By Matthew D. Batista

I. The Camp Fire

Bad Signs. The Mendocino Complex fire is the largest wildfire by area in California history. The Mendocino and Carr fires together burned nearly 650,000 acres. Fast forward six weeks and move south less than 100 miles, and now, both the most destructive fire, by structure count, and most deadly fire in California gripped the state. The Camp Fire is considered the deadliest fire anywhere in the United States in 100 years.

By 9:00 AM or so on Thursday, November 8, I started receiving images from friends and family in Chico, CA, showing the all too familiar orange glow in the sky. Think “The Upsidedown” from the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” but orange. A few hours later, it became apparent that this fire was serious. I arrived at a ghostly landscape the next evening to meet with evacuated family members.

A Uniquely Destructive Fire. Rain mercifully fell at long last in Northern California during the week of Thanksgiving. The rain helped fire crews contain the blaze at 95% as of the morning of November 24. As of the same day, 153,336 acres burned and 18,733 buildings, including 13,954 residences, were destroyed. There were 84 people who lost their lives, 3 firefighters were injured, and 475 people remain missing. Nearly 6,000 firefighters, 23 helicopters, and 630 fire engines fought the fire. The cost of such a response will be staggering.

Continue reading “Unique Destruction: The Camp Fire Shows What the Beginning of Climate Change Looks Like”

By Matthew D. Batista

The Problem

Plastic Does Not Disappear. “Every bit of plastic ever made still exists.”  Plastic permeates the Earth and its ecological systems. Since the advent and mass adoption of plastic, roughly over the last 100 years, humans have treated plastics like they are bio-degradable. Spoiler alert, they are not. Plastics also gradually break down into smaller debris, making the collection problem even worse. The result is an astonishing concentration of plastics, often ending up in oceans around the globe.

Pacific Gyre Accumulation. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (“GPGP”) is a region of the Pacific Ocean, between the United States and Japan, where dumped plastics accumulate due to natural ocean currents. The GPGP is an area of incredible plastic concentration, estimated to be roughly twice the size of Texas. Though the problem has been known for some time, a recent study—using perhaps the most comprehensive research method yet—has concluded that the concentration by weight of plastics in the GPGP may be between four and sixteen times more than previously estimated. The study estimates a minimum total of at 80,000 tons (approximately 176,000,000 pounds) of plastic floating in the gyre. Continue reading “Ocean cleanup problems and solutions”