Talk with your mouth full / Bite the hand that feeds you / Bite off more than you chew / What can you do? / Dare to be stupid — Al Yankovic (Weird), 1985
When it comes to wildfires, we here in the States tend to think of California… as well we should, particularly right now. This year’s deadly conflagrations have spread to Oregon and Washington State. Or, as President Tang says, “those antifa anarchist states.” Wildfires have done a world of harm to Australia as well. And, now, Russia.
But… the arctic circle? And… zombie fires? ZOMBIE FIRES IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE?
Wow. That one didn’t even make it into the bibles. And they sadly shit-canned the revered Weekly World News, so you might not have heard of zombie fires.
According to the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic Program Director Peter Winsor, a zombie fire is one that starts in the permafrost layer. Those things consist of frozen soil, silt, gravel, frozen plants and animals and sand bound together by frozen water. Such layers can be hundreds of meters thick – or, in midtown Manhattan terms, about two blocks thick, which is deeper than many Broadway potholes. A good place to find permafrost is in the arctic circle, where its less likely to break down due to lower warming conditions. Those last two words are known in the writing racket as “foreshadowing.”
The arctic circle permafrost layer was not expected to break down for another 70 years, according to Winsor. These zombie fires burn underground for years. They promote the release of even more carbon into the atmosphere, and that accelerates the whole warming thing which, in turn, causes more zombie fires. What goes around, comes around.
And, speaking about perpetual motion machines, zombie fires are almost impossible to put out.
The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) Global Fire Assimilation System, part of the European Union’s Earth observation program, reported from January 1 to August 31 carbon dioxide emissions for the Arctic Circle “were 244 megatons, compared to 181 megatons for the whole of 2019.” The permafrost-covered underground fires in the Eastern Federal District of Russia “emitted a total of approximately 540 megatons of carbon dioxide, which surpasses the previous highest total emissions.”
Okay, that sounds like a bad idea, but why should we care? It’s the arctic circle. It’s Russia. Big deal, right?
That region is home to eight and one-third million human beings, and only about a half-million of them live in the city of Vladivostok. Granted, very few of these people are Americans, but there are reasons for us to care. It’s on the eastern boarder not far (comparatively speaking) from such places as Japan, both Koreas, China, the Philippines, Canada, and Alaska. That latter place is part of the United States of America, for those with an overly narrow worldview.
If you were worried about North Korea exploding a nuke with fallout that would likely affect us here in the United States, then you should be able to grasp this concept.
Perhaps you have noticed we all use the same atmosphere. Ask anybody who’s been in orbit around our planet: Earth’s atmosphere is an extremely thin envelope that contains a lot of life-providing oxygen and other gasses, as well as an ever-increasing amount of carbon. It filters out the cosmic rays that prevent us all from turning into the sequel to the Fantastic Four movies which, you might recall, weren’t very good.
If you think that dumping an uncountable amount of crap into that thin atmosphere is a problem we can deal with… then go ask a dinosaur.
That carbon stuff is the basis of all this “global warming” stuff we’ve been reading about. You know, the stuff President Tang and his 62 million babbling zombies tell us is a hoax.
It’s not a hoax. It’s not fake news. It’s not a plot to cost Tang the election. As the saying goes, “Science does not care what you think.” If you were giggling about zombie fires at the top of this column — and, hopefully, you’ve gotten over that by now — how much proof do you need before you consider this global warming thing is real?
Do you have kids? Grandchildren?
This is serious stuff, and time is not on our side.
