Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy centralow.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about wildfires aka the coronavirus of the forest.
Speaker 2: As you probably know, the West Coast has been devastated
Speaker 2: by massive fires burning for weeks, and over the weekend,
Speaker 2: California saw one of its biggest blazes yet.
Speaker 3: Those deadly new fires raging out of control in northern
Speaker 3: California among the dozens now burning across the state, and
Speaker 3: they exploded in size on Monday, those fires destroying homes,
Speaker 3: damaging popular wineries.
Speaker 1: Before sunrise, entire neighborhoods were engulfed in flames, devouring an
Speaker 1: untold number of homes.
Speaker 4: It was just, you know, a big red qualifire right
Speaker 4: next to us.
Speaker 1: In the world famous Napa Valley. More than sixty wineries
Speaker 1: are in the burn zone. An unknown number have already
Speaker 1: been damaged or destroyed.
Speaker 5: It covered cars with ash and turned the sky's above
Speaker 5: Punoma County red as this smoke block the sun. So
Speaker 5: far this year, California has seen more than eight thousand wildfires,
Speaker 5: destroying more than seven thousand buildings, scorching nearly fifty eight
Speaker 5: hundred square miles. That's the size of almost three million
Speaker 5: football fields.
Speaker 6: God damn that is terrible.
Speaker 2: So many beautiful wineries are being threatened by these wildfires.
Speaker 2: And remember, there are a lot of people who rely
Speaker 2: on these wineries. You've got the owners, you've got the employees,
Speaker 2: you've got the economy of entire towns.
Speaker 6: And you know who.
Speaker 2: I feel really bad for America's book clubs because without wine,
Speaker 2: they're gonna have to discuss books soba, and I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just English class. Here's my question, though, how come
Speaker 2: wildfires never burn the shit that we want them to? Huh?
Speaker 2: Just once I want to turn on the news and
Speaker 2: hear about a wildfire burning down a pedophile's house, you know,
Speaker 2: taking out a neo Nazi recruitment center, then passing by
Speaker 2: a marshmallow factory and roasting everything.
Speaker 6: Inside to a nice golden brown.
Speaker 2: And another reason I hope that these wineries get out
Speaker 2: of this thing. Okay, it's not just because of how
Speaker 2: awful it would be for the region, but because it
Speaker 2: would mean that we would all left to start getting
Speaker 2: our wine from New Jersey. Hmm, I detect hints of
Speaker 2: Adidas track suit and Gubba goole. But yes, With yet
Speaker 2: another wildfire breaking out in California, a record setting year,
Speaker 2: continues to get even worse for the West Coast, and
Speaker 2: the question many people are asking is why why have
Speaker 2: wildfires gotten so out of control? Well, let's find out why.
Speaker 2: In another installment of If you don't know, now you know?
Speaker 2: So why have wildfires been so bad in recent years?
Speaker 6: Well, if you immediately.
Speaker 2: Said the climate change, then okay, you're mostly right.
Speaker 4: It's a disastrous new normal. Catastrophic fires once contained one season,
Speaker 4: now a hair wa year round battle. We're going to
Speaker 4: go a major factor climate change. In the last forty years,
Speaker 4: fault temperatures in California have increased about two degrees, where
Speaker 4: precipitation has dropped about thirty percent.
Speaker 7: Longer dry seasons, and extreme events like heat waves that
Speaker 7: synchronize the risk of fire across enormous landscapes.
Speaker 8: Climate change is increasing the area burned by the average wildfire,
Speaker 8: more than doubling it since the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Since nineteen thirty, five of the biggest fires so far
Speaker 1: out of the top ten, have.
Speaker 9: Been this year.
Speaker 10: California is America fast forward.
Speaker 9: In other words, of postcards from the future.
Speaker 6: Oh man, are you serious?
Speaker 2: California is basically a postcard from the future that means
Speaker 2: the future is also on fire, and it also means
Speaker 2: that the post office is still functioning in the future.
Speaker 6: So I guess whooa, we did it, and that really
Speaker 6: is mind blowing.
Speaker 2: Five of the biggest fires have been this year's sane,
Speaker 2: although this is twenty twenty, so I'm kind of shocked
Speaker 2: that all of the biggest fires haven't been from this year.
Speaker 2: Wildfires might be here to stay, which is awful for humans,
Speaker 2: but especially bad for trees because they can't move. Humans
Speaker 2: can just run away from a wildfire, but trees they're
Speaker 2: just stuck there.
Speaker 6: Can you imagine how terrifying they must be for them?
Speaker 1: Ah ha ah ah.
Speaker 2: Now, there are a number of ways that climate change
Speaker 2: makes wildfires bigger and more frequents. For instance, not only
Speaker 2: does dryer wood and leaves make better fuel for fires,
Speaker 2: but hot weather is also associated with increasing lightning strikes
Speaker 2: that ignite them. In fact, even small things about climate
Speaker 2: change can have a huge ripple effect that leads to fires,
Speaker 2: and I mean really small things.
Speaker 9: Millions of drought stress trees in California forests were low
Speaker 9: on SAP, which is their natural defense against the bark beetle.
Speaker 11: These are these little tiny bugs about the size of
Speaker 11: a grain of rice.
Speaker 12: Bark beetle infestation is linked to global warming. As the
Speaker 12: weather gets warmer, they burrow into the bark of pine trees.
Speaker 12: They kill the pine trees. The pine trees then essentially
Speaker 12: become sticks of kindling ready to burn.
Speaker 9: The beetles took down more than one hundred and sixty
Speaker 9: million trees, and that's where some of the largest fires
Speaker 9: are burning today.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I believe it a lot of people.
Speaker 2: The spread of the tiny bark beetle is yet another
Speaker 2: way that climate change is making wildfires worse. It's also
Speaker 2: a great reminder that even though climate change is really
Speaker 2: bad for us humans, for some other creatures it's.
Speaker 6: The best thing that ever happened.
Speaker 2: It's like how the Trump administration has been a disaster
Speaker 2: for most.
Speaker 6: People, but great for various reptiles.
Speaker 2: And I gotta be honest, I never thought the apocalypse
Speaker 2: would be caused by such a lame villain. I mean, really, guys,
Speaker 2: beetles are going to be the reason everything's on fire.
Speaker 6: Come on, man.
Speaker 2: The last season of Game of Thrones was bad enough
Speaker 2: when Denaris was burning everything down with dragons. Now I
Speaker 2: imagine if she had beetles instead, that shit would make
Speaker 2: the brand storyline seem exciting. Well, let's get back to
Speaker 2: the kid who's like a bird or something. I don't
Speaker 2: want these beetles. So, yes, we have to address climate change.
Speaker 2: But the truth is climate change isn't the only reason
Speaker 2: that these fires have been getting worse. There's also at
Speaker 2: least a century of government stupidity.
Speaker 13: Controlled fire or prescribed fire is the method of burning
Speaker 13: certain land to reduce wildfire hazards. This method was developed
Speaker 13: by Native Americans thousands of years ago. These low intensity fires,
Speaker 13: called cultural burnings, that built much of California's forests. Without
Speaker 13: controlled burns, forests would have become overgrown and unmanageable. Overgrown
Speaker 13: forests create a lot of fuel in its form of
Speaker 13: dry or dead plants. As European colonization grew in California,
Speaker 13: native tribes were banned from engaging in cultural burning, and
Speaker 13: over time, state and federal authorities focus on quickly extinguishing
Speaker 13: any wildfires. For example, the US Forest Service infamous ten
Speaker 13: Am policy so that any fires that occurred in it
Speaker 13: must be put out by ten am the next day.
Speaker 13: This limit on fires.
Speaker 7: Did little to reduce the fuel that was growing on
Speaker 7: the forest floor. And even with these policies, California still
Speaker 7: has fuel loads waiting to be burned from centuries ago,
Speaker 7: making prescribe burning far more tedious and expensive than previously thought.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you heard that right.
Speaker 2: One thing that would help out a lot is if
Speaker 2: California had been doing more controlled burns, which is basically
Speaker 2: when you burn a little to prevent a lot from
Speaker 2: burning later. It's the same way you meet your college
Speaker 2: friend for coffee so that you don't have to have
Speaker 2: a three hour dinner with them. And you know, you
Speaker 2: have to admit, it's pretty unbelievable that California is now
Speaker 2: doing what they outlawed the Native people from doing. I
Speaker 2: guess it's kind of hard, though, to kick somebody off
Speaker 2: their land and take their advice at the same time,
Speaker 2: this is my property now, you savage.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 2: Also, before you go, do you have any landscaping tips,
Speaker 2: like any like mulching techniques or things that I have
Speaker 2: to learn now. Obviously, it's bad enough that wildfires are
Speaker 2: burning millions and millions of trees, but what makes it
Speaker 2: an especially big problem for people is that we've been
Speaker 2: giving the fires a lot more of our stuff to burn.
Speaker 14: Since nineteen ninety sixty percent of all the homes in
Speaker 14: the United States have been built in the wildland urban interface.
Speaker 2: We've got houses in places we didn't used to have houses,
Speaker 2: and that puts people and property at risk.
Speaker 14: As more houses are built near wildlands, more of them burn.
Speaker 14: Fifty years ago, wildfires destroyed a few hundred structures per
Speaker 14: year across the United States. Now it's more than three thousand.
Speaker 14: In California alone. More than six million houses are in wild.
Speaker 15: Areas because urban housing is so expensive. Instead of avoiding
Speaker 15: these high risk zones, Californians continue to build in a
Speaker 15: tinder box of grass and trees boxed by windy canyon.
Speaker 16: Instead of smoky bear in the middle of the woods,
Speaker 16: we need a smoky bear in the middle of suburbia.
Speaker 2: Ah, you do yourself a favous smoky ban. You stay
Speaker 2: out of the suburbs. We don't want Karen calling the
Speaker 2: cops on you. Hello, nine one one, There is a
Speaker 2: bear in my neighborhood and he's he's brown. But yes,
Speaker 2: one big problem is that more and more people are
Speaker 2: building homes in the middle of the forest. And let's
Speaker 2: place the blame where it belongs. Here with the Keibler
Speaker 2: Alves Yeah, these guys made living in the forest looks
Speaker 2: so cool that everyone started doing it. You get to
Speaker 2: be in a tree making cookies all day. Sounds great,
Speaker 2: But guess what those cookies are covered with beetles. And
Speaker 2: if we're honest here, guys, one of the bigger issues
Speaker 2: is human arrogance.
Speaker 6: We just think we can build wherever we go. You know,
Speaker 6: wherever we build a house, that's our land.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 2: It's the same way people in Florida are always surprised
Speaker 2: when alligators show up. Oh, there's an alligator in my backyard. No,
Speaker 2: there's a person in that alligator's house. But the good
Speaker 2: news is we can fix these problems. Yeah, believe it
Speaker 2: or not. The wildfires don't have to happen the way
Speaker 2: they have been. We can stop them if we take
Speaker 2: action to reduce climate change. We can stop them if
Speaker 2: we maintain the forest, and we can stop them if
Speaker 2: we build in environmentally sensitive ways.
Speaker 6: And as for those beetles, you leave them to me.
Speaker 6: We'll be right back tonight.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna bore you with the effects of climate
Speaker 2: change that everybody knows about, you know, like more extreme weather,
Speaker 2: rising sea levels. Feeling guilty every time I start a wildfire.
Speaker 2: What we're gonna focus on instead is how all the
Speaker 2: major effects trickle down into a lot of weird little.
Speaker 6: Effects that you may not know about.
Speaker 2: And these little weird effects are changing the world in
Speaker 2: all sorts of ways, like the strange thing that's happening
Speaker 2: to sea turtles.
Speaker 8: Turtles are so important for the marine ecosystem, helping to
Speaker 8: keep sea life in balance. But they lay their eggs
Speaker 8: on the beach, and as the world wounds up, the
Speaker 8: sand is war them in too, and that is.
Speaker 14: A big problem.
Speaker 16: Sand temperature determines the sex of the hatchlings. So for
Speaker 16: the Northern Great beriery green turtle stock that they've been
Speaker 16: producing over the last ten to twenty years, ninety nine
Speaker 16: percent females. If that trend continues for decades to come,
Speaker 16: that's an irreversible issue and will lead them towards extinction.
Speaker 6: Ah, people, this is this is terrible. You kind of
Speaker 6: all female turtles.
Speaker 2: The species is going to go extinct, and it's also
Speaker 2: going to make for some really lame gender revealed parties.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it's a girl, And I know what you're
Speaker 2: thinking right now. You're going, well, at least life is
Speaker 2: going to be pretty sweet for all those male turtles. Eh,
Speaker 2: they're going to be cleaning up on turtle tender And yeah,
Speaker 2: it may seem like a good deal until they realize
Speaker 2: that they're going to be expected to perform all the
Speaker 2: time morning turtle sex, afternoon turtle sex, nighttime turtle sex.
Speaker 2: They'll never have any time left to do whatever else
Speaker 2: turtles do, I don't eat plastic straws. I guess they
Speaker 2: don't do that for themselves. But that's the kind of
Speaker 2: weird effect of climate change that nobody saw coming, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, how crazy is it that the heat of
Speaker 2: the sand is what determines the sex of the baby?
Speaker 2: You know, turtles should just do it like humans have
Speaker 2: the sex of the baby determined by the man screaming
Speaker 2: either male or female at the time of conception. It's
Speaker 2: a lot easier that way.
Speaker 6: What do you mean then, how did your parents do it?
Speaker 6: But then why am I a boy? Then you're dumb?
Speaker 6: And it's not just the turtles.
Speaker 2: Climate change is messing with the sexiest animals of all. Yeah, humans,
Speaker 2: And again I'm talking about unexpected little things. For instance,
Speaker 2: if you like to start your day with a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee, and maybe you like to end it with
Speaker 2: a couple of beers or a couple of.
Speaker 6: Bottles of wine.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, you might have a problem, But
Speaker 2: here's some news that might leave a bad taste in
Speaker 2: your mouth.
Speaker 11: Change could make it tougher for you to get a
Speaker 11: good cup of coffee. Changes in temperature, along with rainfall
Speaker 11: and the length of seasons would change the quality and
Speaker 11: taste of beans, making for a lower quality cup.
Speaker 17: A changing climate is putting those key ingredients used in
Speaker 17: beer at risk. More rain versus snow in the winter.
Speaker 17: This means irrigation may depend more on groundwater, which has
Speaker 17: a higher mineral content, and that's a big deal because
Speaker 17: that affects the beerest taste.
Speaker 11: An increase of about one point two degrees celsius over
Speaker 11: the past.
Speaker 9: Century has met wine grapes are maturing earlier, putting the
Speaker 9: world's most famous wine regions at risk.
Speaker 18: The largest change that wine drinkers are likely to see
Speaker 18: is higher alcohol contents in the finished product, and there's
Speaker 18: much discussion on if this is a good or a
Speaker 18: bad change.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it's a bad change. I mean, the
Speaker 2: real housewives already fighting each other at current wine levels.
Speaker 2: You raised that any higher that show is going to
Speaker 2: have to move to UFC. And what's crazier for me
Speaker 2: is that this is gonna make coffee taste worse. That's
Speaker 2: what they said. That blew my mind because I already
Speaker 2: think coffee tastes like you burned Doghan and put the
Speaker 2: ashes in a cup of water. Yeah, and I know
Speaker 2: right now all the coffee drinkers.
Speaker 6: Like Trevor, You're wrong. Coffee taste delicious bullshit.
Speaker 2: If that's true, then why is it that every single
Speaker 2: coffee place has fifty different ways to cover up the
Speaker 2: taste of coffee. Huh? You got creamer in your coffee,
Speaker 2: you got half in half, you got vanilla, lattes, pumpkin spice, cinnamon, sugar, stevia.
Speaker 6: The only flavor no one wants is coffee flavor.
Speaker 2: You know why, because when you have coffee flavor, that
Speaker 2: shit keeps you up for three days, not because of
Speaker 2: the caffeine, because of the taste of regret. I'm never
Speaker 2: doing that again. And look, people can get used to
Speaker 2: bad coffee and stronger wine. I mean, we'll just put
Speaker 2: more oat milk in both of them. But unfortunately, climate
Speaker 2: change is also doing weird little things to our most
Speaker 2: core human behaviors, sex and violence.
Speaker 19: There are so many different things that can dampen your
Speaker 19: sex drive, and now here's another one to add to
Speaker 19: the list. Global warming. Researchers looked at really hot days
Speaker 19: and then look forward nine months. The impact was pretty sizable.
Speaker 19: In the United States, they found that the impact of
Speaker 19: one hot day meant eleven hundred fewer births. Nine months later,
Speaker 19: that could mean one hundred thousand fewer.
Speaker 6: Births every year.
Speaker 2: Rising temperatures are not the only phenomena on the rise.
Speaker 9: Our tempers have jumped.
Speaker 11: We're getting angrier, more aggressive, more violent.
Speaker 20: Our brains change when it's very hot, our hormones change,
Speaker 20: and people's behavior changes.
Speaker 10: You get a really hot night or really hot day,
Speaker 10: and people just freak out and do crazy things.
Speaker 18: Researchers say that as temperatures continue to rise, the US
Speaker 18: could see between twenty thousand and fifty thousand more violent
Speaker 18: crimes a year.
Speaker 2: That's right, thanks to climate change, we're looking at a
Speaker 2: future of no.
Speaker 6: Sex and tons of violence.
Speaker 2: So basically Drake's album cover, but nobody is pregnant and
Speaker 2: everyone is just punching each other. And you know, my
Speaker 2: one hope is that this is the news that finally
Speaker 2: gets people to take drastic action, because if anything is
Speaker 2: gonna motivate people, it's gonna be the end of sex. Oh.
Speaker 2: I mean, if there's one thing that could get humans
Speaker 2: to jump into action, it would be the prospect of
Speaker 2: absolutely no sex, because, trust me, the first time we
Speaker 2: caught of sex because of the heat, people are gonna
Speaker 2: lose it.
Speaker 6: I'm just gonna be there, like, what.
Speaker 15: Do you mean my penis is overheating?
Speaker 6: All right? Shut it down.
Speaker 2: Everybody planes, cars, bitcoin mining, everything until this blad boy
Speaker 2: gets back up.
Speaker 6: We're going ah mesh everyone.
Speaker 2: And by the way, this increase in violence isn't just
Speaker 2: a future problem. In fact, climate change may have already
Speaker 2: cost America a war.
Speaker 20: For the past three decades, drought and floods have plagued
Speaker 20: rural Afghanistan. As a result, farmers have struggled to maintain
Speaker 20: their crops in livestock, and many people have been left hungry.
Speaker 21: Afghanistan, of all the countries in the world, is ranked
Speaker 21: sixth in the list of all the countries hit hardest
Speaker 21: by climate change. The Taliban has gone to the communities
Speaker 21: of these farmers and mostly impoverished people in rural Afghanistan
Speaker 21: and said to them, look around you. You're not getting
Speaker 21: the support that you need from this government. Come join us.
Speaker 21: It's been very crucial to their eyes over the past
Speaker 21: two decades.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: The Taliban won in Afghanistan because of climate change, and
Speaker 2: also because America couldn't go a week without joining a school,
Speaker 2: but mostly climate change. Well, this really shows how desperate
Speaker 2: climate change can make people. When your livelihood is destroyed,
Speaker 2: you will turn to anybody promising relief. I mean, I
Speaker 2: will say, though, if you gave power to the Taliban
Speaker 2: because it was too hot, I think that's a decision
Speaker 2: that you're going to regret. All right, First thing, men, growbeards, women,
Speaker 2: come on everything except your eyes.
Speaker 6: Is there an extremist gurup that believes in short shorts?
Speaker 22: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, So climate change is having unexpected consequences all over
Speaker 2: the Earth. What's most shocking to me is that it's
Speaker 2: even having effects outside the Earth.
Speaker 10: Climate change also affects objects in space. As the upper
Speaker 10: atmosphere gets thinner thanks to climate change, the amount of
Speaker 10: drag goes down, and that means satellites stay in orbit longer,
Speaker 10: But it also means everything up there will stick around longer.
Speaker 10: Like the used upper sections of rockets which sometimes stay
Speaker 10: in orbit, or any debris from the occasional satellite collision.
Speaker 10: As more objects stick around, there is a higher and
Speaker 10: higher chance that they will collide, putting even more junk
Speaker 10: in orbit.
Speaker 23: Right now, there are probably over three million kilograms of
Speaker 23: space junk, vastly outweighing out operational satellites and nearby natural
Speaker 23: meteorites combined, forming a giant space tornado of death above
Speaker 23: our heads.
Speaker 2: You know what, I'm I'm not gonna lie. Giant space
Speaker 2: tornado of death sounds like the coolest way that you
Speaker 2: could die. No, no, no, wait wait wait I take
Speaker 2: it back, I take it back. The coolest way to
Speaker 2: die is still being trampled to death in a stampede
Speaker 2: of Rihanna's. That's still number.
Speaker 6: One, easily. But this is pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: Thanks to climate change, our planet is going to be
Speaker 2: completely circled in trash.
Speaker 6: Aliens are going to be flying past the planet.
Speaker 2: Like this looks like a bad neighborhood locked the doors.
Speaker 6: H Dad, you're so planet tests.
Speaker 2: You'll understand when you have blogsh.
Speaker 6: Of your own. So that's what we're facing with climate change.
Speaker 2: A lot of weird little effects that, when you add
Speaker 2: them all together, ends up being basically everything you know.
Speaker 2: We could be facing a future where your sex starved
Speaker 2: husband gets killed by space junk while he's on the
Speaker 2: way to join the Taliban. And don't forget, Please do
Speaker 2: not forget what it's going to do to our friends,
Speaker 2: the sea turtles.
Speaker 22: The female green turtle approaches a potential mate for the
Speaker 22: male turtle. This, his delicate ritual, is part of an endless,
Speaker 22: nightmarish orgy from which he cannot escape. He will have
Speaker 22: no peace, no rest, no moment to enjoy a tasty
Speaker 22: bed of sea grass, dignity a distant memory. He is
Speaker 22: nothing more than a communal reptilium stick attached to a shell,
Speaker 22: passed around from female to female, and expected to slam.
Speaker 24: Turtle Puss twenty four seven. He pumps joylessly, though he
Speaker 24: is exhausted. His suffering will not end until either.
Speaker 25: His turtle penis shaped raw by the ocean salt water,
Speaker 25: finally fails, or a tiger shark delivers him the sweet
Speaker 25: mercy of death.
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