Chickens come home to roost

The bigger the chicken, the longer it takes ...

"Not very many people are talking about what do we do to live with the consequences of what's happening," said James Brock, a longtime industry consultant in the Beijing office of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "The polar bears are doomed - they're going to museums. At the end of this century the Arctic ice cap will be gone. That means a lot of water rising, not by inches but meters."

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Burned since ancient times, coal dramatically increased in use during the Industrial Revolution, when it became fuel for the new steam engines, gas lamps and electrical generators. Worldwide demand for coal dipped at the end of the 20th century, but is now back up and projected to rise 60 percent by 2030 to 6.9 billion tons a year, according to the International Energy Agency.


In America, about 150 new coal-fired electrical plants are proposed over the next decade. In China, there are plans for a coal-fired power plant to go on line nearly every week. Emissions from these plants alone could nullify the cuts made by Europe, Japan and other rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol "



GW & wildfires, part II

More things I bet you didn't know ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/18/60minutes/printable3380176.shtml

... like "The fire season in the last 15 years or so has increased more than two months over the whole Western U.S. So actually 78 days of average longer fire season in the last 15 years compared to the previous 15 or 20 years"

... and: "in 2006, the feds spent $2 billion on fire fighting, seven times more than just ten years ago. "

Seems that Nature is just throwing bigger and bigger tantrums at us.


"Perfect storm overwhelms well prepared CA" said the headline...

LOS ANGELES, Oct 25 (Reuters) - California's fire-fighting strategy has made big
strides since deadly infernos in 2003 but little could have prepared it for the
perfect storm of drought, high winds and triple-digit temperatures behind
massive blazes this week, officials said on Thursday.

... but it wasn't a perfect storm. We'd had a very dry year in SoCal so there was actually much less build up of fuel to dry out than in a wet year. On the other hand it's the lengthening of the fire season by 78 days over the last decade that really makes more of these inevitable.


... How's that working for ya?