Australia Wildfires Really Are A Global Big Deal

Firefighters in a losing battle with the Australian bushfires.

I know that for the past couple months, I keep returning to the extreme wildfires in Australia, which incredibly, keep getting worse and worse.

In fact, there's a lot of media reports and weather forecasts that indicate Australia will have the worst part of the crisis yet by Saturday, as a combination of near record heat, continued drought and erratic winds will stir up the giant fires even more. 

Mass evacuations continue amid a rising death toll, widespread destruction, and a section of Australia burned that is at least as big as Belgium. Dramatic videos are at the bottom of this post.

The real reason I keep bringing the fires up is the obvious situation that this is a huge new story.  It also is, if you'll forgive my oxymoron, a microcosm of the global climate crisis writ large

Yes, yes, I know the bushfire crisis in Australia is not 100 percent caused by climate change, as some of the more strident activists would have it.

Wildfires have always happened in Australia,  pretty much every summer. This year, a  natural cycle that has brought drought to Australia, which has exacerbated the  fire situation.  On top of that, more and more people have moved to the so-called urban-wildland interface, which has made for an increasing number of potential human fire victims.

Apocalyptic scene of a mother taking her two sons
(under the blankets) out in a boat on a lake to
escape the Australian bushfires. Photo by
Allison Marion.

But there's no question that climate change has tipped the scale to make what would have been a terrible fire season absolutely catastrophic. It you make a climate a little drier, a little hotter and a little windier, in this case through climate change, you get something like the current Australian cataclysm.

We've seen this type of thing all over the world, although Australia is among the most devastating examples. I suspect the terrible wildfires in California in 2017 and 2018 were made much worse by climate change.

On the opposite extreme, epic floods, like the Hurricane Harvey inundation of Houston and much of the rest of East Texas back in 2017, likely would not have been as bad if climate change had been absent.

Australia's current summer of fire also highlights the current state of climate denial among the world's so-called leaders.

The escalation in "natural" disasters - ones that might have happened anyway but in recent years were made worse by climate change - coincides with a global rise in right wing populist "leaders."

For some reason, some, but not all of these right wingers, like Donald Trump in the United States, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, and yes, Australia's Scott Morrison, are strident climate deniers, or at least, they don't give a damn about it.

Trump, Bolsonaro and Morrison have all labeled climate change as "fake news."

Bolsonaro went as far to falsely accuse climate activists, including Leonardo DiCaprio, of setting or  having people set Amazon forest fires last year to boost their political agenda  While Morrison has certainly not copied Bolsonaro, his poltical supporters have.

I notice on Twitter, where fake news really thrives, a lot of climate deniers have retweeted patently false "news" that 200 climate activists started the Australian fires to advance their agenda.

Australians awaiting rescue from a seaside beach as bushfires
close in on them.

As always these awful deniers take something that has a grain of truth and then totally falsify what's really going on.  It's true that a lot of the Australian fires were set by humans, either accidentally or on purpose. 

These obviously weren't climate activists setting this blazes. It was stupid people doing some outdoor burning despite all advice against it, or pyromaniacs who get their jollies out of inflicting immense pain and suffering by starting wildfires.

Australia's Morrison acknowledges the existence of climate change, but says the current conflagration isn't caused by it.  And he supports and encourages the nation's coal industry, and resists calls to downsize that industry.

So, the fires continue. The death toll will mount, more destruction will happen, and then when the fires are out, or more likely before then, we'll move on to our next climate-related disaster.

Some videos:

Here a firetruck is overrun by the fire front in New South Wales. Firefighters in the video try desperately to get under blankets to protect themselves from the intense heat. Happy spoiler: They survived



A woman attached a GoPro to her forehead as she battled to save her home from the fires:



This is Mallacoota, as residents were forced to flee to the beach, a risk of having to dive into the ocean to escape the flames. The blood red sky and the darkness in the video were taken during the day, a testimony to how scary and intense this crisis was and is:



Here's some aerial views to give you just a little taste of how extensive these wildfires are:



To give you an idea of how serious this is, Australian media have begun calling this, accurately, a humanitarian crisis. That's the kind of phrase you hear when a Third World country is having a catastrophe, not an advanced nation like Australia. Here's the video that shows this:

Quick Thursday Update: Maria, Jose, Heat, Storms, Snow. Kitchen Sink, Too?

These palm trees in Puerto Rico were reduced to
sticks by Hurricane Maria

Hurricane Maria was sideswiping the Dominican Republic this morning, hitting it pretty hard with dangerous winds, flooding rains and storm surges.  

Hey, it trashed a bunch of islands already, I guess the hurricane figures it will keep destroying things.

As expected, Puerto Rico is hurting bad. The entire island has no electricity, and it could take up to six months to get it back. Which sounds daunting, depressing and quite possibly deadly.

Imagine trying to run hospitals, emergency services, entire societies with electricity in the 21st century. Oh sure, there will be generators, and electricity will slowly come back on line, but still. It's almost like going back to the stone age.

Especially since so many houses, businesses and other buildings are destroyed. Here's a glimpse of how horrible it was, as related by one witness, as relayed by the Weather Channel and the Miami Herald:

"'What I'm seeing is incredible,' retiree Rosita Galguerra, 66, who was riding out the storm with her husband in the Rio Piedras neighborhood of San Juan, told the Miami Herald. 'The house is trembling - and my house is made of concrete with a concrete roof. The winds are like out of a horror movie and its gusts, gusts, gusts. The island is going to be completely destroyed.'"

I suppose the only bit of good news right now is that most computer forecasting models are still insisting that Maria will stay offshore of the East Coast of the United States. Maria will still produce high tides, dangerous rip currents and such for the next several days, but that's certainly better than a direct hit.

Meanwhile, weird Tropical Storm Jose is still sitting and spinning and slowly winding down southeast of New England. It's track has had a seemingly endless history of stalls, loops and weird turns. That's continuing. Forecasters expect Jose will basically sit in the same spot out there at least through Sunday.

This is just making the weather miserable on Cape Cod and the Islands. The wind has been gusting past 40 mph continuously since just after noon Wednesday on Martha's Vineyard.

Elsewhere, we're still expecting record heat in northern New England - including Vermont, and southeastern Canada this weekend. Here in Vermont, weekend daytime highs are expected to reach the upper 80s, compared to the normal temperatures in the mid to upper 60s this time of year. Burlington has already had six consecutive days with highs in the 80s.

Further west, a stripe in the middle of the country can expect some flooding rains over the weekend due to a stalled weather front. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where the flooding might happen, but some areas could get a half foot of rain in the northern Plains.

And it's still snowing in the Rockies.

It's going to be one of those weekends when the weather is totally off the rails.

This video from CBS Miami is as good as any to show you the totality of the destruction from Maria in Puerto Rico and other islands:

Harvey's Misery Keeps On Spreading, Keeps On Getting Worse

An exhausted woman tries to sleep as floodwaters
rise around her in a Port Arthur evacuation center.

The news about the Harvey flooding in Texas and Louisiana continues to be pretty much all bad, and it's spreading to new areas, and the news is hitting new depths.

The latest cities to fall under the worst of Harvey's viciousness are Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas.

As of early this morning, water had poured into an evacuation center in Port Arthur, and hundreds of people retreated to bleachers above the floor awaiting rescue. And that's going to take awhile.

Nobody can get into Port Arthur to help. They want to take the hundreds of people stranded in the evacuation center to another one that's above water five miles south of town, says the Weather Channel.

However, that second evacuation center has no supplies yet. And it's going to be hard to move people and supplies there until the water goes down.

Overnight, Twitter and Facebook were filled with pleas from Port Arthur residents begging to be rescued from flooded homes. The people crying for help included the elderly, children and pregnant women.

Port Arthur received 26 inches of rain in 24 hours, more than double the old record for the city. The storm total there is up past 42 inches.

The whole city is under water. Several houses are on fire, apparently sparked by electrical shorts in the flooding. Nobody can get to the burning houses, so they will burn down completely to the water line.

The world's largest oil refinery in Port Arthur is at least partially shut down. Many other refineries and chemical plants are also down across the western Gulf of Mexico.

With 12 percent of the nation's refining capacity off line due to Harvey, expect fuel shortages and spiraling gas prices nationwide. 

Between the higher gas prices we're all going to pay, and such a broad area of the nation's economy centered around Houston, I wouldn't be surprised if United States economic growth temporarily stalls due to Harvey.

You can see a time lapse of the flooding in Houston at the bottom of this post.

This is not a storm-tossed lake. It is the middle of Interstate 10
just west of Beaumont, Texas.

The misery is going to keep spreading. Flash flooding from Harvey, now finally inland, could extend as far north as southern Ohio in the coming days. The lower Missisissippi River all the way through western Tennessee is especially under the gun.

Harvey has produced the heaviest rainfall in continental U.S. history.

A weather station near Cedar Bayou, Texas recorded 51.88 inches of rain in the storm beating the old record of 48 inches for the continental United States. I'm still guessing we'll see localized totals topping 50 inches.

The death toll from Harvey is uncertain, as it's still hard to get to flooded areas for inspections. It does  appear that so far at least two dozen people have died, including a Houston Police officer caught in flood waters on his way to work during the emergency.

I'm going to have a lot more to say about Harvey in the coming days, including what people do once the water recedes.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Irma has just formed far out over the eastern Atlantic.  It will will likely turn into another hurricane and is heading west. And there's a chance, just a chance, this would-be hurricane could end up in the Gulf of Mexico in less than two weeks.

I'll also wade into the question of whether climate change had anything to do with Harvey's destruction. Some people are saying we shouldn't talk about that while we are still trying to rescue people and recover from the damage.

But the nation can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can help all those people affected by Harvey, and we can also look at the science of Harvey so we can learn and prepare for the inevitable  next time.  

Typhoon Update: Philippines Reeling

I was afraid this would happen.

Destruction in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan  

In the immediate hours after Typhoon Haiyan smashed through the Philippines, initial reports indicated the death toll wasn't that bad.

But as people are finally able to get in and survey damage from one of the strongest typhoons in world history, the news has gotten really, really bad.

Estimates are up to 10,000 people died in the storm, and images coming from the disaster zone show unclaimed bodies lying in the street.

The same thing kind of happened with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The initial reports were New Orleans had largely been spared, but of course within hours we knew it was a cataclysm.

The same has pretty much happened with Typhoon Haiyan.

To give you an idea of how bad things got, here's a video tour, below,  of the hardest hit larger city in Philippines, Tacloban City, which is pretty much flattened.

Notice the city looks like it's been hit  by a strong tornado, kind of like looking like Joplin, Missouri after their mega-tornado in 2011, with gutted buildings and shattered, leafless trees.

Taclonan City also looks like it was hit, along with the "tornado," the huge Japanese tsunami of 2011.

Here's the sad video: