By Dr. Robert Thorson
Global warming ruined my golf game.
Golfers are legendary for making excuses, and hence are probably laughing at me now. But I swear it’s true!
Global warming is not something that will happen in the future. It’s happening now. Nor is it something that will affect us principally through warmer temperatures. It will have an effect in countless ways not yet dreamed of. I offer the ruination of my golf handicap as an example.
Last August, I asked my son Kevin what he would most like to do while in Fairbanks, Alaska. His answer was to play night golf in the “Land of the Midnight Sun.” Foursomes often tee off sometime after 11 p.m. and play till after 1 a.m. just for the bragging rights of having played at midnight. Under normal circumstances, darkness isn’t a problem because there’s usually enough light to read a book outside.
We made it through the first few holes just fine. Then, much to our surprise, darkness came on quickly. First, we started to lose balls right in the middle of the fairway. Next we came to a short par three with a water hazard between the tee and green. Unfortunately, we could see neither the far side of the pond nor the flag on the green. Undeterred, we hit our tee shots, then heard them fall — splash — kerplunk — into the water. Our mulligans cleared the pond and landed with an audible thud, giving their locations away. We felt like a couple of bats using sound, instead of sight, to play that hole. Things then went from bad to worse. On the last hole, we walked from the tee to the green, using the lights of vehicles on the road as a time-delayed strobe light. I finished with five putts, which were guided by the dark gray silhouette of my son standing over the hole.
Now, back to global warming and wildfire history. According to A.L. Westerling and his colleagues, who published in the July 6 Science Express, 1986 was a turning point for wildfires. Since then, fires in the western United States have become more frequent, larger, earlier in the season, longerburning and more costly. This week’s fire in California, for example, has scorched more than 70,000 acres, cost more than $10 million to suppress and been declared a state of emergency by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The scientists assembled a comprehensive database for 1,166 fires in the western U.S. larger than 400 hectares. They compared the duration and intensity of the burns to geographic location, time of year and recent climate trends. Then they compared the fires in the modern period with those from the interval 1970-1986.
Since 1986, the fire season has become 78 days longer, the frequency of major fires has increased fourfold and they now burn for an average of 37.1 days instead of 7.5. The link between warming and wildfire activity is caused by an earlier snowmelt, which extends the fire season; higher summer temperatures, which dry the vegetation and soil; and expansion of the vulnerable forest areas to higher elevations. The increase in wildfire activity is not due to a change in forest management practices or to a reduced level of fire suppression. It’s due to a warmer climate.
Having read this report about the link between climate change and wildfire activity, I suspect that the same basic factors apply to Alaska, which has also had an increase in wildfire activity. Hence, my lousy golf score (an average of 10 strokes per hole) and the loss of a dozen balls were due to global warming, which caused the fires, which sent up the smoke, which darkened the skies, which impaired my sight, which ruined my round.
On that night in early August 2005, the Land of the Midnight Sun had become the Land of the Midnight Smoke.
I close with two pieces of advice. Don’t play golf in the dark. And prepare yourself for some really oddball and expensive results of climate change. It’s too late to turn back now.