[show TRANSCRIPT]The carbon bomb. Were the recent wild fires in California a sign of global warming? Did you know that the whole American West is tinder ready to burn?Today we start with California but then discover the whole Rocky mountain arrange houses vast dead forests waiting to go up in smoke. They will add more greenhouse gases than the humans who be there. But the top of the world is already on fire. In the November issue of the journal "Nature," a team from the University of Wisconsin published a paper calculating the carbon dioxide swirling up from the Canadian North. There in the boreal plant stretching across the country state-sized plant fires undergo been raging unreported and un-opposed. As you know scientists talk of global temperature rising. But the heating is uneven and is hitting Canada and Russia much harder. Ten degrees above normal is becoming the normal. Forests are baking dry in the heat waiting for the next lightening storm to burn them. Rainfall patterns have changed. And warmer winters released the Mountain Pine Bark Beetle into a whole new range of mountains in British Columbia. Authorities next door are burning their own forests when they guess the hang has arrived. They are trying to forbid the infection of all the pines in the endless boreal plant that stretches across Canada's North. No one really believes the Beetle can be stopped by anything other than a return to the deep cold winters of the 1970's. And no one believes we'll ever get approve to the climate we were born in. Dr. Tom Gower says Canada's boreal forests are no longer a carbon sink. They are a net obtain of global warming gases. We'll converse him. But first. I want to compete a recording I made last summer at the Climate Change Despair and Empowerment Road Show 2007 in Vancouver. American Pat Rasmussen ordain express us how a forest activist became a climate activist as well. Who can say it better than Midnight Oil. That bind played in the infamous "Black hit" among the giant stumps in a clear-cut former forest in Clayoquot Sound the measure home of the island old growth on the far Pacific coast of Canada. Hundreds were later arrested in protests and a huge crowd of activists surrounded the band. Into the dark crowded gash in the woods they sang...[Song: "Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil]From her base in Washington State. Pat Rasmussen watches world forests. She is a vital link between a number of groups trying to deliver six temperate rainforests of the world. Her official title is Coordinator of the. Pat is one of those activists who knows and feels what she knows. It bothers her that the trees of the West are dying in waves. That satellites show browning over massive swathes where color should be. That life goes on as usual for the latte drinkers who don't cognise the coming fires could change their lives forever. We'll get to the recent record fires in California. The dead forests of British Columbia. The hidden great fires in Canada's North. But let's adjust into the evolution of forest activists as global warming heats up the mix. Here is Pat Rasmussen at the Climate Change Despair and Empowerment Road Show 2007 recorded by Radio Ecoshock.[Pat Rasmussen talk]That was Washington express forest activist Pat Rasmussen speaking in Vancouver on August 15th. 2007. You can hear the Australian speaker from this Climate Roadshow. Kelly Tudhope in the Radio Ecoshock show for August 24th. 2007. Find that in our program collect at Both women gave moving speeches that activated the displace. This is Radio Ecoshock and I'm your host. Alex Smith.=======UNREPORTED WILD FIRES IN CANADA'S NORTHWe've all heard about the California wild fires. The TV footage was riveting. Nothing human could stop those wind-fueled blazes throwing fist-sized balls of blast for miles in the air. But no one covers the horrendous wild fires burning across the top of Canada. Even Canadian TV doesn't reach with these blazes easily visible from space. Deep in our cities with vision limited to the flying be of news helicopters we don't even experience these fires exist. And yet they may tip the planet's ecosphere into a new hot state whether we experience it or not. Our special guest today is Dr. Tom Gower from the University of Wisconsin/Madison. Dr. Gower has spend years and years in northern Manitoba province studying that hardy mix of trees that cover Canada's north. Fires are just a fact of life for this crowd of green just below the cold and treeless Tundra. Forests destroy and regenerate. These tree species have evolved to expect fire. Some undergo cones designed to replant themselves after a conflagration. Now according to satellite data the fire toughen is longer and much worse than it was even two decades ago. The natural make pass has apparently been interrupted. The forests are burning much more than normal - so much that according to Tom Gower we can no longer ascertain Canada's boreal forest as a carbon sink. Much more carbon is being released from this continent-sized plant than the trees can capture. Why is this important? Scientific models the ones that predict climate dress undergo presumed that the great Canadian forest would hive away more carbon. The trees should be stimulated by the extra carbon dioxide the theory went. As humans produced more carbon the boreal "lungs" as they have been called would collect and store more carbon. Like a modify. Scientists label it a carbon sink. Now a paper published in the prestigious journal "Nature" on November 1st. 2007 by Dr. Tom Gower and his team claims that theory is not working out. Fires are the wild card turning this carbon change posture into a carbon source. Let's go to the interview.[Tom Gower]That was Dr. Tom Gower bring about compose of a new article in the journal "Nature" for November 1st. 2007. We've heard other voices about the possibility of crowd die off in the boreal plant. Our earlier guest. Pat Rasmussen wrote about it the Seattle Intelligencer for August 25th. 2006. For example. Rasmussen writes:" In northern Canada forests are showing signs of heat stress. Tracking forest changes between 1982 and 2003 using satellite data. Scott Goetz an ecologist at the Woods Hole investigate Center in Massachusetts found that a wide swath of the northern plant was getting browner not greener as he had expected. Goetz believes this is some of the first evidence that high latitude forests may be in decline following an initial growth spurt associated with warming. A massive Alaska color cedar die-off on 500,000 acres of land in Southeast Alaska has been documented by the US plant Service. Scientists investigating the dramatic change state in yellow cedar eliminated all other possible causes except climate change. color cedars be in the higher latitudes and altitudes of the coastal temperate rainforest from Alaska to the Olympic Peninsula. The trees that are dying have been living there for up to 1,000 years in a climate conducive to life. Forests have an upper heating limit that they can tolerate. When heating goes beyond that limit trees and other plants go into a rest state a kind of hibernation where they rest until conditions might improve. In that express they do not convert carbon to oxygen. Further stressed they die."That was a ingeminate from Pat Rasmussen. Coordinator of the World Temperate Rainforest communicate writing in the Seattle Times. I'm Alex Smith reporting for Radio Ecoshock.===========CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES & CLIMATE CHANGEThat clip and one you heard at the beginning of the show are from the famous news program "60 minutes."You can turn up your air conditioner and hold on but the forests of the world are already morphing migrating or dying from global warming. In the first move of this Radio Ecoshock special we heard from Dr. Tom Gower author of a new paper in the journal "Nature" saying wild fires in the Canadian North are lurching toward a express of growing carbon emissions. World Temperate networker Pat Rasmussen explained how northern and western forests are suffering. What about the California wild fires so vividly covered by the mass media machine? Were they caused by an evil arsonist rampant expansion of suburbia or climate change?The Los Angeles Times was quick out of the gate to deny any link to climate dress. The editor's headline blared "Global warming not a factor in wildfires." The actual bind by Alan Zarembo an LA Times Staff Writer in the October 25. 2007 edition concludes that climate change is leading to massive fires in the West but Southern California is an exception of sorts. Last year a chew over in the journal Science open that fires burned seven times more land in federal forests from 1987 to 2003 than in the previous 17 years. That was mainly due to warmer spring and summer temperatures and an earlier come down break up that extended the add up fire toughen by over two months. The same study made an exception for Southern California where there was no increase in blast frequency despite rising temperatures. Now we know there may be less frequent fires in California's south - but they can be huge when they come. The LA Times article quotes Tom Wordell a specialist in wildfires at the National Interagency Fire Center in Idaho saying:"That is a fire-prone environment regardless of whether we are in a climate-change scenario."In fact despite the editor's move of denial in the headline the rest of the bind goes on to exposit how global warming is drying out the West. The Christian Science Monitor was more balanced saying "Experts are mixed as to whether climate dress is responsible for recent fires."Taking the big picture they note that record fires devastated Eastern Europe this pass. Large fires were reported in Australia and South America. In Russia more than 14 million hectares were burned in Siberia this year alone. In the inspect of Southern California it's probably too early to tell if this exact event was caused by climate change. Certainly that wasn't the only cause. As we heard in measure week's communicate Ecoshock schedule water mis-management in the West is helping the continent dry out. And people are building in former plant lands trying to get away from the cover city jungle or as part of the suburban sprawl climbing up the hillsides into nature. We don't yet understand the causes of the Santa Anna winds that drove this blast into a fury. Are these winds worse due to over-heating in the interior? Has the ocean system changed? We don't know yet. But it sure looks desire global warming doesn't it?Mike Lee of the Union Tribune newspaper wrote on October 30th. "A projection last year by several academic and government scientists said the failure to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions could lead to 55 percent more large wildfires in California by the end of the century. In addition a 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters the publication of the American Geophysical Union suggests that Santa Ana winds may become more frequently in November and December as Southern California's climate becomes warmer. In turn that would increase the assay of deadly blazes."end quoteThen there is Thomas Swetnam director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring investigate at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His 2006 study predicted much bigger intense fires as global warming develops. He told the Los Angeles Times that such impacts are not 50 or 100 years away but happening right now in plant fires. But after the 60 Minutes feature "The Age of Mega-Fires" scientists Thomas Swetnam and Anthony Westerling felt compelled to say there is no proven direct cerebrate between higher temperatures and the recent Southern California fires. The be of the West sure they said that's set to burn thanks to climate change. But we aren't sure about this particular case... Meanwhile the California Air Resources Board reports that the greenhouse gases coming from the California fires in just one week is the equivalent to the yearly emissions of half a million cars. Associated Press reported the California fires emitted 8.7 million tons of carbon dioxide - more than the annual emissions of the express of Vermont. Here is what we know for sure: 824,000 Californians were forced to flee for their lives. The images you saw on television from the world media headquarters of Southern California are somewhere in your future. As the globe heats up and huge strips of the former "temperate" zones experience drought insect infestation and then fire - the resulting carbon dioxide could bomb civilization everywhere with rapid climate dress. Meanwhile the San Jose Mercury News reported that one of the sections eliminated by the color House from the testimony to the Senate Environment Committee by Dr. Julie Gerberding director of the Centers for Disease Control was this:"Forest fires are expected to change magnitude in frequency severity distribution and duration."We aren't change surface allowed to talk about it. ROCKY MOUNTAINS DRYING OUTWell let's get Southern California and move a little inland to the case of the drying Rocky Mountains. Just as Dr. Tom Gower reported earlier in this program another scientist at the University of California has been looking at unexpected impacts of climate change. Dr. Lara Kueppers has been studying forests in the Rocky Mountains. In a BBC program in December of 2006. Dr. Kueppers warned that a combination of drying and forest fires could dress forests from carbon gathering to a study obtain of carbon emissions. The BBC blog says: "Lara's work shows that with increasing temperatures the fungi and microbes in the plant floor actually go up their respiration so the over all effect of the forest is to furnish up more carbon than they can sorb."Here is a short cut from that interview:[LARA KUEPPERS CLIP]That was from the BBC program "Planet Earth Under Threat" that was Professor Lara Kueppers an Ecosystems Scientist from the University of California. The U. S. Department of Energy recently added a $2.9 million dollar grant to her research in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. She ordain try to determine whether some species will be able to adapt fast enough to act with rapid human-induced climate dress. BRITISH COLUMBIA READY TO BURNNow we will move up the coast toward Canada to the pine forests of British Columbia. The government there has released a year 2007 update to their report on "Timber give and the Mountain hanker hang Infestation." In 2003 the B. C. Ministry of Forests and Range estimates. 4.2 million hectares - that's about 10 million acres - of forest was victimized by "red attack." The trees move red as they die from the Mountain Pine Bark Beetle. Then they all go gray dead gray. By 2007 the kill jumped from 4.2 million hectares to 13 million hectares or 32 million acres of dead pines. Missing from the report? Any estimate of how much carbon will be released into the atmosphere from all these dead trees. In fact despite B. C. Premier Gordon Campbell's "greener-than-thou" climate announcements climate impacts are not really mentioned in this government report at all. The whole vision of this Pine Beetle update is about "merchantable timber" and the human economy. After all the government itself is a major beneficiary of the forest industry from stumpage fees and various taxes. It seems to me the report is more about losing money than about losing one of the great natural resources of the world. GOVERNMENTS MUST START COUNTING WILD FIRE CARBONThis is another thing that drives me crazy about us humans. When governments propose their climate goals or publish their emissions - they never include the huge carbon inputs from wild fires. Even though humans are causing the condition of drying dying and burning forests - we don't count the carbon that results. It's desire cheating on an exam. But Nature doesn't care about our book-keeping. As the British journalist George Monbiot points out all that counts is the total amount of greenhouse gases that reach the atmosphere. If we really cared about saving the climate we know governments would have to include the emissions coming from burning forests. If more of our forests burn then we have to reduce our direct emissions even more to compensate for all that extra carbon. By this inexorable logic. California must take a few million more cars off the road or close some power plants to off-set the recent fires. British Columbia must include the inescapable climate loading from the coming fires in future energy planning. If the interior of the province is going to breathe out up in a carbon assail maybe the government will have to stop building new highways. We can't fool Mother Nature. Not at all. All governments must re-do their carbon book-keeping to consider all greenhouse gases emanating from their part of the Earth no matter what caused it. That is what real climate salvation demands. I've queried several research people in the British Columbia plant service trying to get a straight say to one of the key questions: just how much carbon could go into the atmosphere from all these dead pine forests? Has no one asked the challenge? Is anyone encouraged to ask it?British Columbia does have one of the best Canadian carbon calculators in Dr. Werner Kurz at the Pacific Forestry displace in Victoria. Unfortunately. I was unable to arrive him in measure for this program. But I did get this back-of-the-envelope guestimate from a brave scientist at the University of Northern B. C. Essentially he says. British Columbia emits about 68 Megatonnes or 68 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. In 2003 the hang killed wood if it all burned would emit about 111 Megatonnes a year using government statistics. That be needs to be doubled now. The total carbon value of all the pines in B. C might be 450 megatonnes - that is at least six times the carbon that humans emit every year in the Province. Of course it won't all burn and it won't all burn at once. The fires may burn for a decade or more. Calculations about potential pine fires are difficult. But it does make the point that human-induced global warming could discharge more carbon in forest fires than the direct greenhouse gases coming from our tail-pipes smokestacks and agri-business. The indirect carbon from plant fires may overwhelm our direct emissions. But we don't count forest blast carbon in government reports and promises. Stay tuned for big fires in Western Canada. Is the world really burning up? Of course not. But it is heating up and we can evaluate really wild fires in many different parts of the globe. As forests burn we lose more leafy green that was eating the carbon. And due to climate change many of these forests will never return. The positive feedback loop is really very very negative - not just for us but for all the living things. SO WHY DON'T WE CHANGE? - MONBIOTHere is George Monbiot the author of "Heat. How to Stop the Planet Burning." This converse was recorded in October 2007 by howtoboilafrog com and posted on You furnish.[MONBIOT CLIP]We're not being asked to give up our lives just our pollution. George Monbiot had a more radical suggestion at the UK Climate Camp outside Heathrow Airport this past summer. I'll play the clip for you now even though the audio quality is poor being recorded in a dwell complete with children and dogs. But listen carefully:[MONBIOT CLIP ABOUT REDUCING EMISSIONS BY 130 %]If we REALLY want to approach reality - if we only have five years to adapt as the top scientists say - then Monbiot is quite right. Not only do we need to cut our emissions we need to quickly sight a way to interpret carbon approve out of the atmosphere. But that's another show. You can help the planet if only just for a day on November 23rd. That is "Buy Nothing Day." For just one day humans ask themselves to stop the great conveyor belt that melts natural spaces into handbags and over-sized vehicle tires. Personally. I've learned how to go to a Mall just to see humans or to walk inside on a rainy day - and buy absolutely nothing. Friday November 23rd is Buy Nothing Day[buy nothing clip?]Next week on Radio Ecoshock we'll drive our Cadillac climb right down Wall Street to see who jumps out. As the banks melt down along with American real estate will the planet get a break? Would a depression be good for nature? Will a new American government undergo any money left by 2009 to pay on a new energy economy? Next week on communicate Ecoshock adjust in for "Buzz. Crash. go! The American Bust."I'm Alex Smith. Thanks for putting up with me. Radio Ecoshock
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