ScienceClimateAndEnergy.com

Russian Wildfires Emblematic of Broader Problem

August 11, 2010

Wildfire increases are a big potential climate change problem.  And rampant ones over parts of Russia, as the map below illustrates, have now lead to unhealthy levels of Carbon Monoxide over huge swaths of Russia — and for extended periods of time.

(map courtesy of NASA)

Huge amounts of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China, as shown by the map above  (covering a chunk of earth dwarfing the U.S. in size), currently have over 200 parts per billion CO concentration, which is still below, for example the U.S.’s maximum exposure concentration of 9 parts per million over any eight hour period (“not,” according to the EPA, “to be exceeded more than once per year”); but these concentrations have been for days on end. And in some city locations, particularly Moscow, levels have been excessive; five times higher than acceptable levels, according to Moscow’s environmental protection agency.

Wildfires are an associated risk of climate change, as Moscow is currently experiencing its worst heat wave in 130 years, and has broken its all time temperature record. (Not to worry though, these — along with all the other compelling increases in both the overall number of temperature record highs being set, as well as the increasing number of heat wave and extended precipitation records — are all just completely coincidental “natural environmental cycles.”  Don’t think so? Just ask one of the country’s leading scientists and geophysicist/climatological and ecological experts, former half term Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, and her official promoter of misinformation as “fair and balanced,” the Washington Post.)

What is also interesting about the Russian wildfires is that they are in part peat bog fires. And, frozen in the Russian peat bogs, which all together cover roughly 600,000 square kilometers (about 230,000 square miles, an area just under the size of Texas), lies massive amounts of methane; a gas which, averaged out over a hundred year period, traps approximately 23x more heat than carbon dioxide (and, over a shorter period, much more than that.)

As Russia warms, those long frozen bogs start to unfreeze. And in the process, the methane trapped there, is no longer trapped, but released into the atmosphere.

It’s getting cooler, and more disinformation posing as science

The last post on here brought up the issue of rampant climate change disinformation, posing as science.

Below are some links to a website filled with both advanced facts, and many more basic, erroneous assertions posed as fact; one that also starts off, rather ludicrously, by asserting that any temperature increase limits as a result of doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels can not only be credibly predicted, but can be assured. (Even more hilariously, to a 1.76 degree temperature rise, Celsius, plus or minus .27 degrees. )

This blog’s editor wrote the author:

Making such an artificially precise, and bounded statement is like claiming the long term price of Intel stock is bounded by an increase in the range of 1.8 to 3.1 dollars, then supporting it with pages of mathematical formulations, based upon “well accepted facts,” with so many underlying assumptions inherently tied in to (that is, thus, multiplied by) so many others as to render the statistical probabilities of your speculations — rather than being in the realm of [certainty] as you manage to convince your readers –in the realm of perhaps one out of trillions.

It’s not the greatest of analogies or explanations, but it will do for now. ( Any responses back will be duly noted.)

The next sentence of the website’s fantastic opening paragraph, is as follows:

Even though global warming has become mostly an academic concern now that the climate has moved into a cooling phase, it’s still important to understand what is and is not factual about the climate.

It then goes on to list many things as factual, which are not only not “factual,” but which are flat out wrong.

But the author’s intense biases are easily apparent from the above sentence in the opening paragraph.  To wit; “Global warming has become mostly an academic concern now that the climate has moved into a cooling phase.”

If there is one take home line from the past ten to twenty years of atmospheric alteration revelation and understanding, to put into a capsule and share with other civilizations who wish to understand the roots of our most profound, biased ignorances posing capably as advanced mathematics, logic and reasoning, that line is due for consideration therein.

This blog, and others, as well as numerous books, examine the basic reasons why it’s not an “academic” concern, and (again, here is a classic example, along with the twisted monstrosity that follows this assertion that climate change is “mostly an academic concern now that the earth has moved into a cooling phase”) how disinformation and ideologically motivated rather than disinterested reasoning has greatly skewed and misinformed the discussion.

But whether the earth, from a geologic perspective, is momentarily cooler or warmer (depending upon degree), is far less relevant to the issue than the long term trends, and, even more so, than the underlying physics.  But while that website author cites advanced climate knowledge (occasionally, even correctly) and even more advanced calculus and mathematics, this most basic of points is nevertheless, of course, not only flat out ignored, but its opposite — that recent weather patterns are the basis for concern over the issue — are falsely, if implicitly, asserted.

Aside from this rhetorical manipulation of the issue, for the benefit of attempting to subvert reasoned analysis on it, consider the issue itself. Now that the earth has entered a “cooling phase:”

The decade which just ended with December, 2009, was the hottest on record. The last year we have experienced, which ended with December, 2009, was the second  hottest on record.  And the current year, 2010, is on pace at least to become the warmest on record. And the past 12 month period, is the warmest on record.

That is some sensational cooling, so as to render concerns over climate change “mostly academic.”

Maybe this is an omen of what it will be like when, instead of having entered a “cooling” phase, we actually enter a real warming one.