancreatic cancer.  The film parts are here and here. Part of the text is below:

"[LD:] [. . . ] And what about my home state of California?"

"[PS:] Not looking great, I’m afraid. Our models predicted persistent drought in the Dust Bowl and here 50 years from now. But we’re just seeing the worst drought in 900 years here right now [in the eastern Mediterranean], so it’s coming a bit earlier than we thought. We’re talking about this happening over the period of a few decades…"

"[LD:] This is not great news."

"[PS:] People get confused about the issue, but the facts are crystal clear – the ice is melting, the Earth is warming, the sea level is rising – those are facts. Rather than being, 'oh my god, this is hopeless', say, 'OK, this is the problem, let’s be realistic and let’s find a way out of it'. And there are ways out of it. If we stopped burning fossil fuels right now, the planet would still keep warming for a little while before cooling off again."

Here is map of California fire updates.