Western Wildfires: Blazes Fueled By Climate Change Engulf Vast Region In Crisis

Washington Post - Andrew Freedman | Karly Domb Sadof

Here are just 11 of the wildfires burning in Washington state, Oregon and California

Sept. 10 | Mountain Home Village, Calif. (Kyle Grillot for The Washington Post)

California, Oregon and Washington state are in the midst of an unprecedented wildfire siege, which has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, killed at least 17 and damaged or destroyed thousands of residences and businesses.

In California alone, 28 major wildfires were burning Friday, including the state’s largest on record. Five of the state’s top 20 largest wildfires are actively burning. Since the beginning of the year, wildfires have burned over 3.2 million acres in California

In Washington, fires spread rapidly amid howling, dry winds. More than 600,000 acres — the largest burned area in state history since 2015′s historic season — have burned in active fires this week alone, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said Friday.

And in Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown (D) earlier this week described the state’s wildfires as a “once-in-a-generation event,” putting more than 500,000 residents — more than 10 percent of the state’s population — under an evacuation warning or order. This week’s fires have left in excess of 1 million acres charred in the state.



Wildfire experts say they have never seen so many large and rapidly growing wildfires in so many places simultaneously. Many were so severe they manufactured their own weather, including lightning arcing out of the ash-laden sky.

Human-caused climate change is driving fire risks in the West to new heights, enabling more fires to behave in extreme, unpredictable ways.

Warming temperatures made these fires worse by drying out vegetation during a record-shattering heat wave, the second since mid-August.

These blazes exploded in size during an outbreak of strong winds that simultaneously hit the Cascades, Sierras and coastal mountain ranges; the gusts pushing the flames down canyons, through campgrounds, past highways and into neighborhoods.

Another factor — decades of fire suppression policies, including a lack of prescribed burning — aggravated conditions further by leaving more material for the fires to burn.

A look at 11 different blazes from these three states shows some of the common features of these blazes — their astonishing speed and terrifying capriciousness.

Cold Springs and Pearl Hill fires, Washington state The Cold Springs Fire started Sunday near Omak, Wash. The Pearl Hill Fire started shortly after, on Monday, near Bridgeport, Wash. Both fires spread quickly due to strong winds and low humidity. As of Friday, the fires had burned more than 196,700 acres.

Sept. 7 | Azwell, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland/AP)

Beachie Creek Fire, Oregon Before a severe windstorm on Monday, the Beachie Creek Fire was just 469 acres. That night, it grew to more than 131,000 acres, driven by dry fuels and high winds, prompting evacuations. The fire affected communities in Santiam Canyon, including Lyons and Mehama, killing at least two people.

(Virgil McCurdy via Storyful)

Sept. 8 | Lyons, Ore. (Mark Ylen/AP)

Holiday Farm Fire, Oregon The Holiday Farm Fire is burning in the Willamette National Forest. As of Friday, the fire was zero percent contained and had burned over 156,708 acres. More than 400 emergency personal have been assigned to the fire, which started Monday.

Sept. 10 | Nimrod, Ore. (Andy Nelson/AP)

Sept. 8, 2020 | Blue River, Ore. (Andy Nelson/AP)

Almeda Fire, Oregon Strong, dry winds blowing down mountainsides from land to sea pushed the Almeda Fire toward heavily populated areas on Tuesday, with parts of the city of Medford placed under evacuation advisories. The fire caused widespread damage in Phoenix and Talent, just southeast of Medford.

(Bow Shaban DeBey via Storyful)

Sept. 10 | Phoenix, Ore. (Mason Trinca for The Washington Post)

Sept. 10 | Phoenix, Ore. (John Locher/AP)

North Complex Fire, California A Northern California wildfire that has burned through more than 250,000 acres of land has now killed at least 10 people, nine alone in the town of Berry Creek, part of a brutal fire season that includes five of the 20 largest wildfires in the state’s history. Butte County sheriff’s officials confirmed seven additional deaths from the North Complex Fire on Thursday and said 16 people remain missing in the state’s deadliest blaze this year. A total of 19 people have died in California wildfires in 2020, fire officials said Friday.

Sept. 9 | Oroville, Calif. (Noah Berger/AP)

LEFT: Sept. 9 | Butte County, Calif. (Noah Berger/AP).
RIGHT: Sept. 9 | Butte County, Calif. (Noah Berger/AP).

LNU Lightning Complex, California The LNU Lightning Complex is one of the fires that was ignited in August, following a mid-month heat wave and rare surge in lightning strikes from thunderstorms that delivered plenty of sparks but little rain. The fire is now on the state’s top 20 list of largest-ever fires.

Aug. 20, 2020 | Sonoma County, Calif. (Stuart W. Palley for The Washington Post)

Creek Fire, California The Creek Fire began on Sept. 4 in the Sierra National Forest. It grew by more than 100,000 acres in 24 hours during Labor Day weekend, trapping campers, hikers and vacationers. The California National Guard conducted daring helicopter flights to evacuate more than 100 people from the area as the fire grew out of control.

(Ian M. Wright via Storyful)

Sept. 7 | Fresno County, Calif. (Noah Berger/AP)

Sept. 7 | Madera County, Calif. (Noah Berger/AP)

Dolan Fire, California The Dolan Fire, burning in Los Padres National Forest in California, has grown to more than 111,000 acres this week after strong winds caused it to triple in size. The fire originally began on Aug. 18, though the cause is still unknown. Three firefighters were injured in the blaze on Tuesday; two have been released from the hospital, and the third is in stable condition. Parts of Route 1, which runs along the coast, were closed due to the fire and the falling rocks and debris it caused. The Dolan Fire was 26 percent contained as of Friday morning.

Aug. 22 | Big Sur, Calif. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Bobcat Fire, California The Bobcat Fire continues to burn deeper into the Angeles National Forest, causing smoke to fill the air over the San Gabriel Valley and surrounding areas around Los Angeles. The fire started Sunday and has burned more than 26,000 acres and is only 6 percent contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The Bobcat Fire crossed into Monrovia, Calif., city limits on Friday. Fire officials say they have built a defensive line between the fire and the city and have warned residents that evacuation orders are possible.

(Mt. Wilson Observatory)

LEFT: Sept 9 | Monrovia, Calif. (Kyle Grillot for The Washington Post).
RIGHT: Sept 10 | Monrovia, Calif. (David Mcnew/Getty Images).

El Dorado Fire, California The El Dorado Fire started on Sept. 5 when a pyrotechnic device from a gender-reveal party ignited dry wild grass at El Dorado Ranch Park, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. As of Friday morning, the fire had burned more than 13,000 acres and destroyed four homes. It is 31 percent contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

(SB County Fire via Storyful)

Sept. 10 | San Bernardino National Forest. (Kyle Grillot for The Washington Post)

LEFT: Sept. 10 | San Bernardino National Forest. (Kyle Grillot for The Washington Post) .
RIGHT: Sept. 10 | San Bernardino National Forest. (Kyle Grillot for The Washington Post) .

Valley Fire, California The Valley Fire in rural eastern San Diego County destroyed dozens of structures and forced evacuations, though those orders were lifted Friday afternoon. The fire has grown to more than 17,000 acres, according to CalFire, and was 39 percent contained as of Friday morning.

Sept 9, 2020 | Concord, Calif. (Brittany Hosea-Small/AFP/Getty Images)

Sept 6 | Jamul, Calif. (Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images)

Links

• As wildfires rage, US voters still divided on climate
• Wildfires scorch millions of acres in Western U.S. as Oregon braces for 'mass fatality event'
• Here's What the Massive Amount of Smoke Created by West Coast Wildfires Looks Like From Space
• A government agency just warned this week's West Coast wildfires could spark a financial crisis. A top economist thinks the effects could linger for years.
• Death Toll Climbs In West Coast Wildfires Increasingly Blamed On Climate Change
• Australia Burned Under a Haze of Misinformation Earlier This Year. The U.S. Is Next.
• Wildfires are striking closer and closer to cities. We know how this will end
• Through the fire and smoke, a sobering view of California’s climate catastrophe
• Stark New Imagery Reveals The Scary Extent Of West Coast Wildfires

The Future Has Arrived. These Explosive Fires Are Our Climate Change Wakeup Call

The Guardian - Peter Gleick

Scientists have been warning of the growing threat of climate change, and now those projections are a reality

Californians woke up to red, sunless skies and layers of ash coating everything as a result of wildfires across the state. Photograph: Frederic Larson/AP

Author Peter Gleick is a hydroclimatologist, member of the US National Academy of Sciences, MacArthur Fellow, and choking, gasping Californian.

Like millions of people in the western United States this week, I woke up to deep red, sunless skies, layers of ash coating the streets, gardens, and cars, and the smell of burning forests, lives, homes, and dreams. Not to be too hyperbolic, but on top of the political chaos, the economic collapse, and the worst pandemic in modern times, it seemed more than a little apocalyptic.

Too much of the western United States is on fire, and many areas not suffering directly from fire are enveloped in choking, acrid smoke.

While fires in the west are not unusual or unexpected, these fires are different: they’re earlier, bigger, and hotter than usual. They are expanding explosively, overwhelming towns and firefighting resources. And there’s no getting away from them. As of Thursday evening, five of the ten largest wildfires in California’s history are burning. Seven of the 10 largest fires have occurred in the last four years. This isn’t normal.

What’s different now? Human-caused climate change.

We’re reaping the consequences of more than a century of using the thin, delicate layer of atmosphere that surrounds the planet as a dumping ground for the major waste product of burning fossil fuels – carbon dioxide. For more than half a century, scientists have been warning of the growing threat of climate change. My own work on climate and water 35 years ago found that rising temperatures would alter California’s snowpack, water availability, and soil moisture in ways we’re now seeing in our mountains and rivers. In the early 1990s, scientists such as Margaret Torn, Jeremy Fried, Kevin Ryan, Colin Price, and others were evaluating the risks of increases in western wildfire areas and intensity under scenarios of climate change. The National Climate Assessments required by federal law have regularly warned that worsening fires were a likely future consequence of accelerating climate change.

Projections have turned to reality. The future has arrived. What we’re seeing now, with massive wildfires, worsening storms, unprecedented heat, and record droughts and floods is just the beginning of the climate changes to come. On top of rising oceans, the accelerating destruction of the Arctic ice cap, expanding water crises, and new health disasters, these climate impacts are something no human society has ever experienced and for which we remain woefully unprepared.

I’m not arguing any individual disaster has been caused by climate change, though the science is strengthening on that as well. I’m saying we are now seeing the unambiguous influence of climate change on these disasters. What used to be considered acts of God are now also acts of humans. Hurricanes such as Harvey in 2017 are stronger and they’re delivering more devastating floods. Heat waves are happening earlier and they’re longer and hotter than they used to be. California just experienced its hottest August on record including what may have been the hottest temperature ever recorded, in Death Valley. The wildfires, as we’ve seen, are turning into fierce, fearsome, monsters.

What we’re seeing now is just the beginning of the climate changes to come

The influence of climate change on wildfires is easy to see. Global warming is diminishing our mountain snowpack, leading to hotter and drier summers. Eighty percent of California, 95% of Oregon, and all of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico are currently in drought. Severe droughts over the past decade have killed hundreds of millions of trees in our forests, adding to the fuels available to burn. Higher temperatures further dry out forest and rangeland soils. Unusual lightning storms are igniting multiple fires at a time, overwhelming our ability to squelch them early.

We’re not alone. The wildfire signal of climate change is being seen around the world, in southern Europe, Canada, Australia, South America, and Africa, and other climate-change impacts are accelerating too, in the form of storms, melting glaciers, rising seas, and more.

More and more scientists are speaking out about the connections between these disasters and climate change. The media is slowly getting better at reporting these links, though too many stories still fail to do so.

It is also time for our politicians to lead or get out of the way. For decades both major political parties in the US ignored the climate problem, putting off decisions for the next generation and permitting the rich and powerful fossil fuel interests to hide, misrepresent, and deny the science and the threat. And the claim that the cost of tackling climate change is too high is complete crap. The reality is the cost of failing to address the problem is so much higher.

We have no more time to twiddle our collective thumbs. The bad news is that the long delay in tackling climate change means that some severe impacts, like the fires we’re seeing now, are no longer avoidable and we must begin the process of adapting to them. We must, at the same time, accelerate the complete elimination of fossil-fuel combustion to slow the rate of future climate changes and prevent even worse, potentially catastrophic impacts from occurring.

The good news is that we know how to do both things. Adaptation options include changing zoning laws, forest management, construction practices and building materials, insurance policies, and public health strategies. And the amazingly fast growth in renewable energy options and the dramatic plunge in their costs means that it makes economic as well as well as environmental sense to get rid of fossil fuels.

The links between human-caused climate change and extreme events are real, dangerous, and worsening. But now that we’re beginning to accept and acknowledge those links, now that the public is increasingly aware of the problem, now that at least one political party has embraced the need to act, we have a chance to break these links. There is no time to waste.

Links

• Trauma, fear, homelessness: life after California's deadliest fire shows the future of climate crisis
• Ban Ki-moon: I’m bewildered that Trump would imperil America by abandoning the Paris agreement
• What has four years of Donald Trump meant for the climate crisis?
• How SUVs conquered the world – at the expense of its climate
• How the global climate fight could be lost if Trump is re-elected
• The climate crisis has already arrived. Just look to California’s abnormal wildfires
• West Coast Wildfires
• 500,000 evacuate wildfires in Oregon as death toll climbs
• What’s causing climate change, in 10 charts
• Frustrated California Governor Gavin Newsom Surveys Fire Zone, Rips “Ideological BS” Around Climate Change & “Absence Of National Leadership”
• Most wildfire coverage on American TV news fails to mention link to climate crisis
• US wildfires could spark financial crisis, advisory panel finds
• California's dark, orange sky is the most unnerving sight I've ever woken up to | Rebecca Solnit
• Wildfires turn San Francisco sky orange as 'unprecedented' conditions stoke blazes across the western US
• Biden's radical climate change plan could overturn the world's efforts
• Western wildfires: An ‘unprecedented’ climate change fueled event, experts say
• Wildfires, Global Climate Change, And The Policy Environment

Dalai Lama Calls For Unified Global Action On Climate Change

CNA - AFP

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama (pictured 1996) said in a video message to a virtual G7 meeting that people have more of a sense of shared interest in saving the planet. (Photo: AFP/David Hancock)

WASHINGTON: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama called on world leaders Saturday (Sep 12) to join forces in fighting climate change.

"Now we should pay more attention about global warming," the exiled leader said in a video message to a virtual meeting of Group of Seven parliamentary leaders.

The session was hosted by the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, a longstanding advocate for the Himalayan region.

National leaders have been meeting less frequently with the Dalai Lama due to pressure from China.

In his video address, the Dalai Lama said people today have more of a sense of shared interest in saving the planet.

"If you look (at) past history, too much emphasis individual nation, individual religion, including color," the 85-year-old Buddhist leader said, according to a statement from the International Campaign for Tibet.

"So it creates a lot of problem. Basically, you see, they are selfish, self-centered attitudes," the 1989 Nobel peace laureate said.

Climate change is affecting some of the world's least powerful people, the Dalai Lama added.

"Due to global warming, too much rain some area. Some area dry. So these people suffer," the Dalai Lama said. "Particularly like in Africa and some area in India and China also."

The impact along economic lines is also imbalanced, he added.

"The rich people, big hotel, not much serious sort of feeling," the Dalai Lama said. "But poor people, they really face serious problem."

Saturday's meeting brought Pelosi together with counterparts from Britain, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.

Links

• Dalai Lama Endorses Global Climate Strike
• Dalai Lama: Climate Change Is Destroying Tibet's 'Roof of the World'
• The Dalai Lama Says We Have an ‘Urgent Responsibility’ to Protect Wildlife and the Planet
• Dalai Lama Urges World to Act on Climate Change
• Dalai Lama: Combating Climate Change a Matter of ‘Survival of Humanity’
• Dalai Lama says climate change needs global action
• Dalai Lama says strong action on climate change is a human responsibility
• Dalai Lama’s message to global climate summit shows need for urgent action in Tibet

(AU) Australian Scientists Say Logging, Mining And Climate Advice Is Being Suppressed

The Guardian - Adam Morton

A third of government and industry-employed ecologists and conservation scientists had work unduly modified, study finds

Australian scientists have told the Ecological Society of Australia they are being prevented from speaking openly about their work. Photograph: Leisa Tyler/LightRocket via Getty Images

Australian scientists say they are prevented from speaking openly about their work and their advice is being suppressed by government and industry when it comes to the impact of logging, mining, land-clearing and the climate crisis, new research suggests.

A study by the Ecological Society of Australia, published in the journal Conservation Letters, surveyed 220 scientists across government, industry and academia on the extent to which their work had been suppressed.

Forms of suppression include not being able to present or publish results, changes being made to findings before the work is released and self-censorship due to fear of retribution.

The society found about a third of government and industry-employed ecologists and conservation scientists who responded said they had experienced undue modification of their work. About half the government scientists and nearly 40% of those working for industry said they had been blocked from releasing or discussing what they had found either publicly or internally where they worked.

Slightly more than half of all respondents (56%) said they felt the constraints on public commentary had become more severe in recent years.

This was most often the case in commentary about the plight of threatened species, with 56% of industry, 46% of government and 28% of university scientists working in the area reporting they felt limited in what they could say.

University and industry researchers were more likely to avoid public commentary due to fear of misrepresentation in the media, while government employees were most often constrained by their manager or workplace policy.

Don Driscoll, the lead author and a past president of the society, said the study showed that some of Australia’s best scientists were being prevented from sharing their work not only with the media and on social media platforms, but with colleagues and policymakers through peer-reviewed journals and at conferences.

He said the potential consequences were profound as it meant policies on issues such as climate change, bushfires and regulation of development proposals may not be informed by the best science.

“In reality, these findings may be the tip of the iceberg,” he told Guardian Australia. “It reflects on a type of corruption that’s going on in the system.”

Driscoll, who is also the director of the Centre for Integrative Ecology at Deakin University, said many industry-employed scientists were consultants hired to assess the environmental impact of proposed developments.

Those scientists were often left with no recourse if the work they did was modified before being presented to a government in a development application as their contracts prevented them speaking publicly.

Similarly, he said, scientists that worked within government departments and agencies faced an increasingly politicised system in which information was often filtered by public servants and ministerial staff before reaching politicians.

As the survey was opt-in it reflects only the experience of the sample who chose to take part, but the eight scientists behind the study said the respondents were an accurate reflection of the scientific workforce across age, gender and type of work.

Driscoll said the findings suggested a politicised culture in how science was dealt with and showed the power of vested interests, and highlighted the need for an independent watchdog such as a national Environment Protection Authority to assess development proposals and determine whether they should go ahead.

“It’s vital our environmental assessments are changed so that the people doing the damage are not employing the scientists doing the assessment of the damage to the environment,” he said.

Euan Ritchie, a Deakin University associate professor in wildlife ecology and co-author on the paper, described the study as “pretty clear evidence the democratic process, which is based on having an informed public, is being interfered with”.

He said it also showed that suppression of scientists’ work was having a heavy toll on their mental health. The paper includes anonymous quotes from respondents who said they had been threatened with losing their job if they spoke up after their advice was ignored, were intimidated by senior public servants on the phone and social media, and had quit their position due to stress and loss of motivation.

Ritchie said the stress of having work suppressed ran alongside a “baseline eco-anxiety and eco-grief” that many scientists experienced. “It’s a serious and insidious mental health issue that hasn’t been addressed properly,” he said.

The research was undertaken before an ongoing review of national environment laws by Graeme Samuel, the former head of the competition and consumer commission. In an interim report in July, Samuel found the laws were ineffective, the environment in decline, and advised the government to introduce an independent watchdog to ensure its protection.

Samuel also recommended the introduction of national environment standards to ensure conservation protection improved while the Morrison government handed greater development approval powers to the states and territories.

The government last week gagged debate while forcing legislation to start that process through the lower house of parliament. The proposed changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act did not include environmental standards as promised. The environment minister, Sussan Ley, said they would be introduced later.

Driscoll said the government decision to rule out an independent watchdog and introduce laws without including environmental standards was “a major mistake” and showed what could happen when MPs did not listen to scientific advice.

Links

• 'Recipe for extinction': why Australia's rush to change environment laws is sparking widespread concern
• Australia's environment laws: are they about to get even weaker?
• Letter by 240 leading scientists calls on Scott Morrison to stem extinction crisis
• Consequences of information suppression in ecological and conservation sciences
• Bob Brown launches legal challenge to native forest logging in Tasmania
• Australia's environmental protection laws should mention climate change, government told
• Bushfire devastation leaves almost 50 Australian native species at risk of becoming threatened
• Claims major projects are being delayed by environmental 'lawfare' dismissed in new research

China Is Rapidly Building A World-Beating Wind Energy Revolution

WIRED - Alex Christian

Despite a pandemic, China is busy building swathes of wind farms and will soon overtake the UK’s booming offshore industry

Paul Ellis / AFP / Getty Images

An army of sea giants is emerging along China’s coastline. Mysterious and magnificent, they rise up from the waves, limbs outstretched, gently whirring in the breeze. From north of Shanghai down to Hong Kong, across a thousand-mile stretch of water, hundreds of these otherworldly creations will one day be able to provide enough energy to power millions of homes and businesses.

With the pandemic and the climate crisis still raging, China has been steadily building up its wind warms over land and sea. Despite Covid-19 grinding much of the world to a halt, China’s drive to conquer the global renewable energy market continues apace: it’s constructing more offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world combined.

Since reaching the one-gigawatt milestone in 2017 (enough energy to power 100 million LED home light bulbs), progress has been rampant. China is now the world’s leader in new offshore wind installations. By 2030, it’s expected to reach a 52-gigawatt capacity. “Amid climate change, the big drive was the government wanting to develop a new industry, create jobs and economic growth while reducing coal production,” says Feng Zhao, strategy director at the Global Wind Energy Council.

And construction hasn’t always been focused on the South China Sea. On the fringes of the Gobi Desert, near the Mongolian border, where the winds howl through the sparsely populated lowlands, sits the Jiuquan Wind Power Base. Building started in 2009, but the largest wind farm on the planet remains unfinished. Some turbines have even been switched off due to low demand.

While the desert winds will forever blow a gale, the surrounding rural villages aren’t necessarily in need of that much turbine-produced electricity. Meanwhile, Beijing and China’s economic centre sits at least a 20-hour drive away. “The onshore wind resource is fantastic, but only a fraction of gigawatts has been installed,” Zhao explains. The government has tried to build transmission cables to cover the thousand-mile-plus distance, with limited success. “In some regions, more than 20 per cent of electricity produced by turbines has gone uncollected – that’s a huge waste.”

Hence the pivot to offshore wind in 2015. According to Zhao, alongside the humongous gigawatt numbers, the transition has been a success. “Offshore is easy to transmit, the wind along the east coast and the industrial cities is well populated, it’s easy for energy consumption. The economy there is larger, meaning there is more money to be made. And you don’t need to build long electricity cables.”

But despite the huge drive into offshore wind farming, the largest market isn’t China – it’s the UK. The UK, with 10.4 gigawatts of installed capacity, three more than Germany and China, still leads the way. Dale Vince, owner of green electricity company Ecotricity, brands Britain the “Saudi Arabia of wind energy.” It’s certainly draughty enough: our wind-battered isles receive 40 per cent of all of Europe’s gusts, with 20 per cent of the country’s entire electricity needs per year generated by wind. “It’s the leading source of renewable energy because it matured first – it’s been around much longer than solar power,” Vince explains. “And most people like it: wind energy is simple, clean and safe.”

From the late 1990s, under the early Blair government, turbines began cropping up all over the country – Vince’s first windmill was built in his native Cotswolds in 1996. But onshore wind farms were effectively banned by then prime minister David Cameron in 2016, when they were excluded from the government’s system of subsidies for low-carbon electricity. Politics, however, has helped create an offshore boom. “Its success has driven the price down incredibly – it’s nearly on a par with onshore,” Vince says. “It’s a madness given how difficult an environment it is to construct in, but the turbines have become so big and built on such a scale that there’s a proper economy of scale.”

There also tends to be less of a resistance to offshore wind farms. In Scotland, construction onshore has mostly continued undisrupted: without subsidies it’s still a cost-effective exercise thanks to an abundance of gale-force winds. But from the Shetlands down to the Highlands and Borders, residents are rallying against turbines in the surrounding countryside. Complaints range from their noise; to their impact on the local landscape and wildlife; to plummeting property prices, trapping them in homes no one will buy.

Aileen Jackson, of campaign group Scotland Against Spin, lives under the shadow of a wind farm in East Renfrewshire, on the outskirts of Glasgow. She explains that her home is surrounded on all sides from turbines up to 110 metres tall. “We used to have glorious, unspoilt countryside which is now full of constantly moving vertical structures. It’s not always the volume of noise which is disturbing, but its character: like aircraft constantly circling overhead.”

Others are campaigning against planned sites. “Shetland is facing becoming one of the largest industrial onshore wind farms in Europe, despite being one of the smallest communities,” argues local resident Christine Hughson. “It’s an industrial project in one of the remotest, wildest, undisturbed islands around. Building work has already decimated the land and has only just begun,” she argues. Building wind farms offshore sidesteps some of the challenges posed by reworking beloved rural landscapes.

In March the government announced that onshore wind farms can compete for clean power contracts from next year, paving the way for another onshore boom. Luke Clark, of RenewableUK, cites a recent independent opinion poll with only six per cent opposing onshore wind. He adds that the industry works closely with conservation groups, and that developers collaborate with local communities and planning authorities. “Wind farms bring massive economic benefits to local communities by attracting billion-pound investments and creating local jobs: 13,300 work in the UK's onshore industry.”

Despite some fervent opposition, a deadly pandemic and a global recession, the long blades of wind energy show no sign of slowing. If anything, it’s proven the industry’s robustness. As the world grappled with coronavirus, another two-and-a-half gigawatts of offshore wind power was installed in the first half of the year. Ten new farms went into operation too, across Europe, the US, the UK and China.

On-or-off-shore, China now boasts more than 135,000 turbines, generating more than 235 gigawatts of electricity per year. It’s also the world’s biggest exporter of solar panels. But wasn’t China meant to be the scourge of the climate crisis? The biggest producer of carbon emissions on the planet? Although coal-fired power plants remain the backbone of the Chinese economy, there are signs that they're slowly making way for renewables.

Zhao pinpoints the Communist Party’s 12th Five-Year plan, beginning in 2011, as a turning point. “There was a big effort to tackle climate change. As a local, I’ve read much criticism of the government. But without its support, there’d be no way of meeting renewable targets. What it’s doing is much better than Donald Trump.” He adds that China’s size and 1.4 billion-strong population means that a huge volume of renewable energy is being generated – albeit with plenty of carbon dioxide still being pumped into the atmosphere.

China is targeting half of all its energy to come from renewable sources by 2050 – the same year the UK aims to be carbon neutral. Wind will be core to either happening. “I like what China is doing,” Vince says. “There’s hypocrisy coming from the developed world about its power stations – we’ve been through that stage. You have to balance criticism of its coal habits with the rate at which it’s turned to renewables. Without China, we wouldn’t have the successful solar and renewables industry of today.”

By next year, China’s offshore wind sector is set to overtake the UK market. Where does that leave Britain’s wind energy industry? In a very good place, according to Zhao. “A European-only business will mean limited growth. If it goes to Asia, North America and even Africa, it grows the pie. Technology can be transferred, innovation spreads across the globe. It’s a big opportunity, and it’s good for the planet.”

Links

• Wikipedia: Climate change in China
• Wikipedia: Renewable energy in China
• Wikipedia: Wind power in China
• Plummeting Renewable Energy, Battery Prices Mean China Could Hit 62% Clean Power And Cut Costs 11% By 2030
• Wind and solar energy is steadily replacing coal
• Solar and offshore wind top 'reasons for optimism in grave year': IEA chief

Earth Barreling Toward 'Hothouse' State Not Seen In 50 Million Years, Epic New Climate Record Shows

Live Science - Brandon Specktor

Record goes back to the dinosaur extinction.

A climate map showing the last 66 million years of Earth's history. The next 300 could be unlike anything we've ever seen. (Image: © Westerhold et al., CENOGRID)

Sixty-six million years ago, after a massive asteroid hit Earth with the explosive energy of roughly 1 billion nuclear bombs, a shroud of ash, dust and vaporized rock covered the sky and slowly rained down on the planet. As plant and animal species died en masse, tiny undersea amoebas called forams continued to reproduce, building sturdy shells out of calcium and other deep-sea minerals, just as they had for hundreds of millions of years. When each foram inevitably died — pulverized into seabed sediment — they kept a little piece of Earth's ancient history alive in their fossilized shells.

For decades, scientists have studied those shells, finding clues about the ancient Earth's ocean temperatures, its carbon budget and the composition of minerals spilling through the air and seas. Now, in a new study published today (Sept. 10) in the journal Science, researchers have analyzed the chemical elements in thousands of foram samples to build the most detailed climate record of Earth ever — and it reveals just how dire our current climate situation is.

The new paper, which comprises decades of deep-ocean drilling missions into a single record, details Earth's climate swings across the entire Cenozoic era — the 66 million-year period that began with the death of the dinosaurs and extends to the present epoch of human-induced climate change. The results show how Earth transitioned through four distinct climate states — dubbed the Warmhouse, Hothouse, Coolhouse and Icehouse states — in response to changes in the planet's orbit, greenhouse gas levels and the extent of polar ice sheets.

The zig-zagging chart (shown above) ends with a sobering peak. According to the researchers, the current pace of anthropogenic global warming far exceeds the natural climate fluctuations seen at any other point in the Cenozoic era, and has the potential to hyper-drive our planet out of a long icehouse phase into a searing hothouse state.

"Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural climate variability, we can see that the projected anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that," study co-author James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections for 2300 in the 'business-as-usual' scenario will potentially bring global temperature to a level the planet has not seen in 50 million years." (The IPCC is a United Nations group that assesses the science, risks and impacts of climate change on the planet.)

The JOIDES Resolution Drillship gathered ocean sediment cores for the new study. (Image credit: Adam Kurtz)

Into the hothouse

To compile their new era-long climate map, the study authors examined fossil foram shells in deep-sea sediment cores — long tubes of rock, sediment and microbes — drilled from the world's oceans over the past several decades. Forams (short for foraminifera) are microscopic plankton whose oldest relatives appeared in the ocean close to a billion years ago; the deeper scientists dig into the seabed, the older the foram specimens they uncover.

The ratios of carbon and oxygen isotopes (versions of elements) in foram shells hold critical climate information. The ratio between the oxygen isotopes oxygen-18 and oxygen-16, for example, can reveal how warm the surrounding water was when a foram constructed its shell; the higher the ratio, the colder the water. The ratio between carbon-13 and carbon-12 shows how much organic carbon was available for the microbes to eat; here, a higher ratio correlates with more greenhouse gases (like carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere.

Because the team's climate record covers such an incredibly long time period, the researchers also had to consider astronomic impacts on the planet's climate — that is, how Earth's slowly changing orbit and tilt toward the sun impact the amount of sunlight reaching different parts of the planet at different times, also known as Milankovitch cycles. When the team overlaid orbital data with their isotopic climate data, they saw that orbital variations created distinct but relatively small-scale changes to the global climate. Crucially, each big jump between climate states was tied to a massive shift in greenhouse gas levels, the researchers said.

A climate map showing the last 66 million years of Earth's history (and the next 300). (Image credit: Westerhold et al., CENOGRID)

For example, about 10 million years after the dinosaur extinction, Earth jumped from a warmhouse state to a hothouse state. This event, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, saw temperatures up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above modern levels, Zachos said, and was driven by a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere, thought to be the result of huge volcanic eruptions in the North Atlantic. Similarly, as carbon dioxide disappeared from the atmosphere over the next 20 million years, ice sheets started to form in Antarctica and the planet entered a coolhouse phase, with surface temperatures averaging about 40 F (4 C) above modern levels.

About 3 million years ago, Earth entered an icehouse phase, driven by waxing and waning ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. Now, human greenhouse gas emissions are causing temperatures to rise to an extent not seen in tens of millions of years. This rise is well beyond the natural variations triggered by Earth's changing orbit, the researchers concluded. And if current greenhouse emissions hold steady, the climate could skyrocket back to levels not seen since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. The transition from icehouse to hothouse won't take millions of years, Zachos said — it will take hundreds.

"We now know more accurately when it was warmer or colder on the planet and have a better understanding of the underlying dynamics and the processes that drive them," lead study author Thomas Westerhold, Director of the University of Bremen Center for Marine Environmental Sciences in Germany, said in the statement. "The time from 66 [million] to 34 million years ago, when the planet was significantly warmer than it is today, is of particular interest, as it represents a parallel in the past to what future anthropogenic change could lead to."

Links

• 10 Signs Earth's climate is off the rails
• 10 ways the Earth changed forever in 2019
• Images of melt: Earth's vanishing ice
• The reality of climate change: 10 myths busted
• Top 10 ways to destroy Earth
• An astronomically dated record of Earth’s climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years
• Cenozoic Era: Facts About Climate, Animals & Plants
• High-fidelity record of Earth's climate history puts current changes in context
• The Planet Is Dangerously Close to the Tipping Point for a 'Hothouse Earth'
• Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles and Their Role in Earth's Climate