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Oregon’s record-breaking heat waves and raging wildfires are set to dent Christmas tree crop output, resulting in supply constraints that may send prices skyrocketing come December.

According to Reuters, who spoke with multiple Christmas tree farm operators in Oregon, one of the top Christmas tree producing states, extreme heat and wildfires are impacting crop yields.

Jacob Hemphill, the owner of Hemphill Tree Farm in Oregon City, estimates he’s already lost more than $100,000 in trees due to the latest back-to-back heatwaves. At one point, temperatures in the area were triple digits for days.

“The second day of the heat, it was 116. I came in the driveway that night and seen the trees were basically cooking. Burnt down to nothing,” Hemphill said.

He said the losses will impact his farm revenue this year but hopes the 2022 season will improve.

“I mean, you just kind of got to roll with the punches, and replant next year… and hopefully make up for the loss that we’re gonna have in the future.”

Reuters spoke to several tree farm operators across the Willamette Valley who said the heat waves have severely damaged their crops.

On top of the heat waves, the Bootleg Fire in Southern Oregon, spurred by months of drought, has burned nearly 400,000 acres and is likely to increase in size as no relief is in sight.

Oregon is the top-selling state of Christmas trees which are Douglas fir, Noble fir, Grand fir, and Nordmann fir. This could present supply constraints come December.

In other words, on the back of already record-high prices, consumers could shell out even more money this year for a Christmas tree if shortages materialize in Oregon. On top of the supply crunch, the cost of everything, from fuel to labor to transportation, has soared and will positively impact prices.

California Grid Strained As Power Shortfalls Loom

July 10, 2021

California Grid Strained As Power Shortfalls Loom

Amid another heat wave across the Western half of the US, California issued a stage-2 power-grid emergency alert Friday and urged customers to conserve power as temperatures surpassed 100 degrees, according to The Sacramento Bee.

The state’s grid operator, California Independent System Operator (ISO), issued the alert on Friday, which is one step away from rolling blackouts.

Readers may recall, as early as Tuesday, we outlined how “scorching temperatures return to the West, persisting through mid-week, and reappear this weekend.” By Friday, we gave the full breakdown of the second heat wave and its impact for the next several days, affecting upwards of 28 million people from California to Washington State.

Excessive heat warnings have already been posted for California, Nevada, western Arizona, and western Utah. Watches have also been posted for interior portions of Oregon and southern Idaho.

By late Friday, ISO discontinued the emergency, but with multiple 100-degree-plus days forecasted for Saturday and Sunday for Californians, the power grid operator may have to reissue grid alerts.

Large swaths of the West could experience temperatures 20 or more degrees above average. Below is a temperature anomalies forecast showing the heat dome could last through mid-next week

For those who are curious what “stage 2” means, power consumption is exceptionally high in the state, and the grid has become “reserve deficient,” allowing grid operators to resupply the grid with generators. If supply doesn’t meet demand, the next stage would be rolling blackouts to prevent the grid from collapse. The alert was the first in 2021 and was last declared in August 2020.

Making matters worse is a wildfire raging in southern Oregon and may threaten transmission lines bringing power into California.

The wildfire prompted California Gov. Gavin Newsom to issue an emergency proclamation to free up additional energy supplies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

PG&E Warns Of More Blackouts As California Wildfire Season Begins

June 12, 2021

PG&E Warns Of More Blackouts As California Wildfire Season Begins

It has been an arid spring in California, and that’s causing alarm with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. executives who have said this week they will need more frequent power cuts to customers in Northern California to prevent wildfires.

PG&E’s chief risk officer Sumeet Singh told WSJ that California’s dry weather conditions could result in more rolling blackouts this year than last year. The company has trimmed trees away from powerlines and inspected the grid as the wildfire season began earlier this month.

June is typically the month the wildfire season in California begins. The state is already battling an extreme drought, and the first heat wave of the season hit last week. The risks of another heat wave are increasing for next week.

The hottest and most fire-prone months are nearing as a second heat wave of the season could arrive as early as next week.

How the season turns out may depend on the immediate climate in the state. Extreme heat and drought are several factors that may produce dry fuels and eventually spark fires.

“The fuel moisture levels … are about a month or two months ahead of schedule,” Strenfel told Sacramento Bee. “They’re at a state where they’re typically this dry in mid-July, and we’re seeing them in June. We’re a month ahead of schedule, if not two months, in terms of fire danger.”

Singh told WSJ, “the big, big variable that’s unpredictable here is the wind. But in all the forecasts that we’ve done, we do not see ourselves getting back to the same kind of [power shut-off] events like we saw in 2019.”

Already, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared 41 of the state’s 58 counties are in a drought, with much of the state in an “extreme drought” and portions in an “exceptional drought.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wildfires Are Contaminating Drinking Water Systems, and It’s More Widespread Than People Realize

May 10, 2021

Wildfires Are Contaminating Drinking Water Systems, and It’s More Widespread Than People Realize

Fire in one part of a community can contaminate the water system used by other residents, as Santa Rosa, California, discovered after the Tubbs Fire. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

More than 58,000 fires scorched the United States last year, and 2021 is on track to be even drier. What many people don’t realize is that these wildfires can do lasting damage beyond the reach of the flames – they can contaminate entire drinking water systems with carcinogens that last for months after the blaze. That water flows to homes, contaminating the plumbing, too.

Over the past four years, wildfires have contaminated drinking water distribution networks and building plumbing for more than 240,000 people.

Small water systems serving housing developments, mobile home parks, businesses and small towns have been particularly hard-hit. Most didn’t realize their water was unsafe until weeks to months after the fire.

The problem starts when wildfire smoke gets into the system or plastic in water systems heats up. Heating can cause plastics to release harmful chemicals, like benzene, which can contaminate drinking water and permeate the system.

As an environmental engineer, I and my colleagues work with communities recovering from wildfires and other natural disasters. Last year, at least seven water systems were found to be contaminated, suggesting drinking water contamination may be a more widespread problem than people realize.

Our new study identifies critical issues that households and businesses should consider after a wildfire. Failing to address them can harm people’s health – mental, physical and financial.

Wildfires make drinking water unsafe

When wildfires damage water distribution pipes, wells and the plumbing in homes and other buildings, they can create immediate health risks…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

California Wildfires Cover 1 Million Acres In A Week As Storms Expected To Fan Flames

August 23, 2020

California Wildfires Cover 1 Million Acres In A Week As Storms Expected To Fan Flames

In the course of just one week, wildfires blazing across the state of California have burned through nearly one million acres statewide, destroying hundreds of homes ahead of an expected storm system heading toward the state that could bring more high winds and lightning strikes.

Two clusters of wildfires in the Bay Area have grown to become the second- and third-largest wildfires in recent state history by size.

Light winds and cooler and more humid nighttime weather helped fire crews make progress on those fires and a third group of fires south of San Francisco ahead of the forecast of warm, dry weather, erratic wind gusts and lightning, state fire officials said.

Weary firefighters in California raced Saturday to slow the spread of the blazes as President Donald Trump issued a major disaster declaration to provide federal assistance. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that the declaration will also help people in counties affected by the fires with crisis counseling, housing and other social services.

Calm weather overnight allowed firefighters to make progress against a trio of massive wildfires burning in Northern California, but they were bracing for a weather system Sunday that will bring high winds and thunderstorms that could spark new fires and fan existing blazes that destroyed nearly 1,000 homes and other structures and forced tens of thousands to evacuate.

Source: The Guardian

The “complexes,” or groups of fires, burning on all sides of the San Francisco Bay Area, were initially sparked by lightning strikes – some of roughly 12,000 strikes registered in the state in the past week. The National Weather Service issued a “red flag” warning through Monday afternoon for the drought-stricken areas across the Bay Area, meaning extreme fire conditions, including high temperatures, low humidity and wind gusts up to 65 mph “may result in dangerous and unpredictable fire behavior.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Dire Circumstances”: Aussie Wildfires Intensify After Killing Half A Billion Animals; Record Numbers Evacuate

January 4, 2020

“Dire Circumstances”: Aussie Wildfires Intensify After Killing Half A Billion Animals; Record Numbers Evacuate

The brushfires raging across Australia which have killed an estimated 480 million animals have intensified over the last 12 hours, according to NASA, causing a record number of residents evacuate as forecasters predict worsening conditions.

Authorities on Friday urged evacuations for Australians living in parts of New South Wales and Victoria to avoid brushfires which are expected to rage out of control over the weekend. Temperatures in the area topped 104 F across much of the state, and no end to the destruction is currently in sight. According to NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance, this is “the largest evacuation of people out of the region ever.”

I would love some big creators to help raise awareness for our beautiful country. AUSTRALIA is on fire, and we need all the help we can get. 500m animals dead. Thousands stranded on beaches. Pls RT with link to @RedCrossAU pic.twitter.com/2CwHp4CqRi— Pia (@piamuehlenbeck) January 3, 2020

Conditions are set to mirror or even deteriorate beyond what we saw on New Year’s Eve,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s Jonathan How, adding that strong and dry winds would pick up over the weekend.

Over 1,300 homes have been destroyed, while 17 deaths have been reported.

In a harbinger of the searing conditions expected, a number of fires burnt out of control in South Australia as temperatures topped 40 degrees C (104 F) across much of the state and strong winds fanned flames.
Victoria declared a state of disaster across areas home to about 100,000 people, with authorities urging people to evacuate before a deterioration expected on Saturday. –Reuters

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

State Of Emergency Declared In NSW Australia As Deadly Bushfires Rage; Military Deployed

January 2, 2020

State Of Emergency Declared In NSW Australia As Deadly Bushfires Rage; Military Deployed

A seven-day state of emergency has been called in the Australian state of New South Wales amid raging wildfires that have killed eight people in the region since Monday, including volunteer firefighters, according to officials.

Military helicopters and naval vessels have been deployed to deliver water, food and fuel to remote areas which are difficult to reach by road. The Australian Defense Force has sent navy ships to Mallacoota on a two-week supply mission, according to Victoria Emergency Commissioner Andrew Crisp, who added that firefighters would be flown in via helicopter do the the lack of access.

Conditions are expected to worsen in coming days, with Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology predicting temperatures to soar above 104 degrees in NSW, Victoria and western parts of the country.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Countries from Siberia to Australia are burning: the age of fire is the bleakest warning yet

December 8, 2019

Countries from Siberia to Australia are burning: the age of fire is the bleakest warning yet

It is time not only to think the unthinkable, but to speak it: the world economy, civilisation, and maybe our survival as a species are on the line

Fire front bushfire in the valley, Blue Mountains, Australia — Realms as diverse and distant as Siberia, Amazonia, Indonesia, Australia and California are aflame. Photograph: Andrew Merry/Getty Images

On any day, between 10,000 and 30,000 bushfires burn around the planet.

Realms as diverse and distant as Siberia, Amazonia, Indonesia, Australia and California are aflame. The advent of “the age of fire” is the bleakest warning yet that humans have breached boundaries we were never meant to cross.

It is time not only to think the unthinkable, but to speak it: that the world economy, civilisation, and maybe our very survival as a species are on the line. And it is past time to act.

It isn’t just fires. It’s the incessant knell of unnatural (human-fed) disasters: droughts, floods, vanishing rivers, lakes and glaciers and the rise in billion-dollar weather impacts.

It is the spate of extinctions, the precipitous loss of sea fish, birds and corals, of forests, mammals, frogs, bees and other insects. It is the march of deserts and the waxing of dead zones in the oceans.

It is an avalanche of human chemical emissions poisoning our air, water, food, homes, cities, farms and unborn babies, slaying nine million a year.

It is the probability there will be no Arctic before the end of this century and rising seas expelling 300 million from their homes.

It is the ominous seepage of methane from the world’s oceans, tundra, swamps and fossil fuels, threatening runaway heating of 7 to 10 degrees or more.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

California’s Blackouts Are Part Of A Far Bigger Problem

October 28, 2019

California’s Blackouts Are Part Of A Far Bigger Problem

This past weekend, Pacific Gas & Electric had to resume electricity blackouts to 930,000 customers affecting upwards of three million people around San Francisco. Meanwhile, two major wildfires, one of which may have been caused by malfunctioning utility equipment, are burning and evacuations are underway. PG&E has informed customers that power in the affected areas may be out for up to one week.

It would not be overstating the case to talk about an air of crisis or panic in the state. Unfortunately, good ideas to resolve difficult, thorny issues seldom arise in troubled circumstances. And California’s Governor Newsom provides us with a ready case in point.

Yesterday Bloomberg News reported that the California Governor was interested in a takeover of PG&E by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Corp. On its face, it sounds logical in several ways. First, Berkshire already owns utilities serving California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah. Wyoming and Idaho. PG&E would fit in. Second, Buffet notoriously has told investors to buy when there is “blood on the streets”, that is, where the investment outlook looks bleak and most investors stay away, fearful of principal risk. Presumably, the governor envisages Berkshire purchasing the PG&E’s equity at a steeply discounted price, replacing a considerable portion of the utility’s outstanding long-term debt and appointing new senior management and a new Board of Directors.

There is one difficulty here in viewing Mr. Buffett as a potential financial white knight riding to California’s rescue. The current crisis is caused by an extensive above-ground high voltage transmission network sparking wildfires in an increasingly arid environment. Stated differently, the world that this transmission system was built for no longer exists. This is a profound operational problem.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Diablo Winds” Are Ferociously Whipping “Out Of Control” Wildfires Across Vast Stretches Of Northern California

October 28, 2019

“Diablo Winds” Are Ferociously Whipping “Out Of Control” Wildfires Across Vast Stretches Of Northern California

Why does this keep happening to California year after year? As you read this article, enormous wildfires are ravaging large portions of northern California, and Governor Gavin Newsom has already declared a statewide emergency. An extreme wind event that began on Saturday evening is pushing the fires along at a staggering rate, and when the winds are howling this ferociously it is exceedingly difficult for firefighters to keep the fires from spreading. It was being reported that on Sunday morning there were sustained winds exceeding 90 mph in northern California with “gusts that topped 100 mph”. It was the strongest wind event in several years, and it came at an extremely unfortunate time. These “hurricane-force Diablo winds” will continue into Monday morning, but that doesn’t mean that things will start to get better. As you will see below, another extreme wind event is in the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Kincade Fire is the largest of the wildfires, and according to ABC News it has now “grown to 85 square miles”…

California Fire officials say a rapidly moving fire in Northern California wine country has grown to 85 square miles (220 square kilometers) and destroyed 94 buildings.
Cal Fire spokesman Jonathan Cox called the conditions throughout California “a tinderbox” Sunday and asked people to continue being vigilant in helping to prevent fires from breaking out.

That is an absolutely massive wildfire, and the extremely strong winds are picking up embers from the Kincade Fire and starting blazes in new areas.

The following is what Cal Fire Captain Robert Foxworthy told reporters on Sunday morning…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

California Fires Spark Massive Mandatory Evacuations; Wineries Burn As Winds Hit 93 MPH

October 27, 2019

California Fires Spark Massive Mandatory Evacuations; Wineries Burn As Winds Hit 93 MPH

California’s annual wildfires are back despite a series of planned power outages aimed at preventing them – the latest of which is expected to affect as many as 3 million people across huge swaths of the state.

The most intense fires raged through Sonoma County, with some 180,000 residents ordered to evacuate.

“The next 72 hours will be challenging,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Saturday. “I could sugarcoat it, but I will not.”

As of midnight, Sonoma County resembled a disaster zone.

✔

Approx 180,000 people under evacuation order due to #KincadeFire. This is the largest evacuation that any of us at the Sheriff’s Office can remember. Take care of each other.

✔

Latest Evacuation map. Mandatory evacuations have been expanded and now include much of western and northern Santa Rosa. For most up-to-date map:http://bit.ly/2PlbvDp

#CAwx #CAFire #KincadeFire

Highway 101 was closed indefinitely through Santa Rosa as wind gusts of up to 93 mph were reported by the National Weather Servicein Healdsburg Hills in the northern part of the county. That said, the NWS now reports that the winds will “start to reduce compared to the peak experienced in the last few hours, but remain strong today with a ramp up tonight.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The open Amazon and its enemies: a call for action and optimism

August 31, 2019

The open Amazon and its enemies: a call for action and optimism

The Amazon, now on fire, has become the central political and geopolitical hot spot for humanity’s right to its own future. Optimism is the gasoline that must feed the fight.

Tree in the Brazilian rainforest | Photo: Pablo Albarenga, all rights reserved.

June and July have been the hottest months on record in the Western Hemisphere as the climate crisis escalates. This summer, the ice in Greenland has been melting at an unseen rate under an unprecedented heat wave. Droughts and wildfires are on the rise ravaging significant forest surfaces, and the role of the rainforest as a carbon dioxide absorber is being jeopardized by a substantial acceleration in deforestation efforts.

The Amazon basin, which contains 40% of the world’s rainforest, plays a very complex yet central role as a buffer of climate change. It functions as a cooler of the atmosphere through moisture evaporation and it produces its own rainfall in the dry season while also capturing carbon and acting as the Earth’s lungs.

Aerial view of the Amazon River near Manaus, Brazil, at dawn. | Photo: Pablo Albarenga. All Rights Reserved

But lately, the Amazon’s vulnerability has become apparent, as fires have been spreading at an unprecedented rate. As Leonardo DiCaprio put it to his 34 million Instagram followers in a post: “the lungs of the Earth are in flames.” Data released by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research shows that from January to July, 4.6 million acres of the Brazilian Amazon went ablaze, a 62 percent increase over last year. We are facing a full scale ecocide case here.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Amazon Inferno

August 30, 2019

The Amazon Inferno

*Fires burning the southern region of the Brazilian state of Para. INPE, Brazil, August 2019. Courtesy Wikipedia.*

One of the lasting highlights of my teaching at the University of New Orleans in 1991-1992 was my travel to Brazil in January 1992 for a conference on climate change. This was a rehearsal for the June 1992 Earth Summit on Climate Change in Rio.

My conference took place in Fortaleza, a beautiful town in the state of Ceara in the northeast of Brazil. The conference passed quickly with meaningless speeches while the conference was besieged by indigenous people pleading unsuccessfully for a hearing.

However, I enjoyed a tour of the semi-arid countryside of Ceara. I sensed more than dryness and desert. I saw fragments of the Brazilian Atlantic forest. These moist woodlands are full of golden tall trees, marshes teeming with life, bleeding streams carrying away the red soil. Yet perpetual danger follows the trees, plants and animals. The loggers who devastated the Atlantic forest for more than 500 years keep coming, leaving a trail of plunder after them.

The asphalt road of our tour sliced through a flat region of small trees, bushes, goats and cattle grazing ranchland, and immense cashew plantations, producing Ceara’s number one cash crop.

We stopped in Caninde, a rural town celebrating St Francis, the ecology saint of the Catholic Church. Once in the St. Francis Cathedral, my eyes were immediately glued to banners.

The message in these colorful cloth banners was not what one would see in a church in North America. Here the burning issue was not hell or paradise or the ten commandments but liberation—the liberation of peasants from oppression. One banner said that the organization of the workers was terribly important for their emancipation; and another proclaimed that the concentration of wealth was the root of evil.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rainforest on Fire

August 27, 2019

RAINFOREST ON FIRE

On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe

THE RIVER BASIN at the center of Latin America called the Amazon is roughly the size of Australia. Created at the beginning of the world by a smashing of tectonic plates, it was the cradle of inland seas and continental lakes. For the last several million years, it has been blanketed by a teeming tropical biome of 400 billion trees and vegetation so dense and heavy with water, it exhales a fifth of Earth’s oxygen, stores centuries of carbon, and deflects and consumes an unknown but significant amount of solar heat. Twenty percent of the world’s fresh water cycles through its rivers, plants, soils, and air. This moisture fuels and regulates multiple planet-scale systems, including the production of “rivers in the air” by evapotranspiration, a ceaseless churning flux in which the forest breathes its water into great hemispheric conveyer belts that carry it as far as the breadbaskets of Argentina and the American Midwest, where it is released as rain.

In the last half-century, about one-fifth of this forest, or some 300,000 square miles, has been cut and burned in Brazil, whose borders contain almost two-thirds of the Amazon basin. This is an area larger than Texas, the U.S. state that Brazil’s denuded lands most resemble, with their post-forest landscapes of silent sunbaked pasture, bean fields, and evangelical churches. This epochal deforestation — matched by harder to quantify but similar levels of forest degradation and fragmentation — has caused measurable disruptions to regional climates and rainfall. It has set loose so much stored carbon that it has negated the forest’s benefit as a carbon sink, the world’s largest after the oceans.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ferguson: “The Whole World Is Playing A Massive, Multiplayer Game Of Chicken”

August 27, 2019

Ferguson: “The Whole World Is Playing A Massive, Multiplayer Game Of Chicken”

From Trump’s trade wars to Brazil’s fires, the world is on the brink

‘Hey, Toreador! . . . We head for the edge, and the first man who jumps is a chicken. All right?”

In Rebel without a Cause, Jim (James Dean) and Buzz (Corey Allen) play the most famous game of chicken in Hollywood history, driving their jalopies at full speed towards a Californian cliff. At the last minute, Jim jumps. Buzz, his sleeve caught on the door handle, plunges to his death.

Games of chicken are all around these days. Indeed, it starts to feel as if the whole world is playing a massive, multiplayer game of chicken.

Clearly, Boris Johnson’s jaunts to Berlin and Paris last week were part of a diplomatic game of chicken. The prime minister repeated his readiness to go over the cliff of a no-deal Brexit if the European Union is not prepared to scrap the Irish backstop. Contrary to some UK press reports, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French president, Emmanuel Macron, essentially reiterated their commitment to the existing withdrawal agreement. Vroom!

If Mr “Million-to-One-Against” himself were driving, there would be no chance of the Europeans chickening out. But the man at the wheel of the British jalopy is not Boris but the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, and the glint in his eye tells you that he would quite enjoy hurtling over the precipice. After all, for him, Brexit is just a means to a higher end: the revolutionary disruption of Britain’s broken system of government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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