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Our penguin hearts go out to those around the world struggling with the effects of forest fires.

Mitch Mendler, a firefighter in San Diego, California said: “It was like Armageddon – it looked like the end of the world.”

Photo – AP


This is how the Washington Post described it:

Fires raged across Southern California on an epic scale for a third day Tuesday, with flames as high as 100 feet stoked by extremes of wind, heat, dryness and — on the suburban frontier where some of the worst blazes roared — the human impulse to live just a little farther out …

That boundary defined the topography of the unfolding disaster. Two of the four counties — San Bernardino and Riverside — burning most fiercely this week are among the fastest-growing in the United States, bedroom communities that push what ecologists call the “urban/wildland interface.”

The move into the hills is for homes that are more affordable, but they are also more vulnerable. An inventory by University of Wisconsin researchers found that about two-thirds of new building in Southern California over the past decade was on land susceptible to wildfires, said Mike Davis, a historian at the University of California at Irvine and author of a social history of Los Angeles.

Even though people have chosen to live a little further out, to push that urban/wildland interface – what an odd word “interface” – they obviously made the choice without thinking too clearly about the dangers:

The blazes outstripped the 2003 fires that many in San Diego County considered a once-in-a-lifetime event, and that caught officials and residents flatfooted. The resulting controversy brought calls for reform, but San Diego voters declined to fund improvements for the fire department, the smallest per capita for any large city in the country, said Steve Erie, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego who is writing a book titled “Plundered Paradise.”

Further north, the Malibu Hills smolder – Photo: Damian Dovarganes, AP


On October 25, 2007, Time Magazine wrote:

The flames consumed more than 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares), destroyed more than 2,000 houses and forced the temporary evacuation of nearly 1 million people — the biggest mass migration in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina, and far more than were evacuated during the 2003 San Diego wildfires, previously considered California’s worst.

But it is not just the human victims who will suffer because of Fire. There are the wildlands and the wildlife. AP tells this side of the story:

The wind-driven infernos that are scarring vast swaths of Southern California’s landscape may leave more than just a temporary path of destruction when they are finally extinguished.

The wildfires could leave a legacy of environmental devastation that will be evident for years to come, scientists say, especially in areas that have been scorched several times recently. Some of the damage may never be reversed …

Small birds, rabbits and other animals dependent on California’s rapidly disappearing native vegetation will struggle to maintain a foothold, while some endangered species will find themselves locked into increasingly imperiled islands of refuge.

Meanwhile the fires burn elsewhere around the world. There is a major drought in Australia. As temperatures hit record highs, water suppllies hit record lows. Emily Sohn describes the situation:

Step off a plane almost anywhere in Australia, and one of the first things you’ll notice is water—or rather, the absence of it. In every public bathroom in Melbourne, signs remind people to be sparing with the faucet. In Brisbane, short showers are required by law. And throughout southern Australia, everyone using a toilet is supposed to choose the alternate-flush option …

Australia Fire – Photo: CSIRO

The Australian continent has experienced dry spells since ancient times, but the length and severity of the current crisis have surprised even the most weathered climate experts. Australia’s population has grown rapidly in recent decades, and there just isn’t enough water to go around anymore.

Reservoir Molonglo River, New South Wales – Photo: CSIRO


Where have we heard that before – and there just isn’t enough water to go around anymore! The United States of America. Brian Skoloff writes for AP:

An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year. Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

And sadly, closer to our home, the Amazon continues to burn. According to Tom Phillips in the UK Guardian, “Government satellites recorded more than 16,000 fires across Brazil in August, the overwhelming majority in the Amazon.”

The Amazon burns – Photo: Daniel Beltra, Greenpeace






“God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time!”

Not if you’re watching.

These documentary film-makers went to great expense to prove the point:

Do Pinguins Fly?

You can find the film at iFilm.

Flying might be the answer.

Photo: Arthur Morris – Corbis

Do gnus fly?
What do gnus do?
Jumana Farouky of Time tells us that because of the climate crisis “there’s bad news for gnus:”

More than a million wildebeest — also known as gnus — crossing from the Serengeti in Tanzania to Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve and then back again in the search of fresh grass makes for some dramatic action shots, as massive herds travel across the plains before plunging into the Mara River to swim to greener pastures …

This time, piles of wildebeest carcasses line the riverbanks, after 10,000 of the animals drowned trying to cross the Mara at the start of their journey back east to the Serengeti …

The Mara River was especially high this year, after the heavy rains that flooded parts of Africa, killing hundreds of people and uprooting thousands more. Climatologists are pointing to the downpours as proof that predictions that Africa will suffer the most from global warming and climate change are already coming true. The human toll is what makes all the headlines, but the consequences for Africa’s wildlife is just as drastic.

Floods. And more floods. Sorry to repeat myself but … according to James Copnall of the BBC the Ivory Coast town of Grand Lahou is sinking.

Ivory Coast Lighthouse – Photo: BBC

Once one of the first points of contact between Africans and the French in what is now Ivory Coast, Grand Lahou is threatened by a combination of climate change and other factors.

Some predict the town will be completely under water within 10 years, and it is widely accepted it is doomed unless drastic action is taken …

According to Guillaume Za-Bi, a senior scientist at the Ivorian Ministry of the Environment, the uncontrolled mouth of the river Bandama is attacking the town from behind, while the sea is eroding it from the front.

It is a complicated problem, and one for which it seems global warming is at least partly responsible.

“Climate change is one of the reasons for what we can locally see in Grand Lahou,” Mr Za-Bi explains.

Paging Noah! Anybody out there IM’ing the man? Got his cell number on speed dial? Flooding elsewhere in Africa:

Log Canoe, Lira Uganda – Photo: Anony Njunga – Reuters

Flood – Budalangi in W. Kenya – Photo: EPA

Flood, N.E. Ghana – Photo: Jane Hahn, EPA

Can Penguins Fly? Not yet, but we’re practicing.

Names. like dollars, are your ways. We are accustomed to tone and touch and smell and sight, to song. But as your philosopher Darwin taught us all, you have to adapt to survive. Along the way we have learned to appreciate the gifts and intentions of some very kind humans. That helps a small bit to counterbalance the melting of the ice, the loss of life, and the destruction of home, the death of Mother Earth.

We are grateful to our dear friend Lannie Moore and her friend Bronwyn Cooke who bring us pictures of some of our brothers and sisters in Boston.

We have yet to make it there ourselves, so it is always a pleasure to learn of our extended family.

Photos: Lannie Moore




There is, of course, some important news to share.

Like the dragonflies in the arctic skies.
Dawn Walton of the Toronto Globe and Mail writes about what Pierre Tautu has been seeing around his Nunavut home in Chesterfield Inlet, at the top of Hudson Bay.

“We still have ice year-round, but there’s been a little bit of changes,” he said. “Different kinds of insects and different kind of birds that come around our area now.”

His hamlet (population 330) is a prime nesting ground for a variety of birds, but last summer the 44-year-old hunter and guide spotted a type of owl he had never seen that far north. For the first time, he also saw a dragonfly in his Inuit community.

“We don’t have dragonflies around, but I’ve seen one,” Mr. Tautu said. “This was just out in our backyard and I was pretty surprised to see one.”

500 miles from Alaska – Photo – Andy Armstrong NOAA


Julian Borger of the UK Guardian writes about the damage the climate crisis is wrecking right now: the increase in floods and droughts and storms.

A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change “mega disaster”, the United Nation’s emergency relief coordinator, Sir John Holmes, has warned.

Sir John, a British diplomat who is also known as the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.

“We are seeing the effects of climate change. Any year can be a freak but the pattern looks pretty clear to be honest. That’s why we’re trying … to say, of course you’ve got to deal with mitigation of emissions, but this is here and now, this is with us already,” he said …

More appeals were likely in the coming weeks, as floods hit west Africa. “All these events on their own didn’t have massive death tolls, but if you add all these little disasters together you get a mega disaster,” he said.

2 girls rescue a dog in flood in Trinidad, Bolivia – Photo, Aizar Raldes, AFP


Since we have been writing lately about the arctic, it is appropriate to end with two articles which much sum up the problems we face.

Stephen Leahy of IPS News writes “U.S. Moving Backwards:”

As global warming melts the Arctic, the United States’s biggest banks are investing billions of dollars in as many as 150 new coal-fired power plants around the country.

The obvious climatic and fiscal stupidity of such investments is staggering, say environmentalists.

“What are they (the banks) thinking?” asked Leslie Lowe, energy and environment programme director at the Interfaith Centre on Corporate Responsibility …

“It is folly to build new coal-fired plants,” she said.

And yet that is just what Bank of America and Citi (formerly Citigroup) are doing, according to the new report “Banks, Climate Change & the New Coal Rush” by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN).

Electricity generation from coal is the biggest source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the world — larger than deforestation or the transportation sector, says Rebecca Tarbotton, director of RAN’s Global Finance Campaign

The 150 proposed new plants would add 600 million to 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon annually into the atmosphere, Tarbotton said in an interview. Total global emissions of carbon are currently about 8 billion tonnes.

“There is no hope of averting climate catastrophe if a significant number of those plants are built,” said Bill McKibben, author and founder of Step It Up, the largest demonstration against global warming in history.

Dollars and more dollars and even more dollars. And fewer polar bears.

Photo – USFWS


Andrew Revlin of the New York Times writes:

Two biologists who measure field time with polar bears in decades sat in a federal building here, envisioning two possible fates for this denizen of ice in a warming world — and neither future looked bright …

On one possible track, the bears, facing a chronic food gap, could weaken and reproduce ever less as the ice-free summer season expands. The other course could be a swift collapse, should more summers unfold like this past one, said Steven C. Amstrup of the United States Geological Survey …

The script for a slow fade-out may already be on display along the western shores of Hudson Bay in northern Canada, Dr. Amstrup said.

After binging on ringed seals early each year, this southern population, well below of the Arctic Circle, leaves the melting ice and scrounges snow geese and lyme grass, losing weight all summer.

“It appears they’ve reached a point where the earlier departure of the sea ice and their earlier appearance onshore is starting to affect their survival,” he said.

But an abrupt collapse could occur, as well, Dr. Amstrup said.

Yes, and an abrupt collapse could occur as well.