While Greece burns ...

Fires in Greece encouraged by global warming, developers

Posted by Kit Stolz (Guest Contributor) at 2:57 PM on 31 Aug 2007

Read more about: politics | international politics | Greece

Two years ago, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, conservatives and right-wingers were quick to deny any possible link to global warming.

"As if any reputable expert believes this is in any way connected," huffed Andrew Sullivan on his well-known site.

To his credit, Sullivan admitted just two days later that he may have blogged too soon, and said that experts such as Kerry Emmanuel had in fact linked global warming and more powerful hurricanes. In the years since, Sullivan has stopped questioning the reality of climate change, and called for a carbon tax.

Now we have an unprecedented outbreak of fire in Greece, and once again some are quick to insist that no connection can be made between drought, wind, record-breaking heat -- and devastating fires.

Scientists aren't so sure. Nineteen different climate models predict that the subtropic zones, such as the American Southwest and south Greece, including the Athens area, will become hotter, drier, and more likely to suffer drought as global warming intensifies.

"It's a big deal. The tropics may be expanding and getting larger," says study co-author Thomas Reichler, an assistant professor of meteorology at the University of Utah. "If this is true, it also would mean that subtropical deserts are expanding into heavily populated midlatitude regions."

Droughts and unusually dry conditions in recent years in the subtropical American Southwest and Mediterranean Europe may be related to expansion of the tropics, he added in a press release last year.

But although the underlying conditions in Greece this summer have encouraged fire, Greeks themselves have worsened matters.

After what is now considered the worst outbreak of fires since at least the 1880s in Greece, according to a backgrounder by Ian Fisher of the New York Times, suspicion has focused on an unholy alliance between the conservative government and developers, who in the past have used fire damage to enable construction.

Veteran reporter Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times explains:

Among the most insidious triggers, according to officials and environmentalists, is a practice by unscrupulous builders of deliberately setting fire to forests to render the land available for development.

Greece is the only country in the European Union that does not have a forest registry. Once a forest burns down, the legal status of the land also goes up in smoke. Absent records, designating the land for reforestation is too difficult, and it is often up for grabs. In some cases, developers have moved in with the help of corrupt officials.

"Historically, this is a very big problem," said Demetres Karavellas, chief executive of the Greek branch of the World Wildlife Fund. "There is no doubt that at least some of the fires this week were due to arson linked to property development."

Already this suspicion has led to demonstrations and spontaneous riots; now the government itself -- which has hinted that terrorists could be to blame for the fires -- is sinking in the polls as it faces a suspicious and angry electorate, due to vote on Sept. 16 in a national election.

Regardless of the political outcome, a great deal of damage has already been done, as the photograph below -- nominated for several awards -- shows. (Photo: stephmel via flickr.)

For story: While Greece burns ...
7 Comments | Post a Comment

A more accurate comparison...

...might be to say that global warming is probably responsible for the conditions that faciliated both the destruction of New Orleans (poor design and construction of the levees) and the fires in Greece (arson).

Emily Gertz Journalist & Editor egertz AT oneatlantic DOT net http://www.apartmentecology.com/

by Emily Gertz at 6:05 PM on 31 Aug 2007

The cow is so big because it is Polarized

Now we have an unprecedented outbreak of fire in Greece, and once again some are quick to insist that no connection can be made between drought, wind, record-breaking heat -- and devastating fires.

The wicked flee when no man pursueth ...

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former H2 energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes

by GRLCowan at 6:12 PM on 31 Aug 2007

Only making it worse ...

Most Americans believe Global is a real threat, and although maybe a third are outright "denialists" most are very interested in the subject. Unfortunately, due to stories such as these, normal folks can detect frothy media exaggeration which only makes Americans more wary. So yes, global warming may have a hand in matters in some subtle way, such the fact is that weather is always, and has always been, chaotic.

The NY Times recently ran an article that said while most Americans supported the concept of Global Warming, most put is down about number 20 out of 25 major topics. Suffice it to say this is not election material. Attempts by the media to up these sad numbers always fail, since most people simply do not trust the media any more - because they lie, exaggerate, or just flat tell biased political stuff. Only about 20 percent of Americans really believe anything they read any more.

So when we hear stories such as linking the fires in Greece to Global Warming, it's just another "my hair is on fire" story probably cooked up by some frustrated college students or professors who need to publish some crap. And what baffles many observers is that is only gets worse, with stories such as about "Super-Canes" and "Land Typhoons."

I have faith that Americans can eventually "get the picture" but such wild-ass stories do not help the cause. Shock and awe simply is not going to work. If you want to convince people that Global Warming requires more dedication than is currently seen in the US, you're going to have to do better than that. Please give us credit, we can sniff bullshit a mile away.

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 7:13 PM on 31 Aug 2007

Climate change can be linked to every disaster.

Anthropogenic climate change is behind every major climate disaster in the world. If not solely from greenhouse gases, you could say that arson is a product of man and causes fires and you could say that our bad design of cities in flood zones exaccerbates disasters as well.

The Black Car Project Killing cars before they kill us!

by wildleaf at 7:59 PM on 31 Aug 2007

No individual throw of seven means the dice are

loaded. Similarly, an individual extreme weather event can't really demonstrate that climate has been changed or not changed.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former H2 energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes --
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

by GRLCowan at 8:28 PM on 31 Aug 2007
[ Parent ]

Gears are grinding in unused brains...

and what those gears are starting to think is "maybe this global warming shit is going to hit MY HOUSE with a tornado, a hurricane, a fire, a flood, ice storm or drought. Maybe, just maybe the planet can fight back when we screw it over."

It doesn't matter for jack if the fires in Greece were caused by a lack of fuel management or global warming; nobody believes the global warming deniers because they lie about everything else. These are the same people that are telling us that there is no inflation becasue DVD's are cheaper while meat, milk, eggs and pasta are up 20% in price. The same people bringing you the Iraq war.

Five more years of whacky weather and people will start believing earthquakes are caused by burning coal. With the arctic ice cap slipping into memory whacky weather is an absolute guarantee.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 11:17 PM on 31 Aug 2007

Acrtic sea ice

Good point about the arctic sea ice - it is truly one of the catastrophes of our times and it's happening right under our noses. While glacial land ice and snowfall might actually be increasing, floating sea ice has diminished by about a third. As the sea ice retreats, it loses its ability to reflect light (albedo) and warms up even more.

Dr Jeff Masters has blogged about this over at Weather Underground. He notes that sea ice was already floating in the water, so any sea level rise would be very small at best, at least in the short-term. However, a warmer North Pole could have the effect of delaying the onset of winter, or having other unusual climate effects.

The rate of sea ice melt is alarming in the extreme, although I doubt if anything can be done today to stop it. Even if every single man-made source of CO2 and methane was shut down, the Arctic melt would continue for years simply because of the inertia from loss of albedo, ocean currents (the sea near the North Pole is about 3,000 feet deep), the thermodynamics of water, elevated CO2 background levels, and so forth.

Worse yet, the IPCC models completely missed this sea ice melt event, and since they could not explain it through modeling cannot predict how to fix it such as by "what-if" modeling scenarios.

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 7:27 AM on 01 Sep 2007

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