
New England's Dark Day - samclemens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England%27s_Dark_Day
======
simonsarris
Man-made climate change makes for easy storytelling and easier self-
flagellation, but the more earth history I read, the less massive climatic
events surprise me. Australia was the smoke-filled continent long before
Europeans arrived. California fires are nothing new: Pre-1800, about 1.8
million ha burned each year.

[https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/Fi...](https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/FireForestEcology/FireScienceResearch/FireHistory/FireHistory-
Stephens07.pdf)

> Approximately 1.8 million ha burned annually in California prehistorically
> (pre 1800). Our estimate of prehistoric annual area burned in California is
> 88% of the total annual wildfire area in the entire US during a decade
> (1994–2004) characterized as ‘‘extreme’’ regarding wildfires. The idea that
> US wildfire area of approximately two million ha annually is extreme is
> certainly a 20th or 21st century perspective. Skies were likely smoky much
> of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period.

And:
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345)

> Many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem [...] however, important
> exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these
> perceived overall trends.

For that matter California can go into drought for _hundreds of years at a
time_ which lead to the downfall and forced migration, understandably, of
peoples in the area.

That's not to minimize man-made impacts, which certainly change the game! But
I worry the focus on man-made change leads people to fail to appreciate just
how much living on earth, on the geological scale, is riding a wild horse. If
we can barely stomach a single weather anomaly without thinking it _must_ be
the result of man-made climate change (and would not be there otherwise),
rather than a part of a planet with a big history of anomalies, it will lead
us to thinking less clearly. (Of course all kinds of denialists aren't helping
there, either.)

Our job is to steward the earth so we can stave off things like mass death,
famines, etc. California should be thinking about the engineering needed to
live in a biome that genuinely wants to be on fire, sometimes, and we should
be routing around this possibility. It's somewhat frustrating to see the
governor jump to climate change if only for its convenient exculpatory power,
as if when we are not sequestering carbon, we humans are _otherwise_ helpless.

~~~
munk-a
> It's somewhat frustrating to see the governor jump to climate change if only
> for its convenient exculpatory power

Eeeeeh.

Sure, fair I suppose. Except that the US political arena is currently composed
of people that want to address climate change and environmental stewardship
responsibly and those that deny it's existence while toting snow balls onto
the senate floor.

It's fine to reasonably say that California & the feds are underfunding
efforts to maintain fire breaks and forest management in the state. It's not
fine to say that carbon sequestration will solve everything magically one day
- we need to be doing both, addressing excessive carbon generation and looking
into carbon sequestration.

Also, as far as I've seen, carbon sequestration isn't really a renewable
process - the idea is to lock that carbon outside of the natural cycles,
that's a great way to reset things, but it doesn't effect the velocity with
which we continue to make the problem worse.

Lastly, we're a pretty rich society - if we can do something about this why
don't we. I think most people would be happy to go without the next generation
of iPhone if it means solving climate change - maybe we can just slightly slow
down the economic engine and produce a more sustainable existence.

~~~
ancarda
>I think most people would be happy to go without the next generation of
iPhone if it means solving climate change

Don't you also have to go vegan, stop flying, switch to an EV car, stop using
disposable plastic, switch to green electricity, avoid businesses that aren't
carbon neutral, consider the environment before you print that email, and so
on ... ?

The scale of change required is seriously overwhelming and I fear without a
solution to that, we aren't going to fix this problem anytime soon :(

~~~
conception
Actually you mainly have to just go at the rich and regulatory capture. Carbon
and plastic taxes/cap/trade to capture those externalities and most of the
problems go away on their own. But then someone might not get another yacht.

------
lisper
This description matches almost exactly with what I personally observed on the
San Francisco peninsula on September 9. I even wrote about it at the time:

[http://blog.rongarret.info/2020/09/this-is-what-
apocalypse-l...](http://blog.rongarret.info/2020/09/this-is-what-apocalypse-
looks-like.html)

------
ainiriand
I personally lived a situation very much similar, although just a few minutes
of full darkness. It was in the north of Spain in the middle of a huge storm.
The day went to fully black and it was terribly scary.

~~~
war1025
We had a big storm here in Iowa last month that was very similar. I looked
outside at 11am and it looked exactly like midnight.

That was a "This can't be good" sort of feeling.

~~~
ainiriand
I know what you mean. It gave me a deep, primitive dread and fear.

------
dylan604
I'm waiting for some History channel show to drill some core samples and have
experts point to the thin layer of soot that they use as proof of the cause
for this Dark Day. You'll have to wait for all of the commercial breaks and
seasonal cliff hangers with goofy repetitive announcer comments trying to puff
up the drama.

~~~
gen220
Has the history channel gone off a cliff? Or has it always been this way, and
I just never noticed as a wide-eyed youth?

I haven't watched it in years, but nowadays it'd be better described as "The
Conspiracy Channel", with generous sides of American Pickers and Pawn Stars.

~~~
dylan604
Go watch a couple of episodes of one of their flagpole show called "Mystery Of
Oak Island". It's produced in such a formulaic fashion that it's mind numbing.
7 seasons later, the people still haven't gotten any closer to their goals.

~~~
gen220
I just spent 10 minutes trying to squeeze some some sense out of the episode
summaries on wikipedia. (like squeezing water out of stone)

It reminded me of how I feel after programming for 12 hours straight --
nothing makes sense any more and everything is connected... I can't believe
they've made 7 seasons out of this.

An example synopsis:

> With only two weeks left in the season Rick, Marty and Craig debate what
> they will do while the crane operators are on strike. They decide to conduct
> seismic testing in the swamp. At Smith's Cove, another wooden structure is
> found and excavation of that begins. A rust coloured patch of packed rocks
> with water flowing out is found. In the war room, members of the team meet
> with researcher Chris Donah who contacted them about the swamp and its
> relationship with the constellation Virgo. Eagle Canada returns to the
> island to conduct seismic testing in the swamp using 2,025 charges and 4,000
> geophones. On Lot 27, Gary and Marty metal detect the spoils from a previous
> excavation of the swamp. They find a button, a coin or token with a square
> hole in it. In the war room, the dendrochronology results are revealed. The
> samples date to around 1770 with a 99.99% confidence.

This episode had 3.16 __million __viewers. What.

~~~
dylan604
Yeah, those numbers don't surprise me. It is one of their more popular shows,
and they are milking it for everything it is worth. Websites of fans
discussing their own theories and what not. It has a huge hook because of
that. It's a modern day Indiana Jones search for the grail and/or ark.
Essentially, the History Of Oak Island would be a pretty interesting 2 hour
documentary. As a weekly reality tv show, they have to fluff it to fill the
time slots so the style of it gets very old very fast. I had never heard of it
until Prime recommended it to me, and then it just became one of those COVID
shows playing in the background while I continued to bang out code. Every now
and then it would catch me, and I'd actually pay attention to some of the
historical research stuff they would go into.

