Fires, Severe Drought and 40,000 Record High Temperatures in 2012

July 27th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Fires, Severe Drought and 40,000 Record High Temperatures
in 2012 – A New Normal in Global Warming?

“Clearly the Earth’s climate is warming up and these anonymously
high temperatures – these really bad heat waves – are
making the droughts much worse.”

– Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Inst. of the Environment, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

Friday, July 20, 2012, Albuquerque Journal.

NOAA U. S. Drought Monitor as of July 17, 2012.

July 26, 2012 Tucson, Arizona – In only the last six months since January 1st this year, the United States has set more than 40,000 high temperature records, but only 6,000 low temperature records. At the beginning of May, two massive wildfires burned in far West Texas.

NOAA records now show that in the month of June 2012, wildfires burned in fourteen states: Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Central Alaska and Hawaii.

Colorado was challenged by five significant wildfires that ended up burning at the same time: the High Park Fire northwest of Fort Collins; the Woodland Heights Fire in Estes Park; the Weber Fire and Little Sand Fire near Durango; and the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs that destroyed more than 600 homes and the estimated fire damage cost there was $353 million, while the High Park near Fort Collins caused $97 million in damages to be filed for a total of nearly half a billion dollars in Colorado alone for the month of June 2012.

NASA Aqua satellite image of five significant wildfires burning across Colorado,
on June 23, 2012. Image courtesy NASA.

This aerial photo shows the destructive path of the Waldo Canyon fire in the Mountain
Shadows subdivision area of Colorado Springs, Colorado, Thursday, June 28, 2012.
Colorado Springs officials confirmed that more than 600 homes were destroyed
by the raging wildfire. Aerial © 2012 by RJ Sangosti/AP/Denver Post.

Now in the last week of July 2012, three wildfires are burning in north-central Nebraska where some residents have been evacuated and the Niobrara River was closed to boating downstream of Smith Falls State Park.

Rows of drought-damaged corn stalks south of Blair, Nebraska, on July 23, 2012,
were cut down for silage. Image © 2012 by Nati Harnik AP.

In Europe, wildfires since Sunday, July 22, have killed at least four people and injured 23 others in the northern and injured people in Spain’s northeast region of Catalonia.

The wildfires that broke out, on Sunday, near the city of Girona in the northern part of the Spanish region of Catalonia, have claimed at least four lives and injured 23 others.

Now come headlines that the “Mighty Mississippi” River is near record low water levels and barge traffic between Cairo, Illinois and Natchez, Mississippi, has cut way down. Two thirds of the contiguous United States is now in moderate to severe drought – second only to the summer of 1934 at the height of the Dust Bowl era. Many livestock farmers have already started selling off cattle because they have no hay or grass for grazing. And nearly half of the nation’s corn crop has been destroyed for lack of water. So now grain prices for corn and soybeans are at record highs, which means food prices will go higher.

CNN MoneyInvest, July 20, 2012, by Hibah Yousuf.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has been trying to get Congress to act on a farm bill that would reinstate expired disaster assistance programs for farmers experiencing the worst drought in 80 years. But House Republican leaders have not scheduled a vote.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says nearly every state will likely have hotter than normal temperatures through October 2012. Now the ground is so dry in so much of the United States there is not enough moisture to evaporate into the atmosphere to cause the rainfall that everyone needs.

Recently I asked the Co-Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona in Tucson if the high temperatures, drought and wildfires could be a new normal for the rest of the 21st Century as global warming persists. He is Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Professor in Atmospheric Sciences and Geosciences.

Interview:

Play MP3 interview.

Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Co-Director, Institute of the Environment and Prof. in Departments of Atmospheric Sciences and Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona: “Heat waves are getting hotter and longer and the forest fires are getting bigger and more severe. And there seems to be little doubt that the warming Earth caused by greenhouse gas pollution, primarily from fossil fuel burning – it’s warming the Earth and that extra warmth is making the heat waves worse and it’s making the wildfires worse and it’s making droughts we are experiencing worse.

Starting in 2010 and culminating last summer in 2011, it really gripped Texas and Oklahoma and New Mexico in the worst drought on record.

THAT GOES BACK HOW FAR?

Record taking began mostly back in the 19th Century, so the late 1800s. This drought is not only one of the driest, it’s been one of the hottest – probably the hottest – and it’s that extra heat demand for moisture by the atmosphere sucking it out of vegetation, sucking moisture out of the soils, sucking the moisture out of lakes and reservoirs. That’s what is giving the perception that this drought is so bad.

It’s interesting during this current drought we’ve been breaking the temperature records that were set during the last Dust Bowl.

40,000 High Temperature Records Set in 2012

“For the year-to-date, there have been 40,113 warm temperature records
set or tied, compared to just 5,835 cold records. (These figures, compiled by the
National Climatic Data Center, are preliminary.) In other words, the warm
temperature records have been outnumbering cold records by about 7-to-1.
In a long-term trend that demonstrates the effects of a warming climate,
daily record-high temperatures have recently been outpacing daily
record-lows by an average of 2-to-1, and this imbalance is expected
to grow as the climate continues to warm.”

– Inside Climate News, July 2, 2012

THERE HAVE BEEN HEADLINES THAT SINCE JANUARY 1, 2012, THE UNITED STATES HAS BROKEN MORE THAN 40,000 HIGH TEMPERATURE RECORDS. COULD YOU COMMENT ON THE QUESTION: HOW BAD IS GLOBAL WARMING’S IMPACT ON DROUGHT NOW AND HOW MUCH WORSE CAN IT GET IN THE FUTURE?

Well, a really good way to look at global warming is to look at what it has done to warm temperature records. And if you didn’t have a warming Earth, then you would have the same number of new cold records as you would warm records in any given year on average. Well, what we’ve been seeing for quite some time now is more and more hot records relative to cold records. And the last two years have really been screaming in terms of how many more hot records we’ve had than cold records.

Clearly the Earth’s climate is warming up and these anonymously high temperatures – these really bad heat waves – are making the droughts much worse. So a drought obviously is where you don’t get enough rain or snow. But if you have hotter temperatures, the effects of that drought – the way it feels to plants, people, animals is a lot worse. Global warming is making droughts worldwide as well as in the United States more severe. And of course, there will be bigger economic impacts.

DOES THIS MEAN THAT WE’RE GOING TO SEE MORE INCREASING FIRES AND DROUGHTS – THAT IT’S NOT GOING TO LET UP – THAT IT WILL JUST CONTINUE INTENSIFYING?

Yes, and I’ve said this is what global warming looks like and it’s what global warming will continue to look like, only worse and worse because the one thing that is clear is that the Earth is warming up. We see it the thermometers. We see it in many natural archives such as the glaciers and the ocean. That is going to make droughts worse in the future and it’s going to make the conditions for wildfires – particularly the really big, bad wildfires more common and we’re going to see major transformations of our landscapes, just as we’re going to see some really heart-wrenching hot drought in the future.

SO WHAT IS THE WORST CASE?

There’s a lot of debate about what the worst case scenarios for the future. It depends a lot on how much more greenhouse gas emissions we release to the atmosphere; how much more fossil fuel do we burn? The more fossil fuel we burn – the coal and oil and the gas – the hotter it’s going to get and the worst case will be.

So, it’s really up to humans to decide what the worst case is, but in my own estimation, knowing that we can’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately and magically – that it’s going to take years to do that – I think we’re going to see much more severe drought and wildfire in the coming decades. Hopefully, we will decide that we don’t want to have this getting worse and worse for centuries.

Fossil Fuels Vs. Alternative Energies

BUT ISN’T ONE OF THE BIG COMPLICATING FACTORS THAT THIS IS A PLANET THAT CANNOT SUSTAIN ALL OF ITS ENERGY DEMANDS GLOBALLY NOW WITH DEPENDENCE UPON FOSSIL FUELS. HOW DO YOU GET PASSED THIS CRUNCH POINT WHERE WE NEED SOME KIND OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY, BUT IT ISN’T CLEAR WHAT THAT COULD BE.

The first thing to realize is that we’re not running out of coal. Coal is still relatively cheap and natural gas now is cheaper than coal. And we have a decades-long supply of natural gas. So on one hand, we have a choice to stick with the fossil fuels. We will end up paying more money and we will also end up paying greater costs associated with things like air pollution and the health problems that air pollution causes – as well as the effects of global warming. I believe we are almost at a break point on solar in terms of it being competitive with fossil fuels. And I believe we have already passed the point where wind energy is competitive. But the problem is that the fossil fuel industry is heavily subsidized and as long as that continues, there is a lot of political might behind the fossil fuel industry. While that continues, it’s going to be harder for nations of the world to wean themselves of this very costly energy source.

Things are changing slowly. I mentioned that the cost of solar is plummeting. The U. S. is reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 7% in just the last couple of years. That’s not just because of the recession. That’s because we are getting more fuel-efficient cars. That’s because we are moving more to solar and wind. Those are promising signs. But there is a huge corporate interest on the part of coal and oil companies to maintain the status quo and burn fossil fuels. They are very rich companies and they can probably exert a lot of political influence, so that will slow down any transformation.

DO YOU THINK THERE IS ANY REALISTIC ALTERNATIVE IN HYDROGEN, THINKING OF HYDRIDES AND FUEL CELLS?

One of the big problems with renewable energy is storage because you don’t have the sun shining 24/7 and you don’t have wind blowing 24/7. So you need some ways to store energy and right now, the scientific community and the engineers of our country around the world are working on ways to store energy and one of the ways that is promising is hydrogen and fuel cells.

DO YOU THINK IT’S DECADES? OR A CENTURY? OR?

I think we’re probably getting close on fuel cells and certainly other storage technologies, too, so that in just a matter of years we will have viable alternatives. And if you look at just batteries and how far batteries have come in the last decade – batteries, for example, that are in our hybrid and electric vehicles. The speed of innovation in these areas is remarkable.

Energy Transformation in 21st Century

SO DO YOU THINK WE HAVE 25 YEARS OF REALLY HARSH CLIMATE CHANGE – FIRES, DROUGHT, FLOODS – BEFORE WE GET ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS CRISIS?

There are two things that I really worry about – one is how long it will take a global society to turn this giant supertanker of energy transformation? That just always takes decades. And at the same time, you have to realize that while we are transforming our economy to a more carbon free, cleaner energy source or sources, climate change will continue to get worse. So we’ll see worse droughts. We’ll see worse heat waves. We’ll see worse wildfires during this transformation.

Then once we’ve made that transformation, the climate that we have at that point is the climate we’ll have for centuries to come because the carbon dioxide we’re putting in the atmosphere stays in the atmosphere – some of it – for centuries. And the ocean, which is absorbing most of the heat – over 90% of the heat of global warming is going to the oceans – that heat will come back out into the atmosphere. So combined, we will maintain this new climate, this new normal, for centuries. And that new normal will include these really dramatic hot heat waves, these hotter droughts, and if there is anything left to burn, these really bad wildfires.

RIGHT, AND WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THE BALANCE OF CHEMISTRY IN THE ATMOSPHERE IF WE LOSE THE AMAZON FOREST AND MILLIONS OF TREES AROUND THE PLANET THAT ARE ALREADY DYING OUT AS WARMER TEMPERATURES ARE ALLOWING INSECTS TO TAKE THEM OVER?

What we think is going to happen – and the Amazon is just part of this just as the widespread wildfires and forest deaths due to insect outbreaks are part of this – is that the Earth’s biota, primarily the vegetation on land, but also living organisms in the ocean – they are going to be less and less able to absorb CO2 as the Earth warms. And this means that the speed of warming will accelerate.

The other thing that is likely to happen is that some of the carbon that is locked up, say in permafrost and in Arctic ocean sediments, as the ocean and atmosphere warm that carbon could start being released to the atmosphere, both in the form of methane and carbon dioxide and that also will act to accelerate the warming. And there is a lot of uncertainty about when that acceleration will really kick in and how bad that acceleration will really be. But it is like trying to play with a gun not really sure how it works, except that it’s loaded. It’s a dangerous proposition.

SEEMS LIKE I HAVE BEEN COVERING THIS FOR SO LONG AND THAT I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO UNDERSTAND WHY POLITICS INTERFERES WITH LIFE SURVIVAL?

Right. Well, it all comes down to money probably. A lot of people are making very serious profits with coal and oil and they don’t want that to change.”

Persistent Heat Problems for Highways
and Power Grid

The New York Times reported on July 25, 2012, that in the summer of 2012, there have been reports of a US Airways regional jet becoming stuck in asphalt that softened on a 100-degree F. day and a subway train derailed “after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked — inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight.”

Clay-rich soils under highways in East Texas are shrinking so much that the roads become seriously cracked. In northeastern and midwestern states, high heat is causing highway sections to expand, press against each other and rise up causing speed-bump-type hazards for travelers. Up in Alaska and the Yukon, permafrost melts under roads causing huge cracks or sink holes so large that traffic is stopped.

Cracking on the shoulder of the road north of Burwash
Landing, Yukon. Image by Alaska Transportation Dept.

The NYT also reports that, “In the Chicago area, a twin-unit nuclear plant had to get special permission to keep operating this month because the pond it uses for cooling water rose to 102 degrees; its license to operate allows it to go only to 100. According to the Midwest Independent System Operator, the grid operator for the region, a different power plant had to shut because the body of water from which it draws its cooling water had dropped so low that the intake pipe became high and dry; another had to cut back generation because cooling water was too warm.”

“We’ve got the ‘storm of the century’ every year now”

If extreme weather events along with persistent heat, drought and fires is the new normal in a warming planet, then infrastructure problems will become chronic, stressing limited city, state and federal budgets. Bill Gausman, Senior Vice President of the Potomac Electric Power Company, told NYT, “We’ve got the ‘storm of the century’ every year now.” Yet, city planners complain that the federal government is “not acknowledging that the future will look different from the past and so we keep putting people and infrastructure in harm’s way.”

More Information:

For further reports about global warming and drought, please see Earthfiles archived reports from the Earthfiles Archive.

• 05/24/2012 — Trees Are Dying All Over the World – Including 4,000-Year-Old Bristlecones. What Can Revive Them?
• 12/05/2009 — Last Time Earth Without Ice: 55 Million Years Ago
• 10/24/2008 — Rapidly Changing Earth
• 04/18/2008 — Grain Shortages, Rising World Food Prices – and Ethanol Backfires?
• 03/27/2008 — Ice Block Size of Northern Ireland Has Broken From Wilkins Ice Shelf in West Antarctic Peninsula
• 08/08/2007 — 2007’s Warm, Erratic Global Weather
• 07/11/2007 — Mystery of Night Shining Clouds – Another Global Warming Change?
• 06/21/2007 — Large Lake in Southern Chile Has Disappeared
• 06/01/2007 — Is Earth Close to Dangerous Tipping Point in Global Warming?
• 05/18/2007 — Antarctica: Unprecedented Western Ice Melt and CO2-Saturated Southern Ocean
• 02/02/2007 — Updated: New U. N. Global Climate Change Report: Earth Could Warm Up 3.2 to 11.52 Degrees Fahrenheit by 2100
• 01/10/2007 — 2006: USA’s Warmest Year On Record
• 12/07/2006 — Earth Headed for Warmest Period in 55 Million Years?
• 11/09/2006 — Outer Space Sunshade to Cool Earth in Global Warming?
• 09/09/2006 — Methane – Another Threat in Global Warming
• 07/18/2006 — 2006 – Hottest Year So Far in U. S. History
• 06/24/2006 — “High Confidence” Earth Is Warmest in 400 Years – Maybe Even 2,000 Years
• 03/17/2006 — Planet Earth’s Ice Melt
• 09/29/2005 — 2005 Arctic Summer Ice Melt – Largest On Record
• 09/23/2005 — Phenomenon of “Instant” Hurricanes in 2005
• 08/18/2005 — Unusual Summer Swarm of Arkansas Copperheads
• 08/05/2005 — Scientists Puzzled by “Bizarre” Pacific Coast Die-offs in 2005
• 02/03/2005 — Kyoto Protocol Goes Into Effect February 16, 2005. British Scientists Warn Global Temperatures Could Climb Higher Than Earlier Estimates.
• 12/31/2004 — Abrupt Climate Change Occurred Worldwide 5,200 Years Ago
• 07/22/2004 — What Is Happening to Birds? Updated With Viewer Reports
• 02/27/2004 — Abrupt Climate Change: Scenario from A Pentagon-Commissioned Report
• 11/08/2002 — El Nino Weather 2002-2003
• 10/21/2002 — Mt. Kilimanjaro’s Ice Cap Is Melting Fast
• 08/27/2002 — August 2002: Severe to Moderate Drought in 37 States
• 06/04/2002 — EPA Admits Humans Burning Fossil Fuels A Big Factor in Global Warming
• 03/30/2002 — Drought Worsens in United States
• 03/21/2002 — Antarctic Peninsula Is Melting – And So Is Arctic Ice
• 03/09/2002 — El Nino 2002 Update
• 02/13/2002 — January 2002 Warmest On Record For Whole World
• 01/05/2002 — Global Warming Update – Could Increasing Carbon Dioxide Gas Be Transformed Into Limestone?
• 12/22/2001 — Scientists Warn That Climate and Earth Life Can Change Rapidly
• 12/01/2001 — 1200 B. C. – What Caused Earthquake Storms, Global Drought and End of Bronze Age?
• 04/18/2001 — April Environmental Updates
• 02/25/2001 — Environmental Updates
• 02/18/2001 — Environmental Updates and Mysterious Deaths of 2000 Atlantic Brant Geese
• 01/28/2001 — U. N. Global Warming Forecast: Up to 10.5 Degrees F. Hotter At End of 21st Century
• 06/17/2000 — Spring 2000 – Hottest On Record in U. S.
• 05/07/2000 — Serious Drought in the Great Lakes
• 01/13/2000 — Computer Projections About Earth Weather 2000-2100
• 07/25/1999 — Maryland Fish Kills; Global Warming; and Warm Oceans and Disease
• 07/21/1999 — Warm Oceans and Disease: A Link
• 06/04/1999 — Global Warming Linked to Increasingly Warmer and Wetter Winters in Europe Western North America