The Wide Gate To Damnation

"The gate that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it."
~ Matthew, 7:13-14

As regular readers of Wit's End must by now suspect, I am very fond of forgotten farms and deserted houses.  I love to take pictures of the peeling, crackled paint, the collapsed roofs, and the rotted sills and sashes.  I find shattered window panes inviting and it delights me to find rusted equipment and vehicles being enveloped by the tendrils of vines.  I wish I could claim the photograph above as my own, since in my estimation it is a triumph of the genre, but I discovered it on a website which itself seems to have been forsaken, myabandonedbuildings.com.  It appears to have been created by a teenager who boldly trespassed into derelict factories, schools and even hospitals, but perhaps has since lost interest.  There are quite a few wonderful images to be seen there, from South Jersey mostly, a few of which I've copied, supplemented later by some of my own.

Before anything else, here is a storm update from the Washington Post, which indicates, curiously, that trees continued to fall even days after the storm had passed.

 "...Sarah Williams had thought she was one of the lucky ones. She and many of her neighbors had power all weekend. That luck seemed to run out just after noon Monday when her home and many others in her neighborhood lost electricity."

"Williams, 52, said she called Pepco and was told that many homes are losing power for several reasons. One reason, she was told, was that Pepco was taking down some areas that had power in order work on blacked-out areas. She said she was also told that trees weakened by the storm have begun to fall, taking power lines down with them."

On the floor of the barn, our intrepid interloper found this stained and faded book - The Fascinating Oil Business - which was published in 1940.  Imagine!  How much has happened since then.  The "fascinating" business has, in partnership with coal, rendered human civilisation ephemeral.

I have been thinking that there must be some way to objectively compare the relative damage done by falling trees and that done directly to property by wind.  A trend towards relatively more tree damage would be a clear indicator of their poor health, but I've tried calling insurance companies before - they're usually not very helpful.  The following story doesn't have any statistics but it's anecdotally amusing.  It was reported in a local paper that a storm last Friday night knocked down trees in Hershey PA, closing the park temporarily.

It was said the trunks of at least fifty pines snapped.

Unless somebody rushed out first thing Saturday morning to hang a basket of petunias on a lamppost, the wind wasn't severe enough to knock it off or even strip the flowers.  And yet the trees broke.

It's quite clear from the trunk lying at the right-hand corner, in the photo above, that at least this particular interior was rotted.

Should winds ferocious enough to knock over huge sturdy trees leave street signs unscathed?

A related article in the same local paper informs us that:

"The National Weather Service in State College said a "strong down burst" of wind hit the Hershey area early Friday morning -- not a tornado.  The strength of the winds was described as similar to tropical storm force winds, about 50 mph to 70 mph, the weather service said."

Why is it news to report not-news?

"Wanda Gomulka said she is unsure whether it was thunderstorm or tornado that knocked down a tree next to her house....as she has never seen damage quite like this....she's happy she invested in new windows yesterday or she might have had a bigger mess to clean up."

This is becoming a familiar refrain, by no means the first time I have encountered it.  People believe there must have been a tornado, or they describe winds as "hurricane-force" even when they're not, because nothing less violent can explain the extreme and unheard-of destruction to trees - and by the way, the house itself exhibits no damage from the "tornado".  I know this doesn't prove anything...but I don't have to prove anything every single time I write a blog post anymore - that's why I wrote the book!

Emboldened by the example of our temeritous host of AbandonedBuildings, I snuck stealthily into this complex of farm outbuildings, brazenly ignoring the prominent "No Trespassing" signs.  Other than some deer that burst, snorting, from the shrubbery and some barn swallows that swooped at my head in irate indignation, no one was to be seen.

Amid all the recent excitement about derechos and heat hazards, I will post just two links to science that indicate, like the hundreds of others catalogued above, that ozone, which increases in proportion to temperature, underlies health threats to both people, animals, insects and plants.

This research, Environmental Oxidant Pollutant Effects on Biologic Systems - A Focus on Micronutrient Antioxidant–Oxidant Interactions, was of interest because I often wonder whether ozone has anything to do with the disappearance of insects.  The paper compares defense mechanisms as manifested in humans, plants, and insects.  It's very technical and I don't pretend to understand much more of the terminology other than "and, if and but".  However, clearly there IS enough of an issue for scientists to explore it.  So I'll just excerpt three sections and leave it to scholars more competent than I who may want to peruse the original.

"Oxidative atmospheric pollutants represent a significant source of stress to both terrestrial plants and animals. The biosurfaces of plants and surface-living organisms are directly exposed to these pollutant stresses. These surfaces, including respiratory tract surfaces, contain integrated antioxidant systems that would be expected to provide a primary defense against environmental threats caused by atmospheric reactive oxygen species. When the biosurface antioxidant defenses are overwhelmed, oxidative stress to the cellular components of the exposed biosurfaces can be expected, inducing inflammatory, adaptive, injurious, and reparative processes."

"Studies of mutants and/or transformed plants and insects, with specific alterations in key components of antioxidant defense systems, offer opportunities to dissect the complex systems that maintain surface defenses against environmental oxidants. In this article, we use a comparative approach to consider interactions of atmospheric oxidant pollutants with selected biosystems, with focus on O₃ as the pollutant; plants, flies, skin, and lungs as the exposed biosystems; and nonenzymatic micronutrient antioxidants as significant contributors to overall antioxidant defense strategies of these varied biosystems. Parallelisms among several living organisms, with regard to their protective strategies against environmental atmospheric oxidants, are presented."

"Most biologic systems are equipped with elaborate mechanisms for protection against the toxicity of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Toxicity arising from imbalances of biologic pro-oxidant and antioxidant processes is usually designated as oxidative stress. Prevalent among the oxidative stresses are contributions of cells generating ROS as part of normal aerobic metabolism, the ROS generated secondary to plant and animal responses to injury and invading organisms, and the ROS generated in polluted atmospheres. The environmental oxidant pollutants, including ozone (O₃), oxides of nitrogen, and particulates with chemically active surfaces (e.g., containing redox-cycling substances), represent an important source of oxidative stress to terrestrial plants and invertebrates and to vertebrate organisms including humans."

Slightly more comprehensible to a scientific illiterate like myself is the World Health Organization 2008 report on "Health Risks of Ozone from long-range transboundary air pollution".  While it makes only tangential reference to damaged vegetation, and the main focus is on humans, it certainly makes the point that climate change will increase ozone, which in turn contributes to premature death in heat waves.  I just don't know when people will ever understand that we're nowhere near the fabled "wet bulb" range of intolerable heat and humidity - so when people prematurely die in summer, it's the pollution, not the temperature...for the most part:

Abstract
Ozone is a highly oxidative compound formed in the lower atmosphere from gases (originating to a large extent from anthropogenic sources) by photochemistry driven by solar radiation. Owing to its highly reactive chemical properties, ozone is harmful to vegetation, materials and human health. In the troposphere, ozone is also an efficient greenhouse gas. This report summarizes the results of a multidisciplinary analysis aiming to assess the effects of ozone on health. The analysis indicates that ozone pollution affects the health of most of the populations of Europe, leading to a wide range of health problems. The effects include some 21,000 premature deaths annually in 25 European Union countries on and after days with high ozone levels. Current policies are insufficient to significantly reduce ozone levels in Europe and their impact in the next decade.

The lifetimes of many ozone precursors and their conversion products are sufficiently long to allow them to be transported over long distances in the atmosphere. Consequently, the large-scale ozone “background” level has a strong long range transport component determined by a wide range of emission sources.

 

On the other hand, the aforementioned factors (plumes, titration and deposition) depend strongly on small-scale geographical and meteorological conditions and superimpose local variations on the large-scale background level. Local emissions in urban areas reduce ozone levels close to the source and increase levels in the downwind plume. Local variation in deposition rates is also an important factor affecting the lifetime and local concentration of ozone.

 

Key Messages: 

 •  Ozone is a secondary pollutant formed in photochemical reactions from
nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as well as
methane and carbon monoxide. The process of ozone formation is complex
and depends on sunlight, geographical factors and the availability of the
precursors.

 

 •  In the vicinity of the source, NOx deplete ozone, leading to lower levels of
ozone in urban areas. Downwind, at a distance from the source, however,
NOx emissions lead to ozone formation. Ozone has a strong hemispheric
component, typically reaching 20–40 ppb (40–80 μg/m3).

 

 •  The majority of ozone precursor emissions originate from anthropogenic
sources. Important human activities that contribute to ozone formation include
transport (especially road vehicles and international maritime shipping),
combustion processes in energy production and industry, solvent use, biomass
burning and agricultural practices.

 

 •  Owing to the presence of stringent emission control legislation, ozone
precursor emissions are expected to decline in the EU over the coming decade.
However, lack of equivalent legislation will not prevent further increases in
precursor emissions in other countries that are Parties to the Convention on
LRTAP. This growth in emissions is expected to increase hemispheric ozone
background concentrations. Furthermore, climate change could lead to higher
biogenic emissions in the future.

 

 •  Methane emissions promote ozone formation and global climate change.

 

 •  Measures to reduce ozone precursor emissions will have many health benefits
in addition to the direct health impacts of lower ozone levels. These measures
will also reduce levels of other hazardous air pollutants and greenhouse
gases and will reduce radiative forcing. At the same time, less ozone in the
atmosphere will result in less damage to vegetation.

 

Health effects are not the only negative effects of ground-level ozone. It also
causes damage to vegetation in forests and natural ecosystems, to agricultural
crops and to materials. Further, ozone acts as a greenhouse gas with the third
largest radiative forcing.

[end of excerpt] 

Climatologists who study ice seem to have a very special and intense clarity of vision about just how bad the situation is.  I'm not certain that's true and if it is, I can only hazard guesses as to why.  Months away from modern cultural distractions?  The certain inexorability and irreversible nature of melting?  The question Desdemona answered my question with ended all my equivocating with an implacable finality - I had asked, doesn't climate change mean we're going to go extinct?  And Des merely replied:  Can you spell ALBEDO EFFECT?  I had to google it.

And so when we see reports like this from NOAA - Greenland Ice Sheet Getting Darker, and illustrations like this:

...plus stunning charts like this from Meltfactor:

 ...it's easier to understand why one of the members of the Arctic Emergency Group described what we can expect "when the sea ice is gone" with the following brutal analysis (take a deep breath):

~ Douglas Spence  

Now 

1. Even with the Arctic ice in the present state increasingly extreme weather is already moving us closer to a point of increasing risk to agricultural output.

2. For the last few years extreme weather has worsened year on year and since we have positive feedback processes in progress we have no reason to suppose this will do anything but accelerate rapidly. 

  

2012-13 

3. I expect significant to majority sea ice loss to occur in either 2012 or 2013, and expect this to dramatically worsen the weather, causing immediate stress to global food supplies. Combined with weak economic conditions we will see stress in countries dependent on food imports or aid triggering more "Arab spring" moments in previously stable regimes. Movement of refugees will cause knock on effects in neighbouring regions. 

4. Modern civilisation is fragile and dependent on global supply chains that can be disrupted both by weather and politics. We will experience an increasing incidence of problems maintaining normal operation in technologically advanced societies. There is the potential for conflict in the Arctic as new resources open up.

 

5. Other positive feedbacks such as methane release and forest burn off will accelerate. 

2014-15 

6. I expect total sea ice loss will occur during summer in either 2014 or 2015. By this time I expect agricultural output to have declined to a point where food supplies are inadequate and famine and conflict are rife. Farmers will not know what to plant or when and even acquiring seed from other climatic regions may be problematic.

 

7. Social conditions will be comparable to the Holomodor. People will try to eat anything and everything - earthworms, insects, each other - even in some cases their own children. Nation states will fragment and reform into smaller and increasingly violent competitive groups fighting over rapidly diminishing resources. Maintaining the supply chains required for the operation of modern technology including agriculture will be largely impossible. 

8. If we see widespread war before nation states fragment there is a possibility of the use of nuclear and genetically enhanced biological weaponry. Whether through war or famine the human population will be in freefall.

 

2016+

9. The climate will continue to worsen as more heat flows into the system and this will become the new threat to survivors as population density becomes too low to sustain conflict. Most survivors will be eliminated, leaving the human race on the brink of extinction. A majority of the planet will cease to be habitable. The deserts will greatly expand, though this will help balance the planets thermal budget. Very few people will live to see the Arctic sea ice entirely gone throughout the year or the ruined cities drowned in the rising sea. 

10. Assuming the collapse is as rapid and severe as I expect – I would expect the human population to collapse below the new carrying capacity of the planet and therefore for resource pressure to lighten once a sufficient number of people die (granted with few useful resources left and uncertainty about precisely which regions would be good prospects).

 

Finally
Theoretically there will be some isolated and scattered areas where the climate is still habitable, resources are sufficient and some form of agriculture can be practised. If small groups of people make it to these areas, there is a theoretical chance over many generations to recover civilisation, albeit at great disadvantage.

 

Disaster taxa will rapidly proliferate into the empty ecosystem, leaving the return of biodiversity to occur over a few million years, bringing the sixth great mass extinction to a close. 

NB Since we are at a point where weather is a key effect, allow +/- 1 year for (good/bad) luck.

  

These sorts of dire pronouncements about a climate careening from chaotic to annihilative (with which I fully concur, especially because none of them factor in the world-wide death of trees from ozone), naturally makes me wonder if it matters a damn that so many scientists and environmental activists are missing the crucial link between air pollution, forests in decline, and the loss of a major CO2 sink.

Nevertheless, Friedrich Nietzsche said, "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."   Thus we Ozonists and Ozonistas sequestered in a little niche here at Wit's End persevere, despite the incessant futility of it all and besides, hey, NASA made a new toy especially for us, now beaming information via satellite, and who could ask for more?  It's OMPS - the "Ozone Mapping Profiler Suite"!  In these images, it tracks smoke:

"Fires burning in Siberia recently sent smoke across the Pacific Ocean and into the U.S. and Canada. Suomi NPP satellite's Ozone Mapping Profiler Suite tracked aerosols from the fires taking six days to reach America's shores. These false-colored images make the data stand out. The blue and green colors represent less smoke. Yellows and pink represent more smoke. Smoke density is identified by the level of transparency in the coloration. The less dense the smoke is the more you can see through it, and the more dense it is, the less you can see through it.  Credit: NASA/Suomi NPP/Colin Seftor"

"Seftor says that unlike photographs, satellite data shows researchers the difference between reflections of smoke and dust from those from snow, ice or the tops of clouds. The UV (ultra-violet) aerosol index is helpful because it makes "seeing" dust and smoke easier even when that background is bright. The aerosol index allows him to separate the aerosol signal from the background."

Please don't miss the AMINALS!

Still emerging are ongoing reports about the power outages, which some blame on aging infrastructure, others on incompetent, unprepared electric companies, and still others on climate change.   But it's very clear from this video that the core issue of much-lamented lost air conditioning - and now, far more crucially, lost food - is the falling trees.  Appended afterwards is my usual comment on such stories (for regular readers, skip it - any new folks who are unfamiliar with the demise of trees from air pollution, it states the basics).

 

Naturally as we all know, the weather is violently worse from climate change - but even more important in terms of lost power is that the TREES are different. They are all dying from air pollution, everywhere around the world. It's pretty obvious actually, if you just look at them. Their bark is falling off, they have cankers and holes like tumors, their leaves are small and burnt and shriveled.

The first thing trees do when they absorb ozone (air pollution) is allocate more resources to repairing damage to the leaves or needles. This reduces energy sent to the roots. Shrunken root systems mean the trees are more likely to fall over and also are more vulnerable to drought, which is happening more because of climate change. To top it all off, they lose natural immunity to insects, disease and fungus. Go ask a tree. It will tell you if you listen.

The underlying reason the power is out, and wildfires are uncontrollable, is air pollution. It's as simple and clear a causal connection as smoking tobacco leads to cancer, a truth that has been even more ruthlessly suppressed by the corporate overlords who seek to perpetuate the industrial destruction of nature - until the very last second before she responds to them with her pitchfork. Just ask the authors of "An Appalachian Tragedy".

The USDA has also been trying to develop crops that are genetically resistant to tropospheric ozone, with no luck. Even if they could do it, what good would that do for the trees and other wild vegetation that are dying from absorbing air pollution? It's especially bad because ozone shrinks roots well before damage is visible on leaves, making the plants even more vulnerable to the droughts that are worsening. People should realize the ecosystem is collapsing and we need to stop burning fuel! a book for free: http://www.deadtrees-dyingforests.com/pillage-plunder-pollute-llc/

Injury resulting from ozone has been extensively, in fact exhaustively, demonstrated during decades of scientific research, which has found it is extremely detrimental to vegetation, including annual crops and especially longer-lived trees exposed to cumulative damage.

A blog about the storms, power outages and wildfires here:

http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/07/suits-of-woe.html

Happy Fourth of July...and God Bless America!

Even in these troubled times, Americans will celebrate our Independence with parades, fireworks and picnics.  In honor of happier days, instead of writing about trees dying from ozone, I'm posting two videos that seem appropriate.  Of course, if you look at the vegetation in the first one, it does look kinda sick.  Just sayin'.

Source ~ Toxic Fireworks

"Fireworks exploding in the air release toxins that can then land in lakes, ponds, and forest adding a substantial amount of pollution to the fallout area. The fallout will either be directly dropped into the surrounding area, or will come down later in the form of acid rain. Acid rain is the dissipation of acid forming chemicals in the form of rain, sleet, or snow caused by chemicals like sulfur and nitrate.  In addition to toxicity, fireworks are also responsible for starting thousands of fires every year."

 

 This is just the trailer...you can rent it online - it's the funniest vision of the USA since Pulp Fiction!

the Wasteland

Thanks to Collapse of Industrial Civilization for posting this video, which couldn't draw a starker contrast between the reality of our devastation to the planet, and the hypocrisy of our leaders, as represented in the soundtrack by Britain's Prime Minister.  It would actually be a comical justaposition if it didn't depict an irreversible ruination that is so hideously, inescapably true.
  
XrayMike observed:  "David Cameron could be replaced by any number of heads of state. The externalization of costs is intrinsic to capitalism and not something that can be changed without radically altering what we know to be this current economic system".


He also linked to an essay by David Hilfiker, which is an excellent primer about our predicament, simultaneously unsentimental and reassuring...to the degree possible when we are faced with not just an existential threat but a horrific end for most if not all of humanity, not to mention all the other life-forms on Earth.


He dissects the futility of effecting political or cultural change based on the multiple constraints of our entrenched institutions, prejudices, and innate inclinations, all with crisp brevity, so I highly recommend reading the entire article, which is titled "Hope in an Environmental Wasteland".  But because it's a point I have made (less elegantly) many times, I'm going to reprint one part, with italics added:

Consumerism

Although the majority of Americans recognize the reality of climate change and want governmental action, there has been no sustained popular demand for a change in policy.  Why not?

Most Americans are deeply committed to their material lifestyle.  The unspoken reality is that any effective challenge to climate change will require a radical transformation of that material lifestyle.  Environmentalists and their organizations generally want to avoid this “inconvenient truth,” but the energy for indoor temperatures to our satisfaction, transportation of food, importation of goods from distant lands, personal transportation, manufacturing and much else all guzzle fossil fuels and emit CO­₂.  A sustainable level carbon emissions—ie a level that the natural earth could recycle without rises in atmospheric CO­₂ levels—would be about two tons of CO­₂ for each person in the world per year.  The average American uses 20 tons.  As China, India and other poor countries develop economically, it’s utterly unrealistic—to say nothing of unjust—to expect them to keep to a 2-ton limit unless the Western world reduces its consumption accordingly.

What would 2 tons per year for the average American look like?  It’s difficult to imagine, but for starters it would mean:

• no air travel (period)
• mostly local transportation on foot or bicycle (or the not-yet-existent) adequate public transportation
• vegetarian, if not vegan, diets
• only locally produced food … even in the winter
• no air conditioners … even in the South
• elimination of individual ownership of luxuries (and many other things we consider necessary), for instance, TVs, computers or washing machines
• reducing the average size of our homes by at least a third, if not a half (or having others share our space)
• and so on

Virtually no national environmental group acknowledges publically that a truly sustainable lifestyle will require such drastic changes.  In Al Gore’s otherwise excellent and important film, "Inconvenient Truth", we are left with the impression that changing to CFL light bulbs, driving a Prius, recycling, and buying carbon offsets would be enough.  Well, no, it won’t be enough.  In this sense those opposing carbon limitations are absolutely right: our “way of life” will have to change.

The One Percent, Slumming It

Time for spoof!  Favorite line:  "Rubbish!  People want to see that they can be like us if they just work hard enough!"

Update:  This video has been removed by the user.  Damn it!  I don't know if that is funny, infuriating or scary.  It wasn't crude or anything like that.  The power of the 1% is absolute, I guess we should get used to our overlords.  The last couple of hundred years of freedom for some was simply an aberration and is over.

Update:  Thanks to M (!), we have (for now) a working version (above).

From The Inquisitor:

The video, which was created by the Chengdu Association for Cultural Exchange with Foreign Countries to promote tourism and “Panda Cabs” in the city Chengdu, shows Kate, Prince William, and Queen Elizabeth II (played by Colette Mularkey, Simon Watkinson, and Amanda Bellamy) standing out in the rain in London. William and Queen Elizabeth are trying to hail a cab while gold digger Kate Middleton complains that she didn’t marry into the royal family to be taking taxi cabs.

Middleton says:

“I just don’t understand why we cannot take the royal limo. I didn’t marry into royalty to schlep around in a taxi.”

William replies:

“But darling, granny is right. The commoners want to see us tightening our belts and all that.”

But Kate insists:

“Rubbish, people want to see that they can be like us if they just work hard.”

Which draws a mocking insult from the queen: ”Like you did?”

And in case you had any doubts about what the video was trying to portray, Middleton adds: “That’s right, I didn’t even fancy him at first. Don’t you remember? You had to practically beg me for my phone number.”

Several people criticized the ad for painting Kate Middleton as a gold digger but a spokesman for the Chengdu Association called the ad “harmless fun.” Still, the original video on Youtube has been removed (or at least set to private). Here’s a copy uploaded by World Viral News. But don’t be surprised if it gets taken down.

The Suits of Woe

I understand quite well that climate change is causing increasingly violent weather, and even previously unknown or extremely rare formations, like these mammatus clouds seen in Regina, Saskatchewan.

In fact the prospect terrifies me.  I confess I spend an inordinate amount of time wondering where a safe place to go might be in the event of a flood, or a tornado.

Having said that, there is more to the weather than meets the eye.  Over the weekend, as everyone has heard, a derecho storm moved from the midwest across the Eastern seaboard.  A Newsday story  described it:

"Millions across the mid-Atlantic region sweltered Saturday in the aftermath of violent storms that pummeled the eastern U.S. with high winds and downed trees, killing at least 13 people and leaving 3 million without power during a heat wave."

 

"Power officials said the outages wouldn’t be repaired for several days to a week, likening the damage to a serious hurricane. Emergencies were declared in Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, the District of Columbia and Virginia, where Gov. Bob McDonell said the state had its largest non-hurricane outage in history, as more storms threatened. 'This is a very dangerous situation,' the governor said."

CNN added more:

"The storms raced east Friday and into Saturday from Indiana through Ohio and into West Virginia and the nation's capital, carrying winds gusting as strong as 80 miles per hour."

 

"Those killed included two cousins in New Jersey, ages 2 and 7, who'd huddled with their families in a tent in Parvin State Park when strong winds felled a pine tree, crushing them. Their relatives all survived relatively unscathed, said Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection."

Note how corroded the bark is on the trunk of the beech - it should be smooth, like on the younger branch that broke off above.

"...The storm affected Amtrak service, including shutting down service between Washington and Philadelphia on Saturday morning. But those most inconvenienced were aboard a train that left New York early Friday morning ended up grinding to a halt at 11 p.m. that night in Prince, West Virginia, after trees blocked tracks both in front of and behind it, Amtrak spokesman Steve Kulm said."

From Wiki:  "To be classified as a hurricane, a tropical cyclone must have maximum sustained winds of at least 74 mph (Category 1). The highest classification in the scale, Category 5, is reserved for storms with winds exceeding 156 mph."

The weakest category of hurricane must have SUSTAINED winds of at least 74 mph - not occasional gusts up to 80 mph max!  And that was the brunt of the storm in the mid-Atlantic, not New Jersey, where the two children were killed by a falling tree - or for that matter in North Carolina just last night, where two more adults were killed by a tree on a golf course.

The reason the thunderstorm is being compared to a hurricane isn’t because the winds are that strong – it’s because the tree damage and consequent power outages are comparable to what you would expect from much more ferocious speeds.  The same misattribution happened after Hurricane Irene, when so many trees and branches came down in New England - even though the system by then had been downgraded to a tropical storm, and the major result was flooding.

Once again (predictably) the cart is being put before the horse. The power outages, blocked roads and crushed houses, cars and people result from trees falling and branches breaking...and that is happening because they are all dying, from pollution, and NOT because the winds were anything that trees haven't withstood before.

We are having both unprecedented storm damage (and wildfires ) – and can expect far worse – because vegetation is dying off from exposure to ozone. Many people believe air pollution isn’t a problem anymore because the visible component of smog – SOx – has been reduced. However, the background level of invisible tropospheric ozone is inexorably rising, even in rural areas, and it happens to be quite toxic to vegetation, including annual agricultural crops.

There have been many controlled fumigation experiments in the US and Europe that have proved over and again: plants exposed to elevated (over natural) ozone – which is a pollutant derived from reactive nitrogen whether from burning fuel or artificial fertilizer – become significantly damaged. The first effect is that root systems shrink because the plant has to repair injury to leaves or needles. This makes vegetation less tolerant of drought, and more vulnerable to wind.  Another major effect is that plants lose their immunity to insects, disease and fungus.

Plants are damaged internally before visible injury appears, but it’s just about ubiquitous now that you can see symptoms on leaves even of plants being watered in pots – tropical plants used to heat. I encourage anyone interested in this issue to go outside and look at leaves and needles. Ozone interferes with photosynthesis so they lose their normal color and eventually turn brown and shrivel up.

Thus, the now-ubiquitous persistent background level of tropospheric ozone is THE ultimate reason that trees all around the world are dying off, even though foresters and scientists are wont to blame whatever localized pest is most apparently attacking them. For some reason, they don’t want to recognize that we have a catastrophic, global decline of vegetation, and to the extent any decline is recognized, it is blamed on warming temperatures.

Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters listed some all-time heat records by way of documenting climate change, and of course I accept that trend as ultimately catastrophic.  However, what was interesting to me is that all the trees still standing now that are 80 or more years old - and there are plenty of them - have survived through these seemingly unprecedented temperatures that are making us swelter this summer, or within a degree or two, at least once in their lifetime, because the previous records or ties go back to 1930.  

109° Columbia, SC (old record 107° on two previous occasions)
109° Cairo, IL (old record 106° on 8/9/1930)
108° Paducah, KY (ties same on 7/17/1942
106° Chattanooga, TN (ties same on 7/28/1952)
105° Raleigh, NC (ties same on 8/21/2007 and 8/18/1988)
105° Greenville, SC (old record 104° 8/10/2007 although 106° was recorded by the Signal Service in July 1887)
104° Charlotte, NC (ties same on 8/9 and 10/2007 and 9/6/1954)
102° Bristol, TN (ties same on 7/28/1952-this site now known as `Tri-State Airport’)
109° Athens, GA. This is just 1° shy of the Georgia state record for June of 110° set at Warrenton in 1959.

If you want to see something really scary, I suggest you visit NASA's site (the U.S. Air Quality Smog Blog http://alg.umbc.edu/usaq/), where the following images were obtained, with excerpts from the notes:

6/21
Fires continue taking place over different regions of the nation and also in Canada and Mexico. According to HMS Several areas of smoke could be seen this morning over northwest Mexico, west Texas, southwest Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, southwest Utah, south Nevada, and southeast California. This smoke is a mix of remnant and new smoke from numerous wildfires burning in the southwest US and in northwest Mexico (bottom left). Also, a large area of aerosol covering the eastern US, and stretching from Kentucky/Tennessee eastward across the Atlantic and northeastward into southern Quebec, is believed to be made up of ozone and other unknown aerosols. At the southeastern edge of the hazy mass of aerosols, a band of what is believed to be smoke from a large fire in southeast North Carolina can be seen extending eastward off the coast. This fire was producing new smoke this morning.

June 25
The most intense heat wave of the summer thus far has commenced over the Plain states, stretching as far north as North Dakota through Southern Texas (bottom left, courtesy Accuweather). Even folks in Denver, CO experienced sizzling temperatures today, rising towards triple digits by late afternoon. Unfortunately, temperatures were not the only indices rising, ozone levels were climbing in tandem with the heat. 

June 26 

During the daytime hours, you can see the AQI values greatly rise. From 14:00 - 16:00 CDT there is actually a code purple for very unhealthy levels of air pollution. These unsafe levels of air quality are shared between the smoke debris from fires in the area and increased levels of ozone formed in the urban areas. When you have a day like today, that was extremely hot and had very low cloud coverage, there will be a surge of ozone production near factories and major highways. The data and graph below show the hourly surface ozone (ppb) for the Houston area. You can see that it reached almost 150 ppb in some areas (looks like ambient values ~40 ppb).

Okay, ozonists and ozonistas, what is the threshold above which vegetation sustains damage?  Ohhhh...40 ppb.  Following is a chart from a British company that manufactures equipment for industrial applications to remove ozone from the workplace, and keep in mind that ozone is far more toxic to plants than people:

Concentration  ppm

Description of Effects

0.003 - 0.01 Threshold of odour perception by average person in clean air.

0.02 - 0.04 Representative average total oxidant concentrations in major US cities in 1964. 

Approximately 95% of oxidants is ozone.

0.1  Recommended exposure limit.  Eye, nose and throat irritation often experienced.

0.2 - 0.5 Reduced dark adaptation and alteration of extra-ocular muscle balance occurs after several hours exposure.

0.5 Nausea and headache sometimes occurs.  Extended exposure can cause pulmonary oedema and enhance susceptibility to respiratory infections (both bacterial and viral).

1 10 minutes exposure typically reduces desaturation rate of oxyhaemoglobin to 50%.

1 - 2 Chronic exposure (one year for 6 hours per day) at this level has resulted in bronchiolitis and bronchitis in animals.  2 hour exposure can cause headache, chest pain and dryness of respiratory 

tract and a reported 30% reduction in timed vital capacity of the lung

1.5 - 2 Exposure for 2 hours typically results in cough, substernal pain and excessive sputum.

5 - 25 Experimentation showed that 3 hour exposure at 12ppm was lethal for rats and 25ppm was lethal for guinea pigs.  Humans (welders) exposed to 9ppm developed pulmonary oedema.  Their 

chest X-rays were normal in 2-3 weeks, but 9 months later they still exhibited fatigue and exertional dyspnoea (Laboured respiration).

50 Thirty minutes exposure may be fatal.

What I want to know is, if the main cause for these uncontrollable wildfires is drought, and dead forests from bark beetles spreading because it doesn't get cold enough in winter, what is all that smoke from fires doing way up north in Canada?

And what about this list of wildfires not just in the exceptionally dry areas from Utah to Texas but in Virginia, North Carolina, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Florida, and Michigan...or this report from NASA:  "Russian firefighters have battled uncontrolled fires for months. According to the environmental group Greenpeace, more land in Russia has burned this year than in 2010, a year during which intense wildfires affected western Russia."

In fact, this NASA map of fires around the globe from earlier in June would seem to indicate a very widespread trend not confined to areas in extreme drought:

While this visual of feedback sources includes tropospheric ozone and nitrous oxide, outgassing from melting permafrost.

Wait, speaking of Canada, and the boreal forest, following is a video with lots of cool, refreshing snow from northern Manitoba.  But first you must look at this screenshot.  What is wrong with these trees?

You'll see the adorable naughty cubs are climbing and pulling on the little trees - but that can't explain why the tall trees have lost needles, high above the ground.

Now, YouTube is a friendly service, and one video will spontaneously segue directly into another (determined by software to be of interest, based on your former choice).  So before I could click and save the cute baby polar bears, another video from the same province popped up.  The polar bears were filmed somewhere vaguely around "A" on the map below - and the next was from "B", Brandon, Manitoba.

You don't need to watch it unless you have a hankering to guess what sort of funny accent the farmer/narrator has.  Or you can trust me that he's telling us about how to grow wheat.  The very first step is spreading nitrogen on the fields...see it spray from the truck?  Did somebody say excess reactive nitrogen is causing the acidification of the earth?

I tend to prowl tree forums and once, an anonymous somebody asked how to could kill a tree without anyone suspecting.  He didn't elaborate as to why, but I assume it was a neighbor's tree that was blocking his view or shading his garden.  The advice was simple...over-fertilize it.  Works every time...

Meanwhile, the mirage continues.  In spite of the smoldering temperatures, First Daughter and husband hosted their annual Pig Roast at Bramblefields Farm on Saturday night.

Aside from bringing flowers and baskets of cherries for the tables, I was given some poster paints and told my job was to make a big sign to encourage nervous guests unused to the country to follow the drive all the way through the woods, about a mile from the main road.

There was a stage for the terrific band, and seating for 150 under two tents situated in the courtyard of the barns.

The horses got lots of attention.

They were fed dozens of carrots.

The new indoor riding ring was a popular destination.

...While the pool had its adherents.

The grounds had been whipped into manicured shape.

As a doomer, I don't know what to call this - Cognitive dissonance?  ...irrational exuberance?

...feeding frenzy?

I really enjoyed painting the pig for the barbeque, and I'm thinking, maybe I should go back to art and forget mourning our tragic end.  If the ozone doesn't get us first, the weather surely will.

Perhaps I should pay attention to the advice that Hamlet ignored:


...the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness...