Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

One of the first climate experiments, investigating carbon dioxide’s effects on air when exposed to sunlight, was conducted in 1856. The first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859. Also in 1859, a physicist proved that concentrations of particular gases in the atmosphere could alter Earth’s climate. Now called the “greenhouse effect,” this phenomenon influenced additional research (as early as 1896) into carbon emissions warming the planet. Before the 20th century, many scientists believed that a warming planet could be a net benefit for humanity, mitigating the toll of winter and even increasing crop yields. However, by the 1930s, coal use had created a trackable and measurable atmospheric change. Unfortunately, petroleum-driven prosperity was such a boon to humanity at the time that people took little notice. A scientist named Guy Callendar proved a measurable link between carbon dioxide and rising temperatures during the years 1938-1958. Geophysicist Gilbert Plass, meanwhile, proved that infrared radiation from the sun is retained in the atmosphere by industrial gas emissions. The Washington Post and Life magazine ran articles in 1953, showing that the truth of climate change was generally accepted in the first half of the 1900s. Almost 70 years ago, scientists were accurately predicting that moderation of fossil fuel use was the only viable solution to climate change.

In 1956, an oceanographer named Roger Revelle was called to appear before the US Congress to discuss “anthropogenic climate change” (248). At this point, climate change was not politicized: Both the right and the left were equally committed to protecting the planet.

Although climate data have always been robust and fairly straightforward in proving global warming, this information “runs counter to the colonial and capitalist impulses” that dominate the globe (254). News about climate change, far from prompting oil companies to slow down, spurred increasing oil production. Like the fur traders in Alberta in the 17th century, they scrambled to make as much personal profit as they could. Regulations seemed inevitable, especially after an American Petroleum Institute (API) symposium in 1959 at which nuclear physicist Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, warned about the looming threat of climate change and about the melting of the polar ice caps. The direct language that Teller used to describe the issue disturbed some attendees, many of whom were hearing this information for the first time.

In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring warned about the toll of environmental degradation resulting from industry and capitalism. The issue became more mainstream, and proof eventually emerged that many oil companies were aware of the risks yet chose to continue their destructive activities. Prioritizing their profit margins, oil companies desperately suppressed independent climate research and downplayed the effects of climate change. Nevertheless, climate change and its effects were mainstream sources of news throughout the 1960s and 1970s. However, Reagan’s presidency represented a huge setback in environmental regulation, leading to an unexpected resurgence in pro-oil rhetoric in the 1990s that obfuscated the risk of climate change at a time when addressing it was most crucial. Oil companies, despite knowing the dangers, took advantage of environmental deregulation to maximize their profits.

The phenomenon of “pyro-tornadogenesis” was unknown to occur on Earth before 2003. This “delinquent offspring of a pyrocumulonimbus thunderstorm” (278), a unique fire tornado generated by intense wildfire, first occurred in southeast Australia near the capitol of Canberra in January 2003. It prompted a new category of fire danger classification in Australia: “catastrophic” or “code red.” In a catastrophic wildfire, evacuation is the only option for survival. Vaillant posits that this is a representation of the “fire planet we have made” (279).

In July 2018, a wildfire known as the Carr fire occurred near Redding in northern California. Driven by high winds and drought conditions, it forced the evacuation of 40,000 people. Redding and surrounding towns were purposely built on the wildland-urban interface model to take advantage of the benefits of nature, but this caused houses to become tinder for wildfires, worsening the effects. One survivor of this fire, Steve Bustillos, remembers feeling strong winds blowing toward the fire instead of away from it, a symptom of the vacuum effect of extremely hot fire. This effect caused a fire tornado, which moved rapidly eastward, decimating everything in its path. Such destruction is typical of fire tornadoes, which sometimes reach 17,000 feet high and change the weather for hundreds of miles in all directions. A Redding firefighter observed that in the era of unchecked climate change, fires are behaving in new and unexpected ways that firefighters struggle to keep up with.

The deleterious effects of climate change test human ingenuity. In 2017, a total of 142 separate wildfires ignited in Canada, some crossing the border into Washington State. Unlike earlier types of wildfires, these burned for months. In August, four of these large fires simultaneously erupted into pyroCbs, an unexpected and unprecedented phenomenon. Like the catastrophic climate change caused by volcanic activity, human activity is now equivalent to a natural disaster.

Climate change threatens humans only because of their mastery of fire, which enables amazing accomplishments. Vaillant states that humanity, or Homo flagrans, will be remembered for essentially becoming “the greatest combustion engine ever devised” (299). Environments no longer experience droughts; now, they become permanently arid. Even frozen tundra is catching fire. Huge forests, formerly the planet’s most robust carbon consumers and converters, are becoming carbon emitters through the destructive effects of rampant wildfire. Carbon emissions are rapidly changing the climate in ways that will take much longer to reverse, regardless of how humans combat rising temperatures. Vaillant muses that the feedback loop of carbon and climate change may create a world in which winter no longer exists and “fire season never ends” (308).