Summary: Over the past few weeks, Planet Earth has experienced a severe climate crisis, and it hasn't made the front page, or the top story on TV news. This catastrophe will hasten warming of oceans and land, add to rising seas, threaten more species with extinction - and change our whole view of environmental action, and what we need to do to save the climate. Massive fires have been burning in Indonesia. In satellite images, large parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore were buried under smoke. Red dots of fires and hot spots want to cover the whole map of the islands. In a few minutes, I'm going to bring you interviews from two very informed people. We get a report directly from the scene, with Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso, at the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor Indonesia. Then I'll thrash this crisis through with one of the long-standing reporters on tropical forests, Mongabay founder Rhett Butler. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! INDONESIA FIRES LINK-FEST AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS BLOG Scroll down to the end of this blog for a selection of links to satellite images, news coverage and must-read reports on the Indonesian fire catastrophe of 2015. PEAT FIRES ARE NOT ORDINARY FOREST FIRES These are not common forest fires as experienced in Western North America, as bad as those were. For one thing, unless climate change prevents it, Western forests are expected to grow back, recapturing some of the carbon. Indonesia tropical forests are not expected to return. They are being replaced with either palm oil plantations or just waste land. At least half of the hundreds of major fires in Indonesia are burning peat. You know, like the peat bales purchased by gardeners. Or the peat formerly used as fuel in the Middle Ages. It's a thick layer of very compressed vegetation, built up over the ages. About 12% of the land in Southeast Asia is peat swamp forest. Eighty three percent of that is in Indonesia. Peat there can be one meter, or 3 feet deep, or up to 12 meters, or 40 feet deep. When peat dries out, it begins to emit both carbon dioxide and the more powerful greenhouse gas methane. When peat burns, it releases a mix of toxic dust and gases with grave effects on human health, and animal health, and the climate of the world. You can't put out a peat fire with a water-bomber or ground crews. The fire goes underground. It smolders and smokes until seasonal rains or snow comes. Some peat fires last for years, resurfacing every year. INDONESIA CATAPULTS PAST U.S. GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS Tropical peat fires release phenomenal amounts of greenhouse gases. Calculations by the World Resources Institute find that Indonesian fires over the past three months have released more greenhouse gases than the entire annual emissions of highly-industrialized Germany. For the past month or so, Indonesia has been emitting more greenhouse gases daily than the entire United States economy. This is a burst of carbon not seen since the last great Indonesian fires in 1997. The Indonesian greenhouse burst throws off all previous calculations of how much carbon we could still burn before crossing the 2 degree C unsafe level. It will force a re-draw of our models, and will create, sooner or later, more swift and unpleasant surprises in our climate system. The unknowns loom larger. You would think that a sudden jump in emissions would be raised at the Paris climate talks coming up in December. But Indonesia didn't mention control of tropical fires in their emissions reduction plan. Oh, and by the way, there are massive forest fires in the Amazon of Brazil at this same time! Some of us know that our actions now are determining the fate of the planet for the next few thousand years at least. But now our plans, actions, and environmentalism have to change. A THIRD STAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE Previously, in my own ignorance, I suggested there are two major stages of climate chan
