The Fiery Inferno
The month of November 2018 will be known as the month Paradise, a small rural community in California, burned down. I heard and saw the news and reacted with some sadness. President Trump's removal of US from the Montreal Climate Change Pact of countries sends a very clear and present message. You mess with mother nature and well, this is what happens, it was going to happen sooner or later. How shallow and unthinking can you get ?
Countless people have lost their entire homes, their livelihoods and their precious loved ones in the blink of an eye. The fire storm was possibly caused by an electrical cable (some electrical company is assisting in the investigations right now) but the damage done is irreversible.
Aerial View of the Fires
There are 2 reasons amongst the many raised for this catastrophe.
1. The forest filled with pine trees is now very densely, some say too densely populated
with trees. Management of the forest led by strict anti-logging laws is one factor.
Once the fire starts on the ground, especially dry ground which had been experiencing drought for some time now, a little spark can easily burn the undergrowth. Once the flames get higher, and reach the lower pine cones of the trees, it changes into a deadly catalyst leading to a much bigger fire. So the closer the trees are to each other, or the denser the forest is, that is, the number of trees per square kilometre, the faster and more intense the fire is expected to be, once it starts to get out of control.
2. Climate Change ; this is long term and we have been pollutants of the green and ever sickening Earth for some time now. We have massive plastic dumped irresponsibly into our oceans. The growing middle classes especially in China, now want to eat red meat, meaning more farmed cows for quality beef, meaning we have more farmland for rearing this top quality Wagyu and Kobe beef. Well and good, but these cows FART, so massive amounts of methane (main gas in fart) are being emitted into the atmosphere, and contribute to the dreaded Greenhouse Gases further creating a gas cloud which prevents the heat from the earth's crust from rising up and dissipating into the outer atmosphere.
Hence the incidence of hotter and hotter temperatures on average for the last 25 years.
Of course, cows farting are not the only cause of climate change. The use of dangerous ozone depletion refrigerants (in air conditioners for example) also add to the greenhouse gases once they (the air conditioner or fridge) are not in use and scrapped.
The hotter climate has led to massive hot / cold fronts leading to more catastrophic cyclones,hurricanes and typhoons (they are all the same just of different intensity) as a result more catastrophic damage to our coastal towns, ports and villages.
Just last month, we saw the news that Venice, St Mark's square and Doge's Palace were all flooded because of rising tides again due to global warming and polar caps melting at a rate like never previously recorded in HISTORY.
Think about Paradise Lost ; this small community of less than 30,000 whose entire lives as they know it, gone in minutes.
It could and will one day happen to us. Let us think hard and start doing something NOW.
