Overview:
A growing disconnect exists between the scientific consensus on climate change and the Trump administration's public messaging, as devastating wildfires continue across the Pacific Northwest and Canada. While researchers and humanitarian organizations cite rising temperatures and prolonged drought as key drivers of increasingly severe fire seasons, administration officials have questioned the certainty of climate science.
Senate Democrats are asking every Trump nomination a question about the 2020 election,” “who won?” The point is to get on the record willful ignorance.
It should be the same for the climate. Every nominee should be asked about how they view global warming and what is there policy response.
To read more articles by Mark Trahant, go to: Marktrahant.substack.com
Of course there won’t be answers. Like the election question, there’s no satisfactory response that will serve President Trump’s commandment (the climate “hoax” or “scam”) yet the conditions that we see every day continue to deteriorate.
News stories about the fires in the Pacific Northwest are consistent, citing the long drought and the changing climate.
“(Betsy) Robertson, a communications director for the Red Cross, is from Washington, and has been with the organization for 10 years. She has seen communities devastated by wildfires before. But never like this.
“The scale of homes destroyed and lives changed forever – this is a new level,” she said. “We are bracing ourselves for seasons like this getting worse and worse, and starting earlier and going later.”
Then, on the other hand, the Interior Department’s US Wildland Fire Service has a different take about this season’s fire challenges. No mention of climate change. In February the Secretary of the Interior said at a conference that climate change is “unsettled science.”
“It was based on the idea that somehow the existential threat to the world was a degree of [temperature] change in the year 2100,” Burgum said. “People say, ‘Oh, it’s settled science. We can’t have a discussion about whether these forecasts may or may not be accurate, or there may or may not be cause and effect.’”
Of course the science — and nearly every climate scientist disagrees.
A peer-reviewed study posted today by World Weather Attribution looked at the fires this summer in Canada (but the results would be similar for the Pacific Northwests and the tragedy on tribal lands and Spokane.) The headline: “Climate change means extreme fire seasons in Canada are here to stay”
Indigenous communities and wildland firefighters face heightened physical and mental health impacts from wildfires. Indigenous communities are overrepresented in wildfire areas, while remote locations and limited transportation routes have made evacuations more difficult. Successive wildfires have made long-term recovery between disasters more difficult. Beyond physical impacts, repeated evacuations and displacement can disrupt access to hunting grounds, traditional foods and cultural practices.
And …
Sustaining an effective response through the remainder of the fire season will require continued interagency coordination, flexible deployment of personnel and equipment across jurisdictions, and sufficient surge capacity to respond to new large fires without compromising ongoing operations. Adaptation to increasing wildfire risk requires an integrated risk management approach and can include incorporating future fire risk into timber harvest allocations, improving forest resilience after fires occur by diversifying with less flammable tree species, as well as strengthening early warning systems and implementing multi-risk zoning for land use and development planning that can have multiple benefits. Integrating First Nation’s knowledge and experience strengthens risk assessment, preparedness and response.
Of course this is impossible when the agencies involved maintain there is no climate change. So planning for what does not exist is impossible. This is backwards. It costs far more to rebuild than to plan ahead.
