And which basically enables the Amazon to generate 50 percent of its rainfall internally we know that at some point too much deforestation can lead to a tipping point and there would be die back at the far as in the south and the east and then a bit of the center of the Amazon just because there would no longer be sufficient rainfall this tipping point really interests me do we know how close we are to it and what would happen. So Carlos number 8 from Brazil and I published a piece year year and a half ago in which we said that we think that nowadays with climate change also bringing pressure and excessive use of fire bringing pressure that the tipping point is somewhere in the vicinity of 20 maybe 25 percent the forestation and Brazilian deforestation is pushing pretty close to 20 per cent and more worrisome we're seeing what Carlos and I interpret it as 1st flickers of the tipping point in his start droughts in 20052 and 2010 and 201516 and so they're pretty close to it the good news of course is if they take it seriously they'll do some very active reforestation and build back a margin of safety do you think it just takes human action to approach that tipping point or is it possible that global climate change could also push the Amazon toward Savannah almost no matter what Brazilian people do. Well I mean climate change human generated climate change is part of what's pushing the system at the moment but it's not all by itself and among other things the last thing you want to do is have some more far as go because of the tipping point and have all that carbon end up in the atmosphere but can we presume that the wave of fires this year are probably mostly set by humans rather than natural sources like lightning so a rain forest basically does not burn naturally if you have lightning strikes in a rain forest you know whatever a tree gets zapped if it is you know and trouble and Psion are but you just don't get natural fires and rain forests that's true we've seen that on the west coast of British Columbia where there are forests that just have never burned in thousands of years because it's just too wet and that doesn't happen. That's right so it's very similar right so Europeans just threaten to withhold a trade deal unless action is taken by Brazil's government against these Amazon fires and journalist David Wallace Well said something I thought was important he says a threat to apply the same tools of leverage and sanction and shame to crimes of climate as have been applied in the past to violations of human rights and territorial sovereignty so I'm wondering are we seeing some promise there of nation to nation action to prevent the worst abuses of the environment your thoughts so I think there are 2 ways that can affect the future one is withholding some economic opportunities such as what's being talked about prior to the G. 7 meeting but the other is when the international community comes together recognizes that we can hardly expect Brazil and the other Amazon Nations to take care of the Amazon all by themselves and create a mechanism some multilateral mechanism. As was done in the 1990 S. Through the world back also Julie Turkle which in the New York Times questions the seriousness of this year's fires in the Amazon in the argument goes like this it's mostly farmers and logs burning slash in Brazil they are not destroying virgin rainforest but that kind of original force is burning in Africa's Angola in Congo with no big uproar Perhaps we should look there instead I don't know I'm not sure I buy that argument what do you think well 1st of all far as burning rain forest burning anywhere in the world is not a good idea just isn't a good idea and it tends to go on year after year without a lot of attention to it so it's a good thing that this popped up the way. It did because it enables people to understand that you know there are serious changes going on which are not good for the forest not good for biodiversity and not good for climate science is under threat in many countries including in the United States and as Julia Canadian climate science hasn't recovered after a 10 year attack on funding climate research how are international scientists coping now that they're in the Amazon and they're trying to do research with the new government or their problems or are things still going along well well the science government science budget in Brazil has been essentially cut in half so you can imagine the impacts fat is having that doesn't mean all all science stops dead and some has non-government funding or whatever but it's just not a very smart thing to do because you know the root word for science is to know and if we cease to pay attention to what we can learn. We're setting ourselves up for all kinds of problems. Yes we could have some real well we're already having some real surprises and that's with the best science that we have to date so we've got to keep up the research in the Amazon I would say well yeah in the Amazon and you know and it what I was saying applies to research Brazil why it actually right in the Brazilian government blatantly announced a 60 day ban on burning in the EMS on and they are sending in the troops will that help is it enough what else could the government do well of course it will help to worry that legitimate landholders who want to use fire to clear the leftover vegetation from last year to prepare the fields for another year of crops are going to be penalized by this but obviously the important thing to do here is not just try and curb the illegal the forestation but actually create and a new vision for the Amazon in which development is around it's it's incredible biodiversity and looks for ways to understand that better and turn it into things which are useful for the world I mean we already have you know cow and we have rubber Kirori and quiet on and you know some other medicines that come from that biology but we've only just scratched the surface. Yes I kind of look at the M is on it's kind of a reserve above diversity we don't know even yet all of the creatures that are there are a lot of exploring to be done and with though that well to replenish this the planet would be much poorer or even in danger well that's completely true so I mean it's really important to understand that one truly important way to think about the Amazon and that far since if it gigantic library for the life sciences you know I don't think the public really understands the bud diversity is in crisis not crisis is developing right at the foundation point of life do you think we're in crisis how serious is it well it's not a crime no crossing globally that we're in a crisis the U.N. Report came out in May basically warn that we could easily lose a 1000000 species in the next 20 or 30 years unless we change some of the negative trends again the Brazilians some Brazilians argue that the Americans developed their West settlers cut down the trees planted crops around cattle despite the original inhabitants Why shouldn't Brazil be allowed to do the same with her wilderness. Well 1st of all we haven't lost very much biological diversity in the process where lucky in the sense of having you know less diverse simpler ecosystems but it's also easy to over simplify what went on in the past in North America and you know there are the equivalent of demarcated Indigenous areas in different parts of the United States that question about it this is radio week was younger porting on the state of the planet I'm Alex Smith honored to have his or just the premier scientist of the end zone and World Conservation Dr Thomas love Julie Thomas if the rest of the switch to away from eating beef than using leather and purchasing slowly would that help preserve the Amazon so I think we need to be doing those kinds of things not just for the Amazon but actually for the future of life on Earth because there are you know we're pushing 8000000000 people now and they're going to be at least another couple more and we just need to change our lifestyles in ways that will create a much gentler footprint on the planet. So tell us please take a couple of minutes if you can to really explain the strategy that you would indoors to save what is left in the great rain forests we'd like to learn from you so I think what one needs to is one engage a major multilateral institutions like the inner American Development Bank to you know mobilize a program that can be funded by other nations. That's step number one Step number 2 I think is actually having a new vision for the future of the Amazon where for example we recognize that rivers are the best transport systems and always have been and highways generally just lead to destruction we need to think about hydroelectric installations that don't walk sediment flow from the Andes down stream that don't block the migratory catfish species which have life cycles that span from the Andes to the estuary and back and then I see incredible opportunity if there was a serious investment in exploring that biological diversity and partnership with industry looking for new medicines new fungicides other new biological products which by definition would be biodegradable and renewable. ready to you know will even for masood a girl research is a multibillion dollar industry in that could be brazil's industry well it certainly could i mean they that did triad wants sabbat 1520 years ago but they didn't really partner sufficiently with industry so and never quite took off but i think it is and you know this is something that could turn all of this sin to incredible financial wealth this well as bearer base on the biological wealth and what about the argument that getting an expanding into the ems on is in a way brazil's social valve to help people who are in poverty or have no of the resources as there are population ill so expense in the you know so it would be more difficult to manage society if the actually tried to protect the amazon more in a 1st fall brazil is a really big country it's if the sensually half a south america so space if not and short supply but the really important thing is the hydrological cycle where by the amazon megs half of its phone rainfall if it gets under cut and you have a tipping point which i think it's close it hand in the south and the isa the amazon part of the sensual amazon you would have dive back or the forest and immense pool of carbon would go up in the atmosphere a huge or matt some biodiversity would be lost and so or while one can sympathize and $0.01 and somebody you just wants to cut some far as to clear a field hi at a certain point that push if the whole system over into much last beneficial future And was there's some suggestion that if the Amazon reaches the tipping point it could also affect global system such as the creation of rainfall in Africa well I'm not so sure about how that links to global patterns of moisture but there's no question that the Amazon is an important flywheel and South Americas climate system and moisture from the Amazon benefits agriculture and central prison all benefits reservoirs and cities of the South or Brazil actually goes as far as Paraguayan and new quiet and northern Argentina so you really play with essentially a continental climate system well this year there has been some public and political reaction to fires in the EMS on rain forest What was your personal reaction and are you trying to keep track of the developments sort of day to day well you know not surprisingly I am on top of it as much as anybody can be on a regular basis and trying to come up with solutions and better outcomes. I think one thing that's very encouraging is how strong Brazilian public opinion was about the need to address this problem and people were literally in the streets as of Friday a week ago. Do you feel that the bio diversity movement and concern is getting lost in the climate change debate and movement or order are they working together what are your thoughts on that well it could easily get overshadowed but if you really stop to think about how it all works in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere from destroyed and created nature is roughly equal to what remains in extent nature that's a pretty shocking statement to be able to make and that's the shocking part so with so much C O 2 in the atmosphere from destroyed ecosystems if we actually got really engaged at ecosystem restoration when we couldn't literally bring down the level of C O 2 in the atmosphere to something which is much more reasonable from a climate perspective and make the future for biodiversity much more secure and basically that means recognizing that this planet works as a linked physical and biological system that it is in fact a living planet and that each and every one of us can individually contribute to ecosystem restoration through planting the right kind of tree or helping restore a coastal well and so my hope here is this will be a great wakeup moment for society about the way the planet works and the importance of biodiversity we certainly need to wake up moment know a lot of your work has been to protect species from extinction What do you make of the new extinction rebellion movement. Well I you know I I'm encouraged that there are some young people out there who really are upset about the thought of extinction Fenton ending what basically are 4000000000 year lineages of evolution cosets what happens every time a species goes extinct so I hope there will be a lot more of it and as we wrap up here as you head toward 80 years on this planet what is the plan do you hope to work your field until the end do you have certain projects you hope to complete or is retirement really an option for you so retirement's not in my vocabulary. And you know there are a lot of things and need to be done and and conservation and science I've got at least 3 more books I want to get out so my days are fall no doubt and you know you have been so generous sharing your time with our listeners thank you very much Thomas Lovejoy and thank you all for caring I'm Alex Smith for radio eco shock which echoes the radio because Web sites were handing the time or. We can add more perspective on the Amazon fires from Brazilian and American scientists on September 5th I attended an online seminar hosted by the Woods Hole Research Center there scientist Dr Michael Coast said quote almost all the carbon stored on land is in forests and the Amazon is one half of the tropical rain forest on the planet equivalent of 10 years of global carbon emissions are stored in the Amazon end quote. Forest also remove carbon from the atmosphere quoting Michael Cohen again something like 30 percent of all carbon being emitted by humans on the planet is being polluted by forest and most of that is in the tropics and again the Amazon is half of that and quote he continues 2 thirds of all sunlight and rainfall are converted back to water vapor by tropical forests that process cools the land surface if you remove the forest it heats up immediately something like 5 degrees C. Or 10 degrees Fahrenheit if you remove a chunk of land in the Amazon today tomorrow it's 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer and quote from Michael Cole and the forest as we know creates rainfall which affects lands thousands of miles away and it's a mainstay for agriculture which means feeding people Cosas about 7000 square kilometers of land were deforested in Brazil this season that is about twice the size of Rhode Island yes the mates about 140000000 metric tons of C O 2 will be emitted into the atmosphere from these Brazilian fires this year the Brazilian rainforest is just not adapted to fire as some forests are on the west coast of North America the Amazon still them burns from natural causes it is just too wet So where does this new burst of fire come from Dr and Ellen Carson experienced Brazilian scientist working with I.P.M. Amazonia she reports as follows They had a big peak of fires in mid August this year and that's very uncommon The only other mid August peak they have seen was in 2010 during a big drug but this was not a mere big drop in early July there was a report of a spike of deforestation pointed out by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research or in pate. They issued deforestation alerts showing a big increase from last year that caused a lot of commotion in Brazil and beyond Dr Allen Carr says that was really a prediction of more fires later in August as the log piles dried enough to be burned and not happened and the world saw the smoke from satellite their team investigated comparing the areas of deforestation and the later hot spots or fires that double check the number of days with the rain and that was not the cause she says quote deforestation is increasing in the Amazon maybe taking us to the rates we had in the 1990 S. And the beginning of the 2 thousands this is a bit scary that we come back to that we get the rates of deforestation that we had 20 years ago and that ends my quote from Dr Anne Ellen car from I.P.M. Amazonia so listeners when the New York Times and others try to say these fires are not burning the rain forest they're just logging slash that is technically true but word of those piles of logs come from the Brazilian space agency says they come from disappearing rain forest cut down a couple of months earlier Michael Cole from Woods Hole discounts media discussion of Amazon as the lungs of the earth and worries about oxygen production this is a distraction from the real issues of the amount of carbon dioxide now being released from deforestation and the burning and the changes on the ground for local climate and of course the biodiversity loss the other Brazilian scientist on the panel Paul Brando just testified about these fires to the Brazilian Congress on September 4th Brandel says quote When you look at what is happening in Brazil right now the Amazon is connected into the global markets what is happening in the Amazon is influenced by buyers in China and Europe and the West. Brazil and the U.S. Compete for the biggest markets for soybeans for example so if someone stops buying grain from the U.S. Or cuts back slowly purchases then we see the impact on the Amazon Dr Brendel thinks international markets and agreements could help reduce deforestation by demanding that as part of trade agreements and Alan Carr says that 50 percent of Brazil's national emissions come from deforestation and lead use changes and the other 20 percent is agriculture so most of Brazil's emissions don't come from fossil fuel use like transportation or industry as in the West and yet Brazil is the 7th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world their only meaningful way to change that is to halt deforestation and to green up their agricultural operations on September 4th I Pam released a briefing paper on where fires are occurring they found by analyzing hotspots that one 3rd of the fires happened on publicly owned land with no designated tenure that means the deforestation is illegal people are cutting the trees in order to quote grab the Syria this is land grabbing land speculation says Alan Carr the only way to straighten that out she test is with a police force the Brazilian government has sent in troops and declared a 60 day ban on setting new fires in the Amazon but that may not stop rampant illegal clearing and logging and the logs consider a little longer before the next round of big fires appear on the satellite photos I asked about a tipping point for the Amazon both the Woods Hole expert and the Brazilian scientists agreed that is a real and worrying possibility perhaps not for the whole Amazon maybe the southern grasslands or Savannah will March further and further north deep into the former rain forest the great rain forest of the world. You can find a link to the live youtube recording of that seminar in my show blog at Eco Schalke dot org It's worth a watch my thanks to the Woods Hole Research Center for hosting and getting the real facts out there about this fire emergency in the Amazon. Your listening to Eco shock radio for the world. I'm Alex Smith get all of our website eco shock dot org. This is radio people shop with your hopes for Alex Smith. How did cold Alaska become the hot smoky place that was summer 2019 with record shattering heat a pocket of drought and smoke that choked out Anchorage and Fairbanks is a new climate emerging in the far north Brian Brettschneider is a climatologist and researcher at the International Arctic Research Center University of Alaska Fairbanks you'll find Brians quotes in Forbes or C.N.N. He just lived through all that wildfires smoke Brian welcome to radio eco shock. I heard you doing today Alex pretty good so I want to ask you the classic question how was your summer Well this was the summer of warm and choking on wildfire smoke in Alaska and in Anchorage in particular Alaska was it was warm everywhere but the core of that heat was centered in the in the southern part of the state and of course the epicenter of the smoky conditions was also focused on the southern portion the state as well was it Fairbanks actually smashed a record the They'd never seen before as far as temperature goes you know it was Anchorage run located had the by far the warmest Well we had the warmest June on record at the warmest July on record and then we just finished with the warmest August on record and and any number of daily records just obliterated previous high temperature marks particularly we had at 90 degrees on July 4th 32 C. And that was several degrees warmer than any observed temperature ever you know and basically in 100 years a record keeping and not only was it just a one day we had a. Just a remarkably warm about a 2 week period where we we had I think 7 of our 10 warmest on record and then 2 week period and then it kind of eased off a little bit but then it warmed back up in August and so we actually ended up with record all time records in August and for dailies but also 4 consecutive days in a row seasonal total so by a by every single metric it was the warmest summer on record not only that it was the driest summer on record in fact if you take our summer for situation if you were to double it it would still be the driest on record and so that was a major contributor to the wildfires we saw this. Summer These are remarkable changes you're talking about I live in British Columbia just south of Alaska and in the previous 2 years summer became a threatening season we had an evacuation kit near the door for a couple of weeks we couldn't breathe outside we had to stay in the house with the windows shut in hot weather does not sound familiar in many ways it does here in Anchorage the the smoke was stick at times and it was persistent and it was unhealthy air the fire that contributed and most of the smoke is about 75 to 80 kilometers to the south and for those people that live close to the fire it was a much more severe hazardous far as people with respiratory conditions safety as well you know for they had to close the only highway that accesses that part of the state many many times you know it was a it was it was more than just an inconvenience it affected many people's lives and a number of people actually lost their homes businesses were burned down and some locations so it was a very very difficult situation. Was it about this summer that made Alaska right for massive forest fires our wildfire season is very compact compared to other locations farther south we we have about a 2 month fire season it kicks in almost reliably be the 1st in June and it typically fades away like clockwork at the end of July and what happened this year was we had a number of days with thunderstorms early in the season so in the 1st week of June and those started many many fires but what really made the situation quite severe was the incredible drought that then set up and took hold of the basic of the entire state for the next 2 months so fire starting our normal process but the occasional rain particularly starting in July that reliably sets and didn't happen this year so the fires there was nothing to slow the fires down and then the incredible warmth that we had worked to dry out the vegetation which made it even more flammable and it was very sunny and light winds and so that sun helped dry out the vegetation even more so really everything kind of came together to make the the fire season really exceptional and and then to top it all off like clockwork normally our rainy season kicks in the 1st of August and puts out the fires it didn't happen this year in the southern part of the state here in Anchorage we normally average measurable rain on half of all days we just didn't get any rain at all and we had just a few millimeters like the last day of the month and so it was. Extended the fire season much much later than it is typical So it really compounded the crisis in the fire this year. Would create those conditions I mean was the jet stream different Was there some sort of blocking pattern I mean this sounds like a big change for the state so what I'd like to tell people is it's a combination of factors the 1st factor is we've had a long term warming and so you know the that that's our that's our climate base state is warmer than it used to be and so that's kind of like the background noise at that everything's set on top of you throw on that record warm ocean waters surrounding the state and so now that's going to be liberating a lot of heat from the water into the nearby atmosphere so that that kind of warms the area around us like you know imagine a in a bathroom if you saw a bath tub full of hot water you've got it set for a couple hours Well what happens so that bath water gets close to room temperature over to that heat go well that heat escaped into the into the air in the bathroom so warmed up the air or what kind of the same effect here and then on top of that we had a very unusual set of weather patterns we had high pressure that just sat over the same area relentlessly the entire summer so if you look at the upper levels of the atmosphere we had the direct record you know highest pressures for June and then in July we had record highest pressure and then in August we had record high pressure so it was an unusual weather pattern but it was the persistence that was really really remarkable how these things normally transience they come and they go but they have an almost unmoved for 4 months it's really just astounding. So in 2060 new cloth of paper titled an assessment of the rule of anthropogenic climate change in the Alaska fire season of 2015 What was special about 20152015 was a was a big fire here you know we had over 4000000 acres burned and that was one of our biggest fire years on record and you know a lot of the the questions that get proposed when we have a big fire year 2019 is another big fire year wasn't quite as big 2015 when it went to things that we we ask ourselves as well is this is this our future is this a condition that we're going to be experiencing more frequently as the climate warms and so it's important just to step back and say you know is this one of the contributions of our long term warming climate to these increases in the fire seasons and what we found was that we expect that in a warming world we expect in the Boreal Forest of the North Dakota in Alaska for there to be more fires and there for the more acreage square mile square kilometers burned in that warming world and so when we model this we say OK we're going to have in a warming world we're going to have more fires and more fire and courage Oh and by the way humans are largely responsible for the warming world and we can now we can we can make some attributions and say you know we are responsible for the the increase in the fire acreage to some degree you know how much of that degree is we're still working on that in the models but we can say that our our contribution to warming the world is also contributing to increasing the amount of fires on fire acreage in Alaska. It's an interesting problem because climate models predict increased precipitation in the suburb tick in the arctic during the century and that happens at the same time that the Arctic is warming more than the rest of the world really so will weather forests decrease forest fire activity or will the extra heat overcome that how does that work oh well that's a great question and so you're absolutely correct we expect there to be more precipitation in a warming world I mean generally everywhere but certainly in the arctic high latitude areas and so there's this paradox he said well if it's going to be weather well it isn't that going to mean it's gonna be harder for fires start and we get less fire acreage and what we found is that the increase in temperature and the increase in atmospheric moisture will lead to increases in instability that will make thunderstorms much more common so we're going to have potentially you know 50 percent more thunderstorm activity what we found is that increase in thunderstorm activity will overwhelm the increase in perceptive Taishan And so the warming temperatures will work to cause vegetation to become more biomass so there'll be more stuff to burn basically and when it doesn't rain it'll be warmer which will dry out the vegetation even more between the rainfall events will see is conditions like this summer will become more common or we have we may end up this year with more precipitation than normal but in between those precipitation events a lot of dryness a lot of warmth and then consequently we do get thunderstorms a lot of fire activity. You know you mentioned the late neighing and I think you said that around 2013 or one of those years there was a time when there were a stream fire conditions everything was ready to burn but it wasn't a bad fire year because you just didn't get the lightning to spark it off yeah you know you need you need a certain set of ingredients for a fire and you know in Alaska about 95 percent in a very few of the year but on balance about 95 percent of the fire acreage is a result of lightning lightning started fires and so if you're if you don't have those lights that lightning that's to start the fires and you're just not going to get it that acreage also it's important remember that fire acreage directive it is highly variable year to year so we've had some very very low fire years in the last decade we've also had some very very big ones and so we have to be careful that when we look at a time series you know we have to look at these things over a long time periods we have to look at aggregations of years so for example if next year we may not have many fires next year and so would we say oh well maybe they were wrong maybe we won't have more fire activity in a warming world but you need to step back and to look at all the atmospheric parameters and are they coming together or thunderstorms and so because we have when you deal statistically with small numbers when I say small numbers I mean the number of thunderstorms so an entire season for example Alaska may have as many lightning strikes as you might have in one day in a bad thunderstorm complex around Oklahoma City I think a few days ago they had almost a 1000000 lightning strikes around Oklahoma City you know in a 24 hour period well that's more than we had the entire year so you can have a couple of lightning thunderstorm outbreaks that start a lot of fires in Alaska or those may not come together in a in A. Killer here and then you might not have many fires and that's what happened in 2013 in 2008 and a couple other years in the last decade but on balance those number of thunderstorms are going up the number of lightning strikes is going up and the number of fires and fire acreage is going up well we know the warming is happening across the Arctic and across the northern hemisphere but I wonder did the same weather system help Siberia to experience the major wildfires that it had in the same summer as Alaska did it I'm not familiar with the amount of lightning activity they had in Siberia but they certainly had conditions atmospheric conditions that once fires were started helps promote fire growth and in extreme fire behavior and so climatologically they have many of the same settings as we have here in Alaska and in other parts of the world the the northern boreal forest and you know once you get those lightning strikes to spark it there's really no stopping it once you have the warm conditions and the dryness you need the rainfall to come and stop it and during the time of our of our high sun season so June and particularly the 1st part of July we saw the same thing here as they saw in Siberia and that was you know once you fires get going they are relentless in the acreage that they burn and that the dry conditions that we saw here were also evident and particularly in Western Siberia you can put the fires out well I know in northern Canada like in the Yukon and further east from that we don't even try to put the fire zone it's impossible to get the human power in to do it so when they start to burn. That's the same same thing here in Alaska and presumably same in Siberia you know we're talking about remote areas that are very difficult to get into there's no you know there's no highways there's no infrastructure to get people in there and the what small populations are there are generally along rivers and can be evacuated if necessary but. There's just not the the infrastructure to fight fires and there's not the there's not the the need in many cases because there's it's just wide open forest for the most part so the management strategy in Alaska is primarily to let the fires burn in less they are threatening people or or structures or we have native allotments you know once the fires go they basically just burn and you see that with the if you look at the just takes on the number of fires and I mentioned lightning accounts for the overwhelming vast majority of acreage burned Well we if you actually look at that the raw number of fires it's about even with human starts and lightning starts but the humans start fires are generally you know they're in the cities or they're right along the highways we do have and so they contribute very little to the overall acreage because they're able to be put out usually in very quick time so you know fires are good for the ecology of a region and so there are benefits to the fires but as at the acreage increases over time we have other considerations that we didn't even used to think of and that is how it affects the total carbon budgets for the earth you know fires contribute depending on which study look at approximately 5 to 10 percent of the global carbon emissions if we increase the fire activity globally in that contribution is going to increase. This is radio week of chalk on milk since we're talking with Brian Brettschneider from the International Arctic Research Center I'm glad you brought up the amount of carbon released because climate critics used to say carbon from wildfires doesn't count because the trees will regroup and recapture the same amount of C O 2 but I wonder if the scale of new wildfires not just in the north but we've got South America and Africa whether that will speed up global warming what do you think Brian. Well you are correct in noting that you know if we assume that the size of forests or the coverage of forests globally remains constant that the contribution of carbon of the atmosphere you know becomes functionally a constant you know so if 20 percent of the earth and I don't know this number I'm just I'm using it as an example 20 percent the earth is forested and it burns in a regular rate historically then you could kind of assume that that's not a changing part of the system but that coverage of forest doesn't stay constant over time and so as we are burning more forest particularly as we're changing the forest cover into something else into pasture land or at their agricultural purposes or or in the urban purposes Rebekah creasing the total amount of orthe cover globally that has an impact because once we burn then forest now in the forest doesn't come back now we've removed that future Seaquest ration of carbon from the atmosphere also as we burn a lot right now you know it contributes locally to the global warming that's that's occurring as we speak and so even if you say well it's going to you know in 100 years you know that tree that force will grow back in the sequester that hard and that may be true but now what's going to happen between now and the next 100 years you know we're in this positive feedback cycle where we have something close to right a runaway global warming hopefully we're not there yet but we don't have the luxury of saying well it will be OK in a 100 years because these trees are grow back we need to worry about what's gonna happen between now and the next 100 years some scientists are concerned that the Amazon may burn enough that it will switch over towards being a savannah or a grasslands instead of a tropical forest are there any expectations that if we have more and more serious fires in the Buru forest that it will say become open peat bog or something different than what it was. You know that's that's a good question and there's not a lot of concern about the Boreal Forest transforming ecologically into and into another kind of eco region but that said you know as say our black spruce forests as they warm up and as a permafrost melts and they dry out it's going to be more suitable for a white spruce to move than areas that are kind of white through forests as they warm up they're going to be more suited to situate forest and as they as the Arctic areas warm up that are currently just tundra they're going to actually have more more trees move in there where there's currently no trees and so there are going to be some some land cover changes but I think the biggest concern here in the in the in the high latitudes is what's going to happen with the permafrost in the tundra you know as we melt permafrost that adds tremendous amounts of carbon to the atmosphere carbon that's been locked in the soil locally for decades centuries perhaps you know can all be released in a relatively short amount time and then also the tundra fires and we haven't had tundra fires in Alaska in 2019 we have another years but Siberia is had some tundra fires this year and those are particularly bad when it comes to releasing carbon in the atmosphere is again eat the tundra isn't able to fully compose vegetation can't decompose fully during the short summer and so freeze up occurs and and it's locked in there in the next year and you grasses grow and they don't have time to fully decompose and it just accumulates over long periods of time and when that burns burn it releases many many a years of stored carbon all of once so that's a concern that we have moving forward is that we're going to have more of these fires in the tundra under Saddam's more common affair tell us about your trip to the Spencer glacier and what that tells us about climate change. Why I had the of the the the privilege of traveling to some glaciers around Anchorage in the recent this summer you know to demonstrate and and to kind of get a handle on what kind of melting is occurring at the glaciers here locally and how that is going to affect the sea level rise and what it means for the ecology of the region and how it's implemented to what's transforming in the north right now in this part of Alaska and an adjacent British Columbia we have many many glaciers and it's a result of tremendous ship a Taishan that falls you know several 1000 feet up 1000 or so meters elevation. In marginal temperature environments we have very very large precipitation values that fall it's just below freezing and so we end up with these very impressive glaciers but they are always right on the edge of a kind of catastrophe because when you warm temperatures up just a little bit you all of a sudden change a lot of that snow into rain and that has a dual effect of one it's not accumulating new snow higher up the glaciers but also that rain actually you know melts snow and ice of that's either on the glacier or part of the glacier and so it really facilitates tremendous melting of the glaciers and that's what we're seeing here in this part of the state is our glaciers are in very rapid retreat they are quickly they're thinning all elevations of the glacier from the top all the way to the bottom and our trips over to the east some of these glaciers the summer just really show dramatic changes over small time periods and you come back year after year and the glaciers look at the visibly different even without taking any formal measurements it's really dramatic and it helps to show people what these changes look like over short time periods because you know we can sometimes kind of get lost in thinking of of these things no longer timescales you know we worry about oh what will Greenland look like in a 100 or 500 YEARS OR WHAT WHAT WILL sea level be like in a 100 years but you can see these changes occurring on an annual basis it really drives home you know the sense of urgency about you know what what needs to be done to turn the ship around. I know people in the Canadian north who think global warming would be a good idea at least for them maybe winters wouldn't be so harsh and Summers a little closer to tropical What do you think Brian will warming up be good for people living in Alaska you know I actually hear that argument from time to time you know there used to be you'd see bumper stickers on cars and would say you know Alaskans are global warming and if you if you look at all the you know the positives and the negatives of a warming world the negatives far outweigh the positives but on the positive side of the ledger you know people would be more comfortable and people would have less expensive heating bills but on balance you know everything else is bad you know everything I tell people you know everything that I love about Alaska and everything that defines the characteristic of this place and all places because the climate defines you know the look in the feel of a place and everything is built for the climate we build houses and all infrastructure is a function of what I'm at of in areas like and at the climate changes this place will become different it will become more like you know Washington state or Idaho which are great places but they're not Alaska and those places will become different bill become more like Nevada or Utah and so as the climate warms our sense of place becomes affected because the nature of locations will boost will just be different that said you know humans can adapt we can adapt we can build new homes and we can change your infrastructure but the environment around us may not be able to adapt asked enough tree species may not be able to adapt to the climate and the plants and the animals may not be able to adapt and so while we may be more comfortable the environment around us may have a kind of a catastrophic downward spiral along the way. Well of the burns down in the trees fall over because the permafrost is melting and the the fish that so many in Alaska depend on going to fish if they disappear it doesn't sound really very good in the long run to have global warming even there you know and so you want well you may have a more pleasant summer to outdoor recreate in the activities that people like to do for their recreation like shooting or kayaking you know the those kind of things those activities may not be left for us to do if the fish don't return are and if the characteristics of our rivers and our forest change you know everything about the place would be difference and it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable Is there anything else you'd like to add as we wrap up here Brian you know one of the things that people like to ask me they say is just a new normal is our future and it's a complicated question and it can be unsatisfying when we talk about probabilities but you know this this kind of summer is is unprecedented and we may say well this was a one in a lot of this happening in any given year might be one in a 100 or one in 500 and in the future you know we may not have a summer this warm again for another 20 or 30 or 50 years but the likelihood is much greater now whereas it was a it was basically impossible to have a summer this warm before the last few decades and now it is possible not only that it's going to be more likely moving forward so we need to look at these things in a relevant time scales as again next summer may be much cooler but the likelihood the probability of of these kind of extreme Summers is much greater moving forward than it's ever been. From the University of Alaska Fairbanks we've been speaking with Dr Brian Brettschneider and you can find links to his work and you can find is popular Twitter feed it's climatologist 49 and up with more links Michelle blog at Eco shock dot org Brian hope you will breathe easier for the rest of the year yes you know we finally got a little bit of wind and a little bit of rain in the last few days not very much but it's at least blowing the smoke out to sea so so we are breathing easier for the time being I'm Alex Smith for radio week 0 shock. That's it for this week thank you so much for listening to radio. My blog and dot org And tune in again next week. Hi this is Hayden from Salmon Creek school and you are listening to Redwood community radio. Garberville 91 point one F.M. Can you Eureka 88 point one F.M. K.O.A. I wait until 90.3 F.M. As them translator K 25 A B Q In shelter Co 99.5 F.M. Noise streaming in archiving on the World Wide Web came a dot org. In the Rosenberg media throughout the country reported that while Trump was forcing himself on a POS The city of the wanted no. Part of him and have to his words and policies helped on the white nationalist and triggered his massacre there his immigration police storm troop their way into several Mississippi food processing plants where they terrorize thousands of workers and arrested nearly $701.00 union president Mark Perowne of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union said such raids they tear hardworking men and women apart from their children families and communities it's wrong the people who do these incredibly difficult jobs have the right to due process and to be treated with respect and fairness these raids spread unmistakable pain among neighbors friends coworkers and loved ones with us from Mississippi to talk about the terror raids is Bill Chandler executive director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance and Louise and by no central Mississippi community organizer and special guest Marlee Lopez who. I don't know if I'm both happy to wish her happy 16th birthday or whether maybe that's where she would start our discussion because today is actually a very said day for Marlee and tell us why Marlee is this is that day. Even though it's your 16th birthday. Well and I still have faith painting friends say OK. And supposedly I was going to put it is I am supposedly. Going to have my like a sweet 16 it doesn't have them and I was supposed to have it doesn't solve the complication now that I wasn't really were able to do it more and more Lee Why aren't you able to have that sweet 16th birthday Well I got my dad and so now after that was on August 7th. They got so he couldn't working more and so my mom the one provided for our lives now she got up at the bills like after that it was a good money going to write the book and so there were there too when you say that you know they got your dad MORLEY What do you mean Who was your dad what happened from the start sure from the start it was say can be a school and it was just at the screen all day and then I get a lock on my dad I call him a guy like 65 I think or something like that because the bus that 7 o'clock. And so I so like is a normal day and then they in like I will miss in the classes and everything like that. And so I do it just like my mother would have meals really qualify me and then makes in the like account the common office that like at. Can not make foreman this one in when it would have already been anything like that building to coming off of the 1st I thought I just got myself and troll or something like that and so like I know what the feel about it like I was into like what did I do wrong or something like that but then there is my friends that were there so they were just and they got my bag and I didn't believe it because like I don't know. I never thought it was like I know the immigration is coming and all that like and I had to have it by do I get like that I got in my head like I know I knew it could be possible vibes never thought it was like they were actually gave him but then I saw their faces and they're like. No I just stare and I mean so that's where my photos and I was and when. Was when I got there I had to like our broke down because that was when I felt bad and all of that just like you know as kind of blame myself for it because like like I said supposedly in the Parliament of the side I am so then I. Blame ourselves and like that when because the brain O'Rorke marks the time now that to get the right the money and all that and after that like you know and so not so for so morally by the way who's who's in the back with you sounds like you're taking care of some little ones and I don't know leftists are the same. As them. Maybe your brothers and sisters do you have. One sister and. Brother and twin brothers and how long of you were you going to the school that you were going to before you were notified that your father was picked up by ice. I was a few days ago and it was like when I found. My 1st. FRESHMAN. Per se in high school I think finance has gone and how long did you live in this town. I grew up here you grew up there so your family's been there a long time yeah. So let's bring Bill Chandler and maybe you can and Luis Espinosa add some of the background to this horrible they don't grant bail in rare cases do the grand bail then the bailiff sells for most people in most cases they cannot go to a bill bondsman like most of us can you know that are in the United States but they have to put up a cash bond a cash bomb can begin around 15000 dollars and go higher $10000.00 even if they're granted bond they don't have that kind of money. Or working in the post or plants less than $15.00 an hour shoes around 11 or $12.00 an hour.