Xasáuan Today

Smokey Sunrise near Redding California

Only nine months ago, winds gusting to 60mph blew the Tubbs Fire across miles of Napa, Lake and Sonoma Counties. The fire effortlessly crossed a well-maintained 100-foot wide firebreak to enter and decimate the upscale Fountaingrove neighborhood, then drove deep into the City of Santa Rosa – eventually destroying about 5% of the housing stock in a city with a population of over 175,000. 22 people were killed and nearly 6,000 structures were destroyed. Santa Rosa alone suffered more than a billion dollars in damage. It was the most destructive, and third deadliest, fire in California history.

At the same time, the nearby Nuns, Atlas, and Redwood Valley fires each ranked, on their own, among the top-twenty most destructive fires in state history. Collectively, these four fires burned over 8,000 structures and killed 40 people.

Just two months later, strong winds blew the Thomas Fire across portions of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties at a rate of advance that sometimes reached an acre per second. The 282,000 acres that eventually burned made it the largest fire in modern state history. Two people were killed and the 1,063 structures destroyed made it the 8^thmost destructive fire in state history – the third fire to make the top ten list in a three month period. Damages amounted to more than 2 billion dollars.

This week, fires in Northern California have already burned close to 200,000 acres. The Carr Fire, without aid of significant wind, developed a rotating column that generated what amounted to a fire tornado in suburbs of the City of Redding – a terrifying sight that resulted in an astonishing level of destruction. So far, 1,236 structures, including nearly 900 homes have been confirmed destroyed and 6 bodies, including the bodies of two firefighters, have been recovered. Additional people remain missing. The Carr Fire will rank as at least the 7^thmost destructive fire in California history – the 6^thfire to rank in the top 20 in the past 10 months.

This is the price we are paying right now, today, for inaction on climate change. The bill will only grow steeper in the days, months and years ahead.

Just in time for Halloween comes news that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 404.39 parts per million.

For those who think this is a normal variation, here’s a handy graphic covering the rise and fall of carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 800,000 years:

(Image created by Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

As it is painfully obvious that those who run the planet have zero interest in reducing carbon emissions by anything like the amount, and at anything like the speed, necessary to avert disaster, that line will only continue to climb toward the stratosphere and the impacts of climate change will only worsen.

While no one knows just how bad things may get, it’s worth noting that the biggest mass extinction event in earth’s history, the Permian-Triassic Extinction, which wiped out as many as 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates, is thought to have been driven by runaway global warming. In that case, increased ocean acidity, caused by higher carbon dioxide concentrations, and decreased ocean oxygen levels, caused by warming, turned the oceans into hypoxic cesspools inhabited by sulfurous bacteria whose noxious gasses left the atmosphere unbreathable. Following the P-T Extinction, it took life on earth as much as 30 million years to rebuild functioning ecosystems with the kind of biodiversity we enjoy today.

We may or may not wipe out most of earth’s species this time, but our carbon emissions have already increased the acidity of the ocean surface by a whopping 30% over the past 200 years and hypoxic “dead zones” are emerging and growing larger. There is little question we are facing, and utterly failing to seriously address, the most serious crisis in history.

That’s the real Halloween horror.

Meanwhile, the fires, floods, and crippling heat waves that global warming has already made more frequent, continue unabated.

This month’s Northern California fires, which burned over 8,000 structures and killed at least 43 people, are a good example of an event made more likely by climate change – and also an outstanding example of how people will focus on anything else.

Lazy reporters repeat tired bromides about fire suppression resulting in unnatural accumulations of fuel – regardless of how frequently the area in question has actually burned – while less sober online commentators take for granted that the fires were deliberate government actions designed to clear away existing housing stock so that new housing designed in compliance with UN Agenda 21 can be constructed.

The main point of disagreement among these commentators is whether the fires were caused by space-based lasers (known to insiders as Directed Energy Weapons) or by some kind of electromagnetic “weather weapon” (the same one used to create and steer this year’s hurricanes). Both agree that highly flammable nano aluminum particles, distributed by “chemtrails” (which are either causing or preventing global warming, depending on who you listen to) played an important role, because “everything on the ground” is now covered with them.

The weather weapon people are angry with the laser people for pushing a preposterous theory and the laser people feel the same way about the weather weapon people. Both accuse the other of harming the credibility of the movement to warn the masses of the UN’s nefarious activities.

And the planet continues to warm.

Happy Halloween!