The Governor should issue a ban on open burning, but has not so far ….

From an Article by Chris Lawrence, WV Metro News, November 6, 2023

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The low humidity, warmer temperatures, and the steady wind in recent days has turned the West Virginia forest and the new leaf litter on the forest floor into a potential tinder box.

As of Monday, the West Virginia Division of Forestry reported more than 100 forest fires in the state and Deputy State Forester Tony Evans believed the number was well beyond.

“Over the weekend we’ve had so many fires that have popped up, we definitively know we have more than that,” said Evans. Some of the fires were large in scale.

“We have several big fires. One down in McDowell County is several hundred acres. Raleigh County’s got a big fire Kanawha has a couple. Boone County has several fires that are going to be several hundred acres, same thing with Mingo County,” he explained.

According to Evans, the Southern West Virginia topography lends itself well to a wildfire and they tend to get out of control faster in the steep hills of the coalfields than in other parts of the state. The terrain also makes them more difficult to put out.

The fires are so widespread, Evans said they are asking people to stop calling 911 with just reports of seeing or smelling smoke. Since those kind of reports are too vague to help pinpoint a fire. “Unless they see an actual fire or a big column of smoke coming up from a specific place, don’t call 911 just if they are seeing or smelling smoke in the air,” he explained..

The Kanawha County Commission penned a letter to the Division of Forestry asking for a total burning ban until some measurable rainfall comes. Evans said that decision would have to come from the Governor’s office.

The fall forest fire rules are in effect, meaning that any outdoor burning must be done between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. However, under the present conditions, Evans said use common sense.

“You know if it’s dry and windy, wait until we get some moisture. It doesn’t take very much for the wind to pick up an ember and put it out into the woods or dry grass and we have a forest fire,” he said.

Forced moves from the red areas to the blue areas

From an Article by Oliver Milman, The Guardian, September 24, 2018

A study published last year found that the economies of the southern states, along with parts of the west, will suffer disproportionately as temperatures rise. In what researchers called potentially one of the largest transfers of wealth in US history, the poorest third of counties are expected to lose up to 20% of their income unless greenhouse gas emissions are severely curtailed. Wealth, and potentially people, are expected to shift north and west.

Meanwhile, cities already struggling with heat will see wealthy residents head for cooler climes. Last year, 155 people died in Phoenix due to a particularly fierce summer. Increasing heat will start testing the durability of the populace, even those shielded by air conditioning. In the western states, wildfires are getting larger, razing homes in ever more spectacular ways and choking thousands of people with carcinogenic smoke.

Further to the south, at the border, there are suggestions that people from Central America are being nudged towards the US because of drought and hurricanes in their homelands, part of a trend that will see as many as 300 million climate refugees worldwide by 2050.

“People will get very grumpy and upset with very hot temperatures,” said Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago who co-authored the research on economic losses. “Even if you have air conditioning, some areas start to look less habitable. By the middle of the century parts of the south-west and south-east won’t look attractive to live in.

“That insidious climate migration is the one we should worry about. The big disasters such as hurricanes will be obvious. It’s the pressures we don’t know or understand that will reshape population in the 21st century.”

Prodded to name refuges in the US, researchers will point to Washington and Oregon in the Pacific north-west, where temperatures will remain bearable and disasters unlikely to strike. Areas close to the Great Lakes and in New England are also expected to prove increasingly attractive to those looking to move.

By 2065, southern states are expected to lose 8% of their US population share, while the north-east will increase by 9%. A recent study forecast that the population in the western half of the US will increase by more than 10% over the next 50 years due to climate migration, largely from the south and midwest.

But these population shifts are uncertain and are bound by a tangle of other factors and caveats. People will still largely follow paths guided by nearby family or suitable jobs. Even those who do want to move may find favoured locations too expensive.

Some will just grimly hang on. “With property rights as strong as they are in the US, some people may choose to go down with the ship,” said Harvard’s Keenan. “The question is whether they have the means and the options to do anything else.”

“People can usually cope with being a little less comfortable, but if you see repeated storms or severe damage to crops, that will trigger change,” said Solomon Hsiang, who researches how climate change will affect society at the University of California.

“There will be pressure to move a little north. It won’t be everyone, though, it won’t be like the great migration of wildebeest in Africa. Whole cities picking up and moving would be hugely expensive.”

Smaller towns are giving relocation a go, however. In 2016, the community of Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana was the first place to be given federal money to replant itself. The population, situated on an island being eaten away by the sea, is looking to move to a former sugar cane farm 30 miles inland.

“We are called climate refugees but I hate that term,” said Chantal Comardelle, who grew up in the Isle de Jean Charles community.

“We will be the first ones to face this in the modern US but we won’t be the last. It’s important for us to get it right so other communities know that they can do it, too.”

About a dozen coastal towns in Alaska are also looking to relocate, as diminishing sea ice exposes them to storms and rising temperatures thaw the very ground beneath them. One, Newtok, has identified a new site and has some federal funding to begin uprooting itself.

A buyout of damaged and at-risk homes has already occurred in New York City’s Staten Island in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, while certain flood-prone houses in Houston, pummeled by Hurricane Harvey last year, are also being purchased and razed.

But the cost of doing this for all at-risk Americans would be eye-watering. Estimates range from $200,000 to $1m per person to undertake a relocation. If 13 million people do have to move, it seems fantastical to imagine $13tn, or even a significant fraction of this amount, being spent by governments to ease the way.

“As a country we aren’t set up to deal with slow-moving disasters like this, so people around the country are on their own,” said Joel Clement, a former Department of the Interior official who worked on the relocation of Alaskan towns.

“In the Arctic I’m concerned we’ve left it too late. Younger people have left because they know the places are doomed. These towns won’t be relocated within five years and I’m sure there will be a catastrophic storm up there. My hope is no lives will be lost.”

Ultimately, the US will have to choose what it wants to defend and hope its ingenuity outstrips the environmental changes ranged against it. Not everyone will be able to shelter behind fortifications like the ‘big U’ planned to defend lower Manhattan. Wrenching decisions will have to be made as to what and where will be sacrificed.

“We won’t see whole areas abandoned but neighborhoods will get sparse and wild looking, the tax base will start to crumble,” said Stoddard, mayor of South Miami. “We don’t have the laws to deal with that sort of piecemeal retreat. It’s magical thinking to think someone else will buy out your property.

“We need a plan as to what will be defended because at the moment the approach is that some kid in a garage will come with a solution. There isn’t going to be a mop and bucket big enough for this problem.”

In major theaters on Friday, July 28-th

From an Article by Dr. Joe Romm, Think Progress, July 20, 2017

New film tells the rollercoaster story of the climate movement and Paris agreement with humor and humanity.

A decade ago, former Vice President Al Gore had one of the unlikeliest hit films of all time, An Inconvenient Truth. Now he’s back with a follow-up, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which premiered in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.
In an interview with Stephen Colbert on CBS’s The Late Show Monday night, Gore joked, “And to young people in particular, I really recommend this movie as a date movie… it’s a hot date movie. It’s an amazingly hot date movie.”

But the truth is this movie is a great movie for anyone who cares about humanity and where we are headed. It tells the stories of the ups and downs of the climate movement, the Paris climate negotiations, and Gore’s own life — and it’s an emotional rollercoaster filled with moments of joy and despair.

Gore told the audience he thought the original, a 2006 documentary of a slideshow on climate change that would become one of the most successful documentaries of all time, was a “bad idea” and had to be convinced by Jeff Skoll, former CEO of eBay and founder of Participant Media. Skoll ended up producing the Oscar-winning film that help start a national conversation on climate change.

Gore and Skoll have again partnered to produce the sequel, which takes off where the original ends and tells the story — through Gore’s eyes — of the climate movement leading up to drama of the Paris climate negotiations and, yes, the election of President Donald Trump.

Gore sense of humor and his humanity suffuse the new movie, one of the reasons it’s even better than the original. Indeed, for those who still think of the former vice president in terms of his media stereotype from the 2000 election — “stiff” and “wooden” — the movie will be quite a surprise. He has emerged as a world-class communicator.

The sequel also fixes the biggest flaw in the original, which was criticized for not enough focus on solutions. This film makes the new clean energy revolution a major focus.

The documentary has many unexpected moments, including the behind-the-scenes role Gore played in getting India on board during the Paris negotiations and Gore’s remarkable meeting with a conservative Republican mayor “in the reddest county in the reddest state” who is taking his city 100 percent renewable.

This is a movie to take a date — or kids — to, but it is especially valuable for people who are involved in the climate movement, or any social justice movement.

For many activists, nothing is harder than staying motivated year after year in the face of the inevitable failures along the (too) slow road to social justice. But few progressives have had to face the disappointments and despair that Gore has, most infamously his controversial presidential defeat in 2000.

Yet Gore remains remarkably optimistic and filled with hope. Seeing how he is able to keep going decade after decade is an inspiring life lesson anyone can learn from.

The film hits theaters on July 28th.

Wildfire Locations in 8 States

Some 14,000 mountain residents evacuated and hundreds of buildings destroyed

From an Article by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, December 1, 2016

Wildfires have devastated eastern Tennessee. The blaze has claimed seven lives, forced about 14,000 people to evacuate and destroyed hundreds of buildings in Sevier County.

The wildfires started Sunday from the Great Smoky Mountains and was carried by nearly 90mph winds into the city of Gatlinburg by Monday. Making matters worse, the strong winds also knocked over power lines, sparking even more fires. National Park Service spokeswoman Dana Soehn told CNN that investigators believe the fire started on a mountain trail and was “human caused.”

As of Wednesday night, the main fire has only been 10 percent contained, fire commanders told NBC News. More than 17,000 acres in the Great Smoky Mountains have been scorched, causing untold damage to wildlife and other natural resources.

“The Great Smoky Mountains are one of the most biologically diverse places in the United States, partly due to the geologically ancient nature of the landscape, as well as the wet and humid forests covering their slopes and hollows,” Bruce Stein, associate vice president for conservation science and climate adaptation at the National Wildlife Federation, said.

“While fire is a natural phenomenon in Appalachian forests, these extreme, drought-fueled fires are not,” Stein continued. “Rather, they are a glimpse into what many southeastern forests and communities will experience as climate change continues to intensify.”

Indeed, much of the southeastern U.S. has been inundated by wildfires in recent weeks. Record-breaking drought and unseasonably warm temperatures have fueled the region’s devastating wildfires.

As the New York Times pointed out, there’s a clear connection between the wildfires and an ever-warming planet:

“The fires spread through Tennessee as much of the South has been enduring a crippling drought, even though rainfall this week offered some relief. The United States Drought Monitor reported last week that 60 percent of Tennessee was in ‘exceptional’ or ‘extreme’ drought, the two most severe ratings.

“Wildfires, once a seasonal phenomenon, have become a consistent threat, partly because climate change has resulted in drier winters and warmer springs, which combine to pull moisture off the ground and into the air.”

A study in Nature Communications revealed that from 1979 to 2013, wildfire season has lengthened and the global area affected by wildfire has doubled. CNBC also reported that we are entering an era of “super fires” due to climate change causing hotter and drier weather.

“Based on what we know and in which direction the climate is going, yes, we can expect more frequent super fires,” Marko Princevac, a fire expert at the University of California at Riverside, told CNBC. “There is scientific consensus that climate change will lead to much more intense fires, more dry areas.”

The Tennessee wildfires have crept to Pigeon Forge, the home of singer and actress Dolly Parton’s Dollywood. While the theme park was not damaged, Parton released a statement saying that she was heartbroken about the fire damage and had been “praying for all the families affected.”

On Sunday, the Sevier County native released a public service announcement with Smokey Bear to promote wildfire preparedness amidst troubling drought conditions. “This extended drought has resulted in high wildfire danger,” Parton said. “As dry as it is, please help fire fighters avoid wildfires.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Blount County at Walland School (11/17/16)

Gatlinburg and Pidgeon Forge  in Tennessee are now being evacuated

(Some 43 Photos are Accessible on Blount County, TN)

From an Article by Steve Ahillen, Knoxville Times-Sentinel, November 20, 2016

Knoxville, Tenn. — Forest fires that have burned more than 119,000 acres in eight states and have people from Asheville to Atlanta smelling smoke continue to rage through most of the Southeast.

More than 6,300 firefighters, some from as far as Alaska, are fighting fires that range from just a few acres to one in the Cohutta Wilderness in northern Georgia that has burned 27,000. That fire has burned more than a month and is just 20 percent contained. A total of 74 aircraft, including Black Hawk helicopters and BAE tanker jets, have been used.

The Southern Coordination Center in Atlanta has overseen the fire response, coordinating efforts with a myriad of federal, state and local agencies and fire departments. The center’s Dave Martin said he can’t be sure if the extent of the fires is unprecedented, but it is the biggest he can remember.

“It has been quite a while since we had had this number of large fires at this many locations,” he said. “The last time it was comparable was in 2001 and even then it wasn’t this busy.”

States that have been dealing with fires are Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. The fires taken together are even starting to rival the mammoth blazes of the west. The Big Sur fire in late July burned around 132,000 acres.

PHOTO: A wildfire in Blount County on Thursday, November 17, 2016 near Walland Elementary School has burned 20-80 acres of land and could spread to 200 acres. 

A severe drought that has gripped the South — in some areas since spring — has been the big catalyst.

“The lower humidity and significant lack of precipitation for more than three months have made a perfect environment for fires to spread,” said the center’s Adam Rondeau. “It makes them faster and stronger.” Rondeau said there have been 50 major fires – fires that burn more than 100 acres.

No lives have been lost. Only minor injuries and minimum property damage have been reported, Martin said. Several structures have been damaged including one residence, a house near Trenton, Ga.

However, the smoke, especially dense in the Tennessee Valley in cities like Knoxville and Chattanooga, has sent hundreds of people to emergency rooms with respiratory problems.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index has in the past few weeks occasionally placed affected cities in the red “unhealthy” level, an indication that “everyone may begin to experience health effects.”

PHOTO: Smoke from a forest fire billows over the Little River on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016, in Walland.  

The Appalachian Trail is closed in parts of Georgia and North Carolina. Campfires have been banned in the 655,598-acre Cherokee National Forest that straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee line with stretches both north and south of the Great Smoky Mountains National Forest, which is also closed to burning.

And, the drought and forest fire situation could go on for months, experts say.

“The forecast for December, January and February show the odds of below-normal precipitation are high for the Southeast,” said Matthew Rosencrans, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, beef cattle aren’t getting their hay in East Tennessee and cattlemen are selling off some stock. Farmers from the cotton fields of north Alabama to the tobacco farms of North Carolina are taking their hits. The Tennessee Valley Authority has cut in half the amount of hydroelectric power it usually generates this time of year from its reservoirs in East Tennessee to hold back water for what may be ahead.

PHOTO: In this Nov. 7, 2016, photo, two major fires burn at the Flipper Bend area atop Walden Ridge, seen from the Montlake neighborhood of Soddy-Daisy, Tenn. 

Even the Christmas tree salesmen are concerned the drought and stress will cause the trees to have a shorter healthy span when they reach living rooms.

“I used to say the trees would stay green (through the holiday season) without a problem,” said Leo Collins, who owns Bluebird Christmas Tree Farm north of Knoxville, “but I’m not so cocky this year.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net