Global climate crisis hits home in the U.S. amid record heat and pervasive wildfires

Geoff Bennett:

Good evening. It is good to be with you. And we begin tonight with a fast spreading fire that's burning out of control in California at the doorstep of Yosemite National Park. Hot and dry conditions linked to climate change are making it an exceptionally tough fire to fight.

The flames moved so swiftly residents had very little warning to get out. The fire engulfed entire homes in the sparsely populated mountain communities of Mariposa County. So far more than 6,000 people have been forced to evacuate.

The Oak fire ignited Friday afternoon and since then has exploded in size, more than doubling from Saturday into Sunday to 22 square miles enabling the fire, foam dry vegetation after the worst drought in a decade. How fire authorities report more than 2,000 firefighters are battling the blaze that so far is 0 percent contained.

The Oak fire is so large, it's visible from the International Space Station drifting over a swath of the western United States. That says 85 million people across the country this weekend are under excessive heat warnings or advisories. In some places, temperatures hitting triple digits.

Joining us now to talk more about the role of climate change and all of this is Michael Mann. He's a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of the new Climate War. Michael, it's good to have you with us.

And look, we've got record heat from coast to coast drought in the south in the west, you've got pervasive wildfires, as this map that we're going to put up makes clear. Does this all of this mean that climate change is happening faster than expected?

Michael Mann, Director, Earth System Science Center:

Yes. Thanks, Geoff. It's good to be with you. It's unfortunate that we're always talking about these sorts of very damaging extreme weather events these days. And, yes, there are some impacts of climate change that are playing out faster, and with a greater magnitude than we predicted, just say a decade ago or so. That's true with the collapse of the ice sheets and the sea level rise that's occurring because of that. And it's true with many of these extreme summer weather events that we're seeing.

And one of the ingredients, of course is, you know, you make the planet warmer, you're going to see more extreme heat. You dry out the continents in the summer, you're going to get worse drought. You combine that heat and drought and you get the sorts of wildfires that we've seen out west in California and throughout the western United States in recent years.

But there's an extra ingredient there that isn't actually very well captured in the models. And that's the behavior of the Jetstream that causes these high and low pressure systems to get stuck in place. And when you get one of these deep, high pressures, like we have out west right now, over California and the western U.S., that's when you get those extremely hot, dry conditions that give you these wildfires. And what's happening is those systems are getting stuck in place.

So the extreme heat that we've seen, the floods, the wildfires, the drought across the entire northern hemisphere this summer, part of what's going on, is this sort of stuck, jet stream pattern. It is something that we think is being made more frequent because of climate change, and it isn't well captured in the models. It's another reminder that uncertainty isn't our friend here.

Geoff Bennett:

Are the heat waves across the globe connected? I ask the question because we saw a parts of Oklahoma hit 115 degrees this past week. Meantime, you've got airport runways melting in the UK, from the heat is all of that connected.

Michael Mann:

It is connected. I mean, obviously you make the planet warmer, you get more that extreme summer heat. So there's that connection. But there's also this behavior of the jet stream where you get these very large Mander. When the jet stream wiggles north and south dramatically, that means that there are big weather systems underneath there big high and low pressure systems. And that's where you get either with a high pressure the extreme heat drought in those wildfires, or with a low pressure, the extreme flooding.

And so we've seen this summer after summer, it's sort of Groundhog Day now here. Every summer now we see this phenomenon, part of it is pretty basic, it's easy to explain in terms of human caused warming, but some of the mechanisms are more subtle. And again, they are one of the reasons the models may be under estimating the impact that climate change is now having on these devastating extreme events that we're seeing every summer.

Geoff Bennett:

It's interesting, former Vice President Al Gore was on a number of the Sunday shows this morning. And he made that same point that some of the warnings about climate change might have been, in many ways too conservative, take a look at this.

Al Gore, Former U.S. Vice President:

And the fact that they were dead, right, maybe a little conservative, even in their projections should cause us to pay more careful attention to what they're warning us about now. They're saying that if we don't stop using our atmosphere as an open sewer, and if we don't stop these heat trapping emissions, things are going to get a lot worse.

Geoff Bennett:

So what do you make of that?

Michael Mann:

Yes, well, you know, Al Gore was out there in front warning us decades ago as the scientific community was warning us decades ago. And what we're seeing happen now is our predictions playing out. That's the sad part of this. We understood that we had a crisis on our hands decades ago. But because of inaction, much of it, because of the fossil fuel industry and politicians who refuse to act on climate, we've allowed this problem now to grow to epic proportions to the point where we're seeing the devastating consequences play out in real time.

Geoff Bennett:

President Biden, as you know, he's trying to keep his faltering climate change agenda alive by taking executive action, since you have Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, and all of the Senate Republicans withholding their vote on legislative action. Are executive actions enough? And what more should the private sector do on their own? I would think that good climate policy would also be in many ways good business policy.

Michael Mann:

Yes, that's exactly right, Geoff, and you are seeing some companies take a more enlightened view, recognizing that you know, that their customers that their clients expect environmental stewardship. This is weighing on the minds of Americans, increasingly, these devastating impacts that we're seeing from extreme weather events that have been exacerbated by climate change. And so it is important that business be out in front, lobbying politicians to act on our collective behalf to do what's right here.

But you're right. Right now, we're sort of stuck with this split Congress with, you know, a Democrat and Joe Manchin, who refuses to support his fellow Democrats in passing climate legislation. There's a limit to what you can do through executive actions, the Biden administration is doing what it can.

But the most important thing it can do right now is to use the bully pulpit to convey the absolute — absolutely essential importance of turning out in these midterm elections this fall in voting for politicians who will support climate legislation, because the only way that we are going to be living — be able to live up to our obligations to the rest of the world to cut our carbon emissions in half by 2030 as we've promised.

The only way that will happen is if we pass climate legislation and we need a Congress that's willing to do that, and if we have, you know, Congress people who aren't willing to do that we need to vote them out and we need to vote in those who will.

Geoff Bennett:

Michael Mann, it's always great to speak with you. Circumstances aside. Thanks so much for your time.

Michael Mann:

Thank you, Geoff.