Global warming may bring us more rain overall, but the current high pressure system (expected to end tonight?) has kept rain away from us for 2 months now, which wasn't helping anything.
The article doesn't mention that 700 full-time park workers were cut in Eric Adams' budget. 50 of those park workers were forestry specialists, who did things such as removing sick/dead trees, and clearing the sort of brush/debris that is easily ignitable.
We see this over and over again: whatever money you "save" by delaying or skipping maintenance, you end up having to spend when something actually breaks.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F3...
[2] https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/07/01/parks-budget-shrinks-eric...
[3] https://thechiefleader.com/stories/urban-forest-program-gutt...
You don't witness self-refuting articles very often. Editors must already be on holiday.
>But the tree rings also show droughts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and a severe drought in the nineteen-sixties. (1963 was a particularly tragic wildfire season in New Jersey.) The Earth’s atmosphere is complex enough that, every now and then, Seager explained, “something really strange is going to happen and there’s going to be a long sequence of dry weather.”
It's not clear how evidence of past wet-dry cycles "refutes" the assertion that the region is currently experiencing drought conditions and becoming more fire prone.
Yes there were fires, but unless something changed, the NE is suppose to get more rain with Climate Change.
So I doubt there will ever be fires in the NE that compare to the West. This is due to a drough that does happen once in a while.
If there was no fire new NYC, I doubt this article would be published :)
> the NE is suppose to get more rain with Climate Change.
One of the biggest challenges with climate change is that it continually increases variance in the system as warming increases. It's hard enough to correctly model a stable climate system, but modeling one that will be continuously changing for many human lifetimes is very hard.
We're not headed to a "new normal", if we ('we' being life on this planet and human civilization) were we'd simply adapt to it, it would be costly, but survivable.
But climate change will continue to cause radical and increasingly difficult to predict changes, and those changes themselves are subject to equally radical future transitions. This is why climate change is such a true crisis: it cannot be "adapted" to, because there is no stationary state we'll arrive at any time soon.
Just look at Europe: the last few years it's been experience extreme heatwaves, but if the AMOC collapses (which it may, even in our life time) that will likely cause it to experience extreme cold. Even then the exact details of an event as extreme as the AMOC collapsing are hard to predict, and the AMOC collapsing is just one of countless other similarly extreme events we are going to be facing in coming decades.
> it continually increases variance in the system as warming increases
This is strictly false. A consistent warming trend reduces the occurrence of extreme cold events. This will narrow the range of temperature fluctuations, which directly reduces the time derivative of temperature variance.
Also, oceans redistribute heat more efficiently due to climate change. This causes the temperature gradients between regions to weaken. Once again the time derivative of temperature variance is reduced. Empirically, one can observe this decrease in temperature variance in the tropics.
More chaos. Plus overall warming (which will ie rise ocean levels), which is again chaotic so it can even mean some local drops.
I think for many this is the limit of how they can/want to understand whats inevitably coming. More info causes many to zone out, move it quickly to mumbo-jumbo and seek another dopamine hit or some other cheap empty fun.
Like it or not, we need for regular Joe to care at least a bit and understand at least on surface why. If we wrap it in economy like many populists do, that battle is lost (which may be intentional on their part).
>More chaos.
Is it your opinion that climate change is universally bad? Language like "more chaos" make it sound that way: whatever changes happen are bad. I can't imagine that's the case. Some things will certainly be bad, and some not so much.
I was (un)fortunate to be in the PNW during the second week of July this year when temperatures in White Salmon, WA on the Columbia River Gorge hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit. The infrastructure architect in me saw nothing but HVAC deployments going in everywhere all the while the energy grid was doing rolling blackouts from the spike in cooling demand for those that had it. Most importantly was the immediate commercial reaction as NEARLY ALL BUSINESSES WERE CLOSED in the region because the locals could not deal with the abnormally high temperature delta as few places had cooling. That last line is critical to those that are cognizant of economics and where "speculated" climate change will lead the human population. We all will certainly be dead at some point in our futures however the verdict remains out on "weather" Mother Nature will continue to freeze, drown, burn, and roast us away. What you cannot see matters most!
Stay Healthy!
If, for example, you are a cockroach it'll probably be great! Humans, however, particularly in the modern world, are very dependant on all parts of a very complex system operating to enjoy the quality of life many readers on HN enjoy.
An unceasing labyrinthine supply chain operates day and night with tendrils in a million other complex systems in order to make sure that you have food, water, medicine, law and order, HVAC, etc.
We are an inch from chaos, moreso than any time in history.
Substantial disruption to these systems will be poorly tolerated and could easily lead to the kind of lifestyle we haven't seen since we found out that sharpened sticks make for excellent negotiation devices.
It's bad, very bad, apocalyptically end-of-the world so. The oceans will rise over 19 miles above their current level. Weather will be come drastically chaotic, one day there will be 100 feet of snow falling in an epic blizzard, the next, 200 degrees farenheit could cook an egg. The world will end right now.
We need to reduce the population by 99.9% and stop all oil pumping full stop, stop all nuclear power, it will be painful but it's better than the alternative, we are the custodians of the environment and we need to treat it as more sacred than human life, this is what I feel and I'm an authority so you should listen to me.
The changes won't be linear, they will go exponential and when a major "shift" starts it will flip to a new state in about 12-13 years. Just because the changes have seemed to be gradual so far doesn't mean that will continue even over the next couple of years. The rate of increase has jumped the last couple of years, watch out things are about to get very serious.
Is it your opinion that chaos is universally bad? Heat (colloquially) increases entropy, and since we are so dependent on initial conditions (current climate) changing climate inherently causes chaos.
Do you find the tundra too cold and dry? Then sure, you will benefit.
Do you like your current climate? Do you find it too predictable? Would higher energy air make it better?
I dunno, the nihilism is creeping in. Why not buy that nice steak at the market today? The price of beef is only going to be higher next year. And so it goes.
Russia just needs to hope China does not invade Siberia :)
I kind of expect this to happen when the south part of China becomes uninhabitable due to warming.
IIRC, China has 10x the number of people than Russia.
Of course it can be adapted to, just not for all species, possibly including our own.
Just give my party more power and resources and we’ll take care of it.
Global warming causes more precipitation and more intense drought periods. We're going to see more extreme wet events and more extreme droughts.
Warmer temps increase evaporation, which leads to more precipitation. But increased evaporation decreases surface water and dries out soil/plants/vegetation (drought). This makes periods with low precipitation drier than they would be with cooler temps (more intense drought).
And the precipitation causes more vegetative growth, providing more fuel during the drought periods.
And - the greater earlier precipitation means more fuel mass
Even if it doesn't compare to fire risk or intensity in other regions, the occurrence of more fires that are hotter or wilder is still a big deal for regions that haven't had many in recent history.
Most ecosystems in traditional "fire country" are adapted to those fires and sometimes even need some volume fires to keep working the way they have been, with the life that inhabits them.
That's not the case for ecosystems in the Northeast. Large fires will take much longer to recover there, and traditional biomes and inhabitants may not recover from them at all. That's not only sad for naturalists, but can have pretty significant downstream effects on the human communities in the region.
Some of our worst fires in California were the summer after winters with extreme rain events.
If you have a dry season, you can have a fire season, and the wetter your wet season, the worse fire season will be.
The northeast woods does not have a wet/dry seasonality the way fire country in the West does.
In the West, the wettest month (which is in winter) can have 6-10 inches of rain while the driest (which is in summer) has 0-0.5 inch.
In the northeast, the wettest month (which is in SUMMER), might be 3-5 inches. The driest (which is in WINTER) might be 2-3 inches, including snowfall.
The Northeast doesn't have a dry season, and I don't think anyone seriously thinks it's going to develop one. It just has occasional dry periods because precipitation is pretty chaotic, and is getting more chaotic due to climate change. When one of those happens there's some fire risk, like has just happened. "The Northeast is becoming fire country" is just unabashed scare mongering.
> NE is suppose to get more rain with Climate Change
At least in CA, rain causes more grass growth for fires to connect up through.
The fire material just builds up as growth pull carbon out and builds up a pile of it (because when a tree grows, most of its mass comes from the air & rain).
And then the fires were started by a "Lightning complex" on top of a hill.
If climate change reaches the tipping point where clouds cannot form then we probably won't be seeing much rain anywhere.
Humidity can still hit 100% though, yea?
I'm not sure about that but in that scenario polar regions would be 75-85F and life would be very harsh just about everywhere else. The one period in time where temperatures were that high, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, diversity plummeted, mammals were smaller and migrated to higher latitudes.
This isn't in the news yet, but the VAST majority of fires, like 9/10 in CA in 2024 were arson.
Just a warning if that trend spreads to the NE.
The stats I’ve seen suggest the ratio was the inverse of that, that 1/10 were arson related. Do you have a source for the 9/10 number?
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/arson-wildfires-c...
Not in the news, I have seen it with my own eyes.
The most ominous interpretation of their comment is that they started 90% of the forest fires in California.
I suspect at least 90% are anthropogenic, but not arson. All nature has in ignition sources is lightning and the odd animal kicking a flint rock into another rock. Humans start lots of accidental wildfires, like from welding, or not maintaining power lines.
A quick google search tells me that arson was the cause of 10-15% of wildfires, not 90%. Do you have an actual reputable news source for your “statistic” or is this just a bit of misinformation you are using to cast doubts on our climate emergency?
Here is one of many news articles on the actual numbers, btw: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna171393
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Farmer and small private forest manager here. We need more logging and controlled burns to control the fuel.
Until they have a website called isnewenglandonfire.com that simply replies with a date stamp and the word Yes, then no. iscaliforniaonfire.com
But you could make such a site for Pennsylvania [1]. NY almost qualifies [2].
I find it all amusing. A few hundred or thousand acres burn in NY/NJ and everyone loses their shit. Watching the newscasts, governor and other admins talk about the issue they make it seem like something we have never witnessed before as a human race. Meanwhile in my home state of California (often mocked and judged by the rest of the nation), they are dealing with fires that burn hundreds of thousands of acres.
NY: "Statewide, there are currently six wildfires in New York State encompassing nearly 6,031 acres, including the Jennings Creek/Sterling State Park fire. "
CA: 1,040,146 acres burned this year.
So next time you wanna talk shit about California and how they handle wildfires, take a look at the amateur hour response from the east coast first.
This comes off as really immature and weirdly defensive. Of course places that hardly ever get wildfires are taking it extremely seriously. If Los Angeles got 3 feet of snow it would be a really big deal, but in Buffalo that's just winter.
> California (often mocked and judged by the rest of the nation)
Being this defensive about your state is ridiculous. And don't pretend people in California never mock people from the "flyover" states.
I live in Michigan, lol. I just think that California is often the butt of many jokes around the nation when most people do not understand the sheer scale of the state (in physical size, population, economic contribution, etc)
Watching west coast elites bicker about east coast elites is peak 2024.
This exact bickering is a plotline in a fair few Woody Allen films. I think this is a decades old inclination!
This is how everything works. Systems that aren't designed to handle an event are unlikely to handle it well. Where I live, we got 4 inches of rain in 20 minutes yesterday. That was a Tuesday. From the time I've spent out west, I believe in that place it would be disaster level flooding.
We're likely to see more of this with climate change, right? Major snows in areas that can't handle it. Typhoons|Cyclones|Hurricanes hitting areas that can't handle it, etc.
It is a big deal when an area gets a weather event that is not normal for that area because they cannot handle it and don't have the tools or people with experience in the area to deal with it. I think the freaking out is justified because it may help save lives - people in the affected area are more likely to hear about it and hopefully react accordingly.
Yes, 100%, though we may build more resilient systems as it becomes the norm, or better mobile response type systems.
I too am in the heart of fire country but I don't find unexpected disaster coming from global warming to be amusing.
There's no doubt that climate change will shift the centers of disasters from one place to another (there's speculation about California getting tropical storms [1]). But I'd say you should only able to laugh or throw snark about this if you're also doing something about it.
[1] https://science.nasa.gov/earth/extreme-weather-events/study-...
Let nobody deny California is the best at burning to a crisp
They are different places with different weather and different expectations. This cannot be surprising to anyone.
It probably doesn't help that people love to build houses in forests so that in every forest fire the fire department has to show up to save them.