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The day I tasted climate change: Every one of us will have moment when global warming gets personal
TechnologyReview.com ^ | Dec 21, 2018 | James Temple

Posted on 12/27/2018 11:53:15 AM PST by ETL

In early November, gale-force winds whipped a brush fire into an inferno that nearly consumed the town of Paradise, California, and killed at least 86 people.

By the second morning, I could smell the fire from one foot outside my door in Berkeley, some 130 miles from the flames. Within a week, my eyes and throat stung even when I was indoors.

Air quality maps warned that the soot-filled air blanketing the Bay Area had reached “very unhealthy” levels. For days, nearly everyone wore masks as they walked their dogs, rode the train, and carried out errands. Most of those thin-paper respirators were of dubious value. Stores quickly ran out of the good ones—the “N-95s” that block 95% of fine particles—and sold out of air purifiers, too.

People traded tips about where they could be found, and rushed to stores rumored to have a new supply. Others packed up and drove hours away in search of a safe place to wait it out. By the time my masks arrived by mail, I was in Ohio, having decided to move up my Thanksgiving travel to escape the smoke.

Climate change doesn’t ignite wildfires, but it’s intensifying the hot, dry summer conditions that have helped fuel some of California’s deadliest and most destructive fires in recent years.

I’ve long understood that the dangers of global warming are real and rising. I’ve seen its power firsthand in the form of receding glaciers, dried lake beds, and Sierra tree stands taken down by bark beetles.

This is the first time, though, that I smelled and tasted it in my home.

Obviously, a sore throat and a flight change are trivial compared with the lives and homes lost in the Camp Fire. But after I spent a week living under a haze of smoke, it did resonate on a deeper level that we’re really going to let this happen.

Thousands if not millions of people are going to starve, drown, burn to death, or live out lives of misery because we’ve failed to pull together in the face of the ultimate tragedy of the commons. Many more will find themselves scrambling for basic survival goods and fretting over the prospect of more fires, more ferocious hurricanes, and summer days of blistering heat.

There’s no solving climate change any longer. There’s only living with it and doing everything in our power to limit the damage.

And seeing an entire community near one of the world’s richest regions all but wiped out, while retailers failed to meet critical public needs in the aftermath, left me with a dimmer view of our ability to grapple with the far greater challenges to come.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Chit/Chat; Conspiracy; Health/Medicine; Local News; Miscellaneous; Society; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: barfalert; berkeley; california; campfire; climatechange; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; doomgloom; droughts; environment; fires; forestfire; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; hysteria; jamestemple; mediawingofthednc; mitigation; mythmaking; nonplayercharacter; nonplayercharacters; npc; npcs; paradise; partisanmediashills; presstitutes; smearmachine; starvation; survival; wearedoomed
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To: ETL

Next thing they’ll be saying is that the Great Fire of London (1666) was caused by climate change.


21 posted on 12/27/2018 12:11:48 PM PST by mass55th (Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway...John Wayne)
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To: ETL

Using talking points again. The state of California has already said that the fires were so damaging because of the states refusal to clear undergrowth and dead fallen limbs and branches. The rules regarding what can be cleared and what SHOULD be cleared have been totally re-written since the fire.

Use your brain for a change instead of just mouthing lib talking points. Imbecile!!


22 posted on 12/27/2018 12:12:34 PM PST by Agatsu77
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To: I want the USA back
"You didn’t taste climate change. "

Liberals have no taste.

23 posted on 12/27/2018 12:12:37 PM PST by mass55th (Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway...John Wayne)
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To: ETL
There’s only living with it and doing everything in our power to limit the damage.

Would that include clearing out thick underbrush during dry spells? Or would the eco-fascists have a cow because you were destroying the habitat of some rodent species?

24 posted on 12/27/2018 12:12:47 PM PST by Vigilanteman (The politicized state destroys all aspects of civil society, human kindness and private charity.)
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To: ETL; 100American; 11B40; A Balrog of Morgoth; A message; ACelt; Aeronaut; AFPhys; AlexW; alrea; ...
DOOMAGE!

Global Warming PING!

You have been pinged because of your interest in environmentalism, alarmist wackos, mainstream media doomsday hype, and other issues pertaining to global warming.

Freep-mail me to get on or off: Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on global warming.

Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here

Latest from Global Warming News Site

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25 posted on 12/27/2018 12:13:09 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Ya lyublyu kovfefe!)
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To: Agatsu77

I truly hate non-thinkers!!


26 posted on 12/27/2018 12:13:39 PM PST by Agatsu77
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To: ETL

For over a decade I’ve said these AGW nuts are like an insect popping out of it’s larvae stage at 6:00 a.m. in death valley and, at 10:00 a.m. thinks the world is going to become an inferno and he’s gonna get roasted.

But the evening is coming.

It’s cyclical. And some of those cycles are so short that young people are experiencing their first cycle change.

Their response is, “Oh noes! We’re all gonna die!”

Nope. Worst case: Oranges growing in Saskatchewan. Bread and grapes coming out of Alaska, and forest reclaiming the Sahara.

Remember. A warmer climate is a wetter climate. And with our current solar minimum, I’d worry more about cooling than warming.


27 posted on 12/27/2018 12:14:03 PM PST by cuban leaf
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To: ETL

Well, maybe climate change is responsible. These idiots have spent so much time whining about climate change they haven’t had time to clear out the brush and dead trees.


28 posted on 12/27/2018 12:14:25 PM PST by McGavin999 ("The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood."Thomas Jefferson)
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To: ETL

“Every one of us will have moment when global warming gets personal”

Maybe it will be when a massive new tax bites into our income, or when a Government restriction drives prices through the roof - but they are determined to make us all feel it.


29 posted on 12/27/2018 12:16:25 PM PST by BeauBo
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To: ETL

Even granting every element of the climate hoax as true, there’s nothing to connect with this particular fire. It’s not a drought year in California, and it was not abnormally hot the day of the fire. There were no climate-related tree diseases implicated.

But what can be squarely connected to the fire is California’s extremist aversion to basic forest and fire management practices.


30 posted on 12/27/2018 12:17:10 PM PST by Behind the Blue Wall
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To: Red Badger

Good luck, Mr. Gorsky!


31 posted on 12/27/2018 12:20:25 PM PST by Flash Bazbeaux
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To: ETL

Delusional Crackhead refusing to see the truth on how the Sierra Club and friends caused the Fuel to be there in the first place.


32 posted on 12/27/2018 12:20:48 PM PST by eyeamok
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To: ETL

Background and degree in “journalism” not science: https://www.linkedin.com/in/templejames/


33 posted on 12/27/2018 12:22:15 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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To: bgill

Because CA has never had a wildfire.
~~~
This is how propaganda works and has been carried to the Nth degree by the CO2 whack-jobs to the point of appearing to be an absurd parody. ANY time something bad happens, associate it with your issue.


34 posted on 12/27/2018 12:22:32 PM PST by z3n
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To: ETL

REAL scientists are concerned with facts, not political agendas.
REAL scientists aren’t driven by the need to satisfy those who finance them.
REAL scientists know that science is never settled.


35 posted on 12/27/2018 12:22:53 PM PST by Fresh Wind (Fox News: "We distort, you deride")
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To: Flash Bazbeaux

B^)................


36 posted on 12/27/2018 12:23:32 PM PST by Red Badger (We are headed for a Civil War. It won't be nice like the last one....................)
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To: ETL

right ... because California never had wildfires before “climate change” ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires


37 posted on 12/27/2018 12:24:09 PM PST by catnipman ((Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!))
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To: ETL

Damm right it is real personal! When I havo pay a global warming tax on everything, very personal. Do these snowflakes know the world won’t last forever? When they get to their 60’s and the waters haven’t taken over most land masses what will be their excuse?

They will never know how the global elite have stolen all their wealth and make them live in dirt shacks.


38 posted on 12/27/2018 12:24:42 PM PST by ColdOne ((I miss my poochie... Tasha 2000~3/14/11~ Best Election Ever!)
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To: ETL

I lived in SoCal most of my life until I moved up here. We always had 2 seasons, wind and fire seasons. I remember when they used to get inmates to clean up the dead trees.


39 posted on 12/27/2018 12:28:30 PM PST by ColdOne ((I miss my poochie... Tasha 2000~3/14/11~ Best Election Ever!)
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To: Doogle

That should be California’s state motto: “Land of the dead trees”.


40 posted on 12/27/2018 12:30:27 PM PST by richardtavor
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