The Lahaina wildfire lasted less than a day and killed 100. Watch a video. The Los Angeles County fires are now into Day 5, with 11 confirmed deaths. However no doubt this number will increase once investigators can check on the results. While winds have since the worst diminished, gusts could rise to 70 MPH tonight through the weekend into Monday. 
Summary of LAC wildfires:
- 39,000 acres covered.
- 12,000 structures destroyed.
- While 11 have been killed, an additional 13 are missing.
- Overall, containment is only 11%.
- At least 153,000 residents are still under evacuation orders.
- Check NBC News for updates.
NASA previously determined that 2023 was the planet's warmest year on record, and this week confirmed that 2024 is now the hottest year since at least 1880.
- Why 1880? That is when record-keeping began.
- Further, Earth is now 2.65 F hotter than the average from 1850 to 1900.
- Scarily, our globe's 10 hottest years have occurred in the past decade.
- Further, from June 2023 to August 2024, every one of those months experienced the hottest month ever for that month.
- Apparently, those math models are so good now that these highest ever temperatures were predicted.
- On the other hand, these models predicted that there was only a 1-in-3 chance that 2024 would become the warmest year on record.
As one example, Phoenix, Arizona logged a record 113 straight days with triple-digit high temperatures last year. The previous record was 76 days in 1993.- Worldwide, storms and hurricanes are now more fierce.
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed yesterday that 2024 was the first full year where global temperatures exceeded 2.7 F. You might recall that the 2015 Paris Agreement tried to limit global warming to 2.7 F to avert catastrophic consequences of climate warming. Well, we just hit that limit.
However, there will a return of La Niña this year, where there is cooling of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Sounds also to me like fewer hurricanes to Hawaii in 2025.- Yet, while there is only a 5% chance or less that 2025 will top 2024 as the hottest year on record, there is a 95% chance 2025 will still rank in the top five.
Here is something from history that startled me. From the University of Southern California:
- Southern California experienced a wave of wildfires 13,000 years ago, contributing to Earth's largest extinction event since that dinosaur-killing extinction 66 million years ago.
At the end of the Pleistocene, a time period known as the Ice Age, 10,000 to 50,000 years ago, much of our lands, including Southern California, teemed with enormous beasts like woolly mammoths, giant bears, camels and large cats- Then, abruptly, they mostly disappeared. North America lost more than 70% of mammals weighing more than 97 pounds, worse for South America and Australia.
- This long befuddled scientists.
Clues were found in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, the world's richest ice age fossil site.- Linked back to 13,000 years ago, sediments suggested a warming climate punctuated by decades-long droughts, and rising human populations, pushing the Southern California ecosystem to a tipping point.
The catalyst seems to have been an unprecedented increase in WILDFIRES, probably set my HUMANS.- Mean annual temperatures over a thousand years rose 10 F and lakes began evaporating from a 200-year-long drought. Half of trees died, and the lack of herbivores meant that dead vegetation built up.
- Natural fire activity was low in Southern California.
- Then came human populations, who brought fire.
- Camels in what is now Los Angeles entirely disappeared.
- The iconic La Brea megafauna disappeared.
To quote from this article:
Studying the causes and consequences of the Pleistocene extinctions in California can provide valuable context for understanding today’s climate and biodiversity crises. A similar combination of climate warming, expanding human populations, biodiversity loss and human-ignited fires that characterized the ice age extinction interval in Southern California are playing out again today.
The alarming difference is that temperatures today are rising 10 times faster than they did at the end of the ice age, primarily because of the burning of fossil fuels. This human-caused climate change has contributed to a fivefold increase in fire frequency and intensity and the amount of area burned in the state of California in the past 45 years. Today, downed power lines, campfires and other human activities start over 90% of wildfires in coastal California.
Speaking of heat: Kilauea’s summit was inflating Friday, indicating that magma was accumulating, according to Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists, who said the on-again, off-again eruption that began before Christmas could resume by Monday. Watch a video of the current phase.
While good for tourism, resumption will mean severe air pollution for the Kona area of the Big Island, and, if wind patterns shift to what they were like a week ago, Honolulu could again become Los Angeles of the 1950s. I would prefer no eruption, so no air pollution. Can't blame global warming for what continues to occur with our active volcanoes. There have been five extinction events in Planet Earth's history, and four of them can be blamed on volcanic eruptions, which is the equivalent today of humanity burning fossil fuels. The fifth was caused by an asteroid 66 million million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs.
So extinction events were previously caused by volcanoes and an asteroid, while us humans will be the cause of Planet Earth's Sixth Extinction.
- 40% of all land has been converted for food production.
- Agriculture is responsible for 90% of global deforestation and accounts for 70% of freshwater use.
- The species extinction is now from 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than natural rates.
- What can we do to stop mass extinction?
- Paris Agreement. We can ramp up our commitments to cutting carbon emissions under the Paris Agreement and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
- 30X30. Our leaders can support the America the Beautiful initiative to conserve 30% of US lands and waters by 2030.
- Kunming-Montreal Agreement. US leadership can play a critical role alongside 195 other countries in conserving at least 30% of lands, inland waters, and oceans worldwide.
- Grassroots action. While the federal government can set high-level policies to conserve nature, businesses, communities, and individuals have a powerful role to play in shifting corporate behavior with their consumer choices and demanding accountability from political leaders.
Sure, good luck trying to convince the incoming Trump administration to take those steps.
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