 10 o'clock Mike. Are you ready? Are you back here and ready for zoom? Okay, let's get started then I'm dealing like built this or assembled I should say this this build last winter and That was after the Horrible horrible fires in Australia, and I did not plan on doing another session here this year but the end of September I Was waking up early to see the dawn to see the sunrise and I didn't see it it was hazy and cloudy and No beautiful dawn and at first I thought it was just the weather in the northeast of the United States and That was not going to be such an issue but Day after day It didn't change and that's really unusual So finally dawned on me that it wasn't my normal weather in the northeast it was that the smoke from the fire maelstroms in California and in Colorado they were Denying me Of a sunrise, but that isn't the important thing they were denying people in California and Oregon and Washington and Colorado their homes so if you have been to this build before You might notice a few changes here They're more houses and They're burned out. There's more smoke because there are more fires and the Most recent research that has come out The last week or two from various sources are showing that We have underestimated the effects of climate change We have underestimated the rapidity of The change that we will be undergoing And so I thought maybe we needed to revisit this and do it more like a a survey Yeah, underestimated is terrifying max so that the most recent one that has come out is saying that the increase in Air surface temperature the warming over the next 80 years to the end of this century is not going to we're not going to be at 1.5 degrees centigrade increase or two, but they're now saying or Now whether this will bear out or not But four is really terrifying so the presentation today the slides are More than anything just a survey of Of where we are globally and what some of the issues are But more than anything that is on the slides what I feel is Essential is that we get into very serious conversation about some of these issues So the the this morning we are focusing on fire Drought and flood and although I pulled the slides together Thomas is part of this presentation to and Thomas. I am certainly hoping that You will speak up at any time as well as anybody else This is not a presentation about my work as much as it is a presentation about the the state that we find ourselves in drought fire Flood and We are here in this build so that we can feel it we can hear it we can almost smell it because it's a natural cycle that has been ongoing for millennia for eons But right now the cycle has gone wrong and humans have Interrupted this natural cycle Today we are learning that this year We're now into November. So it is Close to the conclusion of 2020 It may beat out 2016 to be the hottest year on record Siberia we think of Siberia as cold Siberia had a hundred degree days not one Numbers of hundred degree days last year Norway and again this year Norway and the northern parts of Sweden and Finland Had a hundred degree temperatures and as of the end of October The winter ice had not yet started to form in the Arctic Ocean. There are always droughts There are always droughts in some of the Mediterranean type biomes in some of the savannah type biomes around the world but The last few years drought has been worse so that Although it's lessened a little bit Australia had 34 months straight of drought in Colorado Where we've had some enormous fires there saying that this is the word worst drought that Colorado has had in a thousand years the Southwest of the US and California have been under drought conditions for years now and they're wondering if The Southwest may go back to the drought conditions that haven't been seen there in over a thousand years Drought that was excessive for hundreds of years And I got to put it aside here that one of the cities that is growing The most quickly in the US is Phoenix right in the middle of drought area so it's important I think to reframe some of the the conversations About drought and about humanity. This is our problem We're going to focus although there are Many layers here of nature and humans and the interruption of the cycles we're going to focus today mostly on the landscape characteristics and human land and water use Because if we're going to interrupt if we are going to do anything to Lesson this or have it not be as drastic as it looks like it's going to be this is where we need to focus global fire map This was January of 2020 now you notice here down here in the lower right-hand corner you see you know fires in In Australia and the southeastern part of Australia what it doesn't show is by the next month This was all the way down and covered a good chunk of New South Wales what you do see here along the central part of Africa is the Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo where there were lots of fires you see Brazil which has had fires all year Including in the it's going to be the almost the center of the South American map I'm a little bit toward the left-hand area where you see a lot of the yellow interspersed in the red along the the border with Peru and Chile that there was an enormous fire and that that part of the Amazon and rain forest If you go up north This is also January. So in California. It is the time of year that is not Heavily fired, but there's still fires in January By the time summer came along All of California was in blaze Look to the right on the map and you see the fires never went out in Siberia So we really have had a fire year Yeah, Vic that that's The drought that's what I was talking about in the the southwest of the United States there that Off and on it from the historical records. It looks like there was about 500 years of extreme drought This is going a little bit deeper into Australia where Not only do you have the The dry lands, but they're and we showed this before Some of the primeval forests there burned out So it's not only drought that is caused by climate change here and this is true not only of the southeast of Australia, but it's also true of the central part of the United States and California it's true of Some of Brazil and Argentina is That the water table has been drawn down so that the land is drier the dirt is drier these are grazing and forest and Farming areas around the world So the fires in the south the deep south were the mega fires They were small fires that got put out, but they show up on the map so To emphasize that this is a global concern we have Australia and the extent of burning in Moose, New South Wales over the a year's period is just mind-boggling So we know that California's far fires and and it's a lot higher this year Have been bad, but compared to what they had in Australia and I chose Pictures this time that have structures because unlike other Previous centuries We're now burning down neighborhoods and towns Yeah, I Latitude yes, I think latitude To the extent that It reflects the different kinds of biomes, but I think it's more you know, it's more complex than that but when the Climate warms when the surface temperature warms when we have the chain in climate when we have More than that the extremes of climate You're going to get the the and we'll talk a little bit more about this the the cycle of Drying out and flooding and drying out and flooding And and this is pretty much exemplary of that now the Indian Ocean Dipole is not the only whether Related or ocean related Incidents that affects Australia and East Africa but it is a major one and when you have the winds going One direction you have flooding in East Africa and you have the Fires in Australia winds glow go the other direction and you have the Fires in East Africa and you have the the flooding in Australia. So these two areas are Are Interrelated Right now it looks like that might be more neutral and that would be good because then Australia would get a little bit of water without getting Extreme flooding this year, but you know, that's that's still it's only November. Who knows what will happen in January But these are very very complex Patterns that we have and and we're getting better at modeling them, but we're not yet good We almost forgot about drought and fire in Europe But they they got it too Spain in particular has had years of extreme drought It's bad enough in the Amazon when We have fires set and logging and clearing of the the areas that are The carbon sinks and the the lungs of the earth the the rainforest but here we had the fires take off on in areas in the Northwest of the rainforest the Amazon rainforest Where they have not typically been so strong and so there was real devastation there Siberia continues to burn and Now they're saying remember I said earlier that the Arctic had not frozen started to freeze 10 days ago and They're saying that the smoke from the fires is partly to blame here Not only that but it is melting the tundra so that we are Having more methane released into the air, which is a very potent greenhouse gas Imagine this for a minute, and I was gonna pause zoom in on this This was a neighborhood it wasn't one neighborhood like paradise in California two years ago in Oregon the wildfires destroyed five towns and Almost without warning The fires just raged through towns Let this sink in this is forest land These are towns So well, we'll talk about that in in just a minute about the trees We've gone now from Oregon to Estes Park Cal Colorado now Estes Park is in the Northern part of Colorado, and it is a little bit to the east but you know fairly central It's not far from Fort Collins. It's on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park Roughly 6,000 people live in Estes Park When This building started burning they evacuated all 6,000 people These folks were really lucky because this was the troublesome fire, which you may have heard of Troublesome boy, is that an apt name for this fire? But it I say they were lucky because When the people were evacuated on Saturday Saturday night and Sunday morning they Colorado had a snowstorm and so This area right here had a foot of snow overnight It did not even a foot of snow did not put out the fire but it damped enough that the Firefighters were then able to get this fire under control Now let's get to some of the contributing factors here in addition to the Human building, yeah, we've had over the last number of years Infestations of bark beetles, and it's not just in Colorado all those This is a picture of Colorado. Yeah, these are Huge swaths huge stands of dead trees It's also throughout the the southwest. It's also into California and surprisingly there are Bark beetles in the southeast of the United States so one of the I Mean the bark beetles have always been around I mean this is not new what is new is that the with the change in the climate with the warming of the climate The larvae don't die off in the winter It has not gotten cold enough for a prolonged period of time Periods of time to kill off these beetles. So you will see stands like this That are all through Colorado all the way up through Montana, and those are all dead trees So when you have a swath like this a huge swath of dead trees This is when you have the the fuel for the fire So if you had a lightning strike for instance take humans out of this And you had a lightning strike anywhere in this Area It just goes up So fast that there's nothing anyone can do about it. Yeah, it's a little hard to Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, so this gets back to the question earlier about the trees and the in the the former natural cycle of You had the fires burn. I mean this is this is something that has always happened But when you didn't have prolonged drought like we have now when you didn't have the the Very very hot temperatures for prolonged periods of time you had healthier trees And the fires would lightning would strike the fires would take out the underbrush and the lower Limbs of the trees, but the trees with the mature trees would survive for the most part That is no longer the case The mature trees are now under great stress from from drought and from infestations one more piece to add to this and that is the Ogallala aquifer is an enormous aquifer and it Runs underneath eight states in the central US If you zoom in closely, you'll be able to see that There are areas that have been drawn down particularly in the south particularly in the northern part of Texas where the aquifer has been Not only drawn down, you know 150 feet in many instances where it does not show here on this map But it is in this lower area The aquifer it's shallow to start with in in general and it has collapsed so that in these areas of Texas you will never ever get the aquifer filled again, it has collapsed you have where the For the land just sinks 10 15 feet and so No amount of rain will refill that But we are paying farmers and we are allowing other people to Draw down the water. I mean we are literally paying farmers to draw down this aquifer so Policies of government it are not Not helping here Yeah, so let's get back to Colorado for a moment here. We I don't know if you can see up there Just below where it's gray and blue. You'll see kind of an L shaped yellow and orange area. That's the Northern Colorado area that is where the Work for Collins is and where SS Park is and You can see that that has been drawn down like a hundred feet of the aquifer. So the ground is dry It's not only that the air has dried out. It's that the drop the ground is dry Let's skip over Skip over the mountains here and into California for a bit So the Creek fire in California early September it Ended up being the largest fire in California history and in California just this year Almost four and a half million acres have burned out some of the fires were started by dry lightning Because of the the weather and the climate There were storms in September in California, but no rain, but not all of them some of them were started in In fact, the major ones really have been started by people Accidentally by smoking But worse than that by partying So some of the worst fires that we have had have been Careless people some of the fires burned right through Wine country now this actually is the glass mountain in in flames and I thought It might be appropriate For us to have a memorial to this and so you'll notice up on the hill We have the glass mountain in burned out and Even the wineries here in Napa and Sonoma that did not get burned because of the smoke many of them had their their whole Produce for the year their whole winemaking Smoked So that it became useless so here you have in the left-hand side on the Just above the middle you have the August complex which ended up being a million acres in one enormous Gigafire and This didn't spread over weeks. This spread over hours Hours so by the time you realize there was danger you were already in great danger For those of us who live in the the northeast of the United States and or who have visited there and have some sense of The size of the state of Rhode Island the fire that single fire Was larger than the entire state of Rhode Island Wildfires or the effects of wildfires don't just go away Because you have millions of acres burned you have millions of acres then of burn scar and Coupled with drought you have ground that has no roots Ground that is dry and so when you have An area like California that is prone to mudslides anyway You have mudslides For years it takes a very long time for the to develop or redevelop the kinds of root systems that you have in a forest so Thomas put together a list of some of the things that are contributors here or To the wildfires particularly in California, but to any of the areas and Take a minute and read this and Thomas, please do chime in at any time But take a minute to read it and look at what are the things that you would have Thought of and some of the things you might not have thought of You'll you this might be a good time for me to introduce myself and give everybody a perspective of The drought fire flooding from Ground zero view in California would that be acceptable and everybody Yes now yes, okay great well My name here in second life is Thomas. I am a consulting hydrogeologists. I live in The Central Valley of California I've been a practicing professional hydrogeologist for almost 40 years and Let me give you some perspective About where Fresno is so you can have an idea Fresno lies in essentially the geographic center of California. I Have lived here long enough that three of the largest fires in California history. I've been able to see the direct impacts of either from my front porch or Through the eyes of my very many friends. I Think some of the things that people need to grasp About California's we are a very unique geographic and geologic environment We have all every single kind of climactic microclimate and combined Environmental conditions in the United States the deepest or I should say yes that the Deepest place in the continental United States is in California Which is Death Valley and the highest place In the continental United States is in California, which is Mount Whitney We have four major mountain ranges that produce their own Climactic conditions whether it's rain shadow or depletion of Rain reaching one side versus the other We have massive forests and we have a lot of people that demand a lot of water one of the things that you're going to learn about and Through Delia's presentation and she's done a tremendous job here is droughts in California droughts are normal In the southwestern United States, but they can be exacerbated by a number of different conditions Fires are normal in the southwestern United States As an example native Americans up until about the 1900s Actually were allowed the cultural practice of burning the forest floor because it replenished nutrients that they needed but that was stopped and Created its own conditions and began a practice of forest management to this day, which is still controversial And then flooding in California. We've done a tremendous amount to control flooding because of the Millions of acres of farm land that we have here in the Central Valley The Central Valley of California is one of the largest food producers in the world Providing roughly 40% of the world's food the valleys roughly 300 kilometers north to south and 100 kilometers east to west We consume Millions and millions of acre feet of groundwater and surface water To supply that irrigation or to supply for irrigation of those crops from a drought standpoint when we're faced with a changing climate and An increasing population the demand on water in California is Insufficient to meet that As a consequence we experience something called subsidence the ground actually drops in certain parts of the Central Valley of California due to Water withdrawals groundwater withdrawals. We've seen upwards of 40 meters of ground subsidence and this has created all kinds of problems for infrastructure With the changes in the climate what we experience then is these massive fires That are not normal we see these gigantic Gigantic mega fires Much like the complex is up north I got to watch the Creek fire and the campfire and we had Almost 20 days of smoke conditions here in the Central Valley that made The air quality so poor that people were asked to stay inside Just yesterday the University of California at Los Angeles through some modeling efforts are Predicting even worse flooding here in the Central Valley Much like we saw in the 1850s where the state capital of Sacramento was Essentially inundated due to what's known as an atmospheric river But we have a combination that's occurring here that is Replicated around the world changing weather conditions creating drier climates Lower humidity it is affecting the forests Two of the major Utilities electrical utilities here in California estimated that as a result of climate change and the bark beetles There's somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 million dead trees in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and They can't remove it. There's no place to take it. There's nothing to do with it Other than watch it burn At which we managed to accomplish here just recently so from the standpoint of Climate change what we're seeing is the extremes are being driven Further and further towards an unsettled or unbalanced situation human demand for water is Increasing despite efforts to manage that the atmosphere is becoming more conducive to extremes and Now as Julia showed in one of her slides We face the possibility of a great deal of runoff due to weather in the mountains where we have rain and snow melt driving flood conditions and Soil erosion so what we're seeing is this spiraling Upward or downward I suppose it depends on which way you want to go with that But this spiral towards more extreme conditions here in California But I think that what we're Experiencing is just the beginning and I'm going to turn it back over to you, Delia This is only the background information in my opinion So I Think the question is how should we think about wildfires and in what context so we're going to go in a Little bit different direction here and a month or so ago month and a half ago, I I was not able to Participate in the ethics conversation Because I was unavailable that weekend, but ethics is a more and more critical area In any of the scientific endeavors and it absolutely is so far as environmental issues are concerned so As we keep saying fires are natural drought is natural Blood is natural We now have human settlements that have encroached Significantly into those areas and human decisions that are impacting those natural cycles and breaking them down some of the things that are happening is not only the The interruption whoops. What's that happening? We're getting back wrong direction. Sorry about that Not only The interruption of the national cycles, but as Thomas was talking about the Central Valley of California is a farming area it has produces much of the not only the country's US Produce but shipped around the world. That's also true of New South Wales of the Australian The Murray Darling Basin is the Australian red basket When you look at Brazil, how much meat comes from what had formerly been Rain forest So all around the world we have Turned these forests into cultivated areas we have introduced Non-native species to do that and Monocultures for the efficiency in farming We assume we have a right of ownership, but do we? So there are three very short little videos and I'm going to put the first one It's only about a minute and a half in here for people who don't know the All of the tragedy of the commons, but when you're watching this think about not what was done originally and how it was Conceived, but what was how we would apply this to more development worldwide So just click that and let it go for for a minute and let me know when when I put the next one in Well, let me try to answer that real quick with regards to Land stewardship policy if you're referring to fire management, there is a great deal of fire management in place Both at local and state levels with various agencies involved, but there's also a great deal of Count there are great number of challenges with regards to that You've got two large utilities that run electrical lines through the forests that have responsibilities For managing those electrical utilities and not causing fires which they have in the past And you have various agencies whether it's the federal Forest Service or the state Cal fire and Are trying to find ways to fight these fires So much of their budgets have been Utilized or used in fighting these fires in the last 12 years that it leaves them very little for active and effective forest management, and I just put the second video in Eleanor Ostrom was Awarded the Nobel Prize for economics a few years ago And she talks about Reclaiming the commons in many ways so in conclusion Here Let's talk about a couple of questions, and you may have other questions. These are just three But the ethics of How we are managing our resources The ethics involved are Unfortunately little discussed in my opinion. They are absolutely critical We are Going along as somebody said as though the resources are endless they will take care of themselves and We we can keep Abusing them and and I don't use that word lightly because we are abusing the and wrecking Ecosystem after ecosystem after ecosystem In my opinion, we are not even asking the right questions We are asking questions related to what we have set out as Isolated areas isolated situations rather than seeing Ecosystems as systems rather than seeing us as part of the natural world so what are some of the questions we should be asking and How are policies that humans make? Within the mindsets That run us. How are they maintaining the practices that are Driving us more and more rapidly into Situations of environmental collapse and who needs to be part of these conversations Are we talking? With the people the right people are we talking with Are we talking with people are we? convening people together with the expertise with the understanding with the actual experience Are we helping policy makers Have these experiences and and one of the reasons that I built this out the way I did is so that you can go and you can stand Here on the edge of a fire walk into the fire and get a sense of the terror And even that is only the tiniest tiniest sense of What that would be if this were even more widespread than it is So what are some of the questions we ought to be asking and who should we be asking? And who should we be engaging? It's not going to go away by itself if it were If it we're gonna get better by itself it would be getting better and Instead it's getting worse. It's not the Cougars and the kangaroos That are Exacerbating this It is not the birds That are making the fire spread. We are part of it is And it's been alluded to and I put it a little bit into the presentation is that instead of seeing ourselves as embedded in nature We behave as though we have rights and ownership is that valid and what does that stand on? humans didn't used to believe That they could own the land but today in many places humans do believe that healthy ecosystems Withstand natural fires much much much better than The stressed Boris that we have now and what would it take to be wild? what would that difference be what would What would be the trade-offs here and and by the way I have I think I have made The slides the whole slide show that so that anybody can take a copy. I hope I have made all of the The slides themselves with the perms that people can use change whatever so when we have concentrated centers of population Like the the four towns in Oregon that were just wiped out this year Virtually overnight wiped out were they building in areas that were That made controlling fire Difficult and should people be able to build in any area that they want When you have as Thomas was saying the Central Valley of California or the Central Plains of Texas and Colorado or the Murray Darling Basin in Australia and you draw down the water So that You have increased your production and increased the Mostly monoculture that again makes the the general ecosystem less healthy What are the consequences and the consequences don't fall equally on people? So these are tough questions. We're not going to answer them today but I hope that we will Keep mulling these around and I hope that every time each one of us reads an Article on the web or in the paper or here is a conversation That touches on these areas. We'll start thinking of some of these questions and we'll start following those threads as to What the consequences are what the benefits are what the risks are what the challenges are? and As we do this we will engage more people in conversation and Keep those conversations going Because if it's just me if it's just you We are going to have this as an increasing spiral so I am More than inviting I really am begging people to have these conversations Daily With ourselves and with other people that we come into contact with So thank you for coming today. It is now 1102 and I did want to keep this to an hour But I hope we have provoked some serious thought here Do take a copy do bring other people up here bring classes use it for teaching space That's why we have it It was my pleasure and Thomas. Thank you for participating. It was fun to work with you today Thank you, Delia. I appreciate the chance and thanks to everybody for allowing me a minute to Interject my observations from what I refer to as ground zero