Studies: Wildfires Worse Due To Global Warming
An anonymous reader writes "According to scientists we can look forward to more devastating wildfires like the ones scorching Southern California because of global warming. "The fires in California and here in Arizona are a clear example of what happens as the Earth warms, particularly as the West warms, and the warming caused by humans is making fire season longer and longer with each decade," said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck. "It's certainly an example of what we'll see more of in the future.""
Global Warming is the nickname of the guy who started the fires.
Any time someone says "look how bad winter was" they are (rightfully) chided for treating a variation in weather as being "climate".
Well who does not remember years and years of past California wildfires. Guess what, drought happens. You can't declare one "climate change" just because it's scary.
And you can't even see that climate change makes drought more likely without way more data than we have. A warmer climate could mean some areas are dryer, others wetter. But actually overall it would mean more moisture in the system, not less...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We would like to give our heartiest thanks to the politicians that have made it illegal to clear under-brush or to provide any reasonable wildfire suppression activities.
No brain, no pain.
First of all, it's "climate change" now and not "global warming"... some spots are having much cooler temperatures instead.
Secondly, droughts happen. The history of California is the history of water politics mainly because most of SoCal is a semi-arid desert. San Diego in particular has a giant desert separating us from the rest of the country -- even LA.
Thirdly, unless you've just moved to San Diego, you're quite aware of the 2003 and 2007 fires. These were (also) not the result of global warming.
Fourthly, there's good reason to believe that at least some of the ones this week were started by (d-bag) arsonists.
It's over-broad statements like this from "scientists" that give credence to the assertion that climate scientists are thinking with the social policy side of their brains instead of the factual side. /signed
Native San Diegan; MRC/former CERT member; non-scientist.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
All weather supports global warming until it doesn't. Then it's just weather.
...their rumored sequel to Frozen:
Anna the Fire Princess
Hey, fans of the movie already blamed the exceptionally cold winter on Elsa.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Make the ice caps melt faster, flood San Diego to put the fires out!
Here is the list.
Every year there are devastating fires somewhere. But we have to look at the acreage and number of fires.
Last year was a light fire year. About 20% lighter than the 10 year average.
So far this year, we are about 15% behind the 10 year average in the number of wildland fires. And we are about 50% behind in the number of acres burned.
http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/n...
Honestly, I still expect overall the world's climate will be getting wetter with global warming. There might be some regions that will get drier, but warmer oceans mean more evaporation. Warmer temperatures mean the air can hold more moisture resulting in higher humidity. Eventually that higher humidity has to result in more rainfall somewhere. But even if higher humidity doesn't result in rain, higher humidity does result in less aggressive fire behavior.
I am not a climate scientist. I have a lot of people scoff at me when I say this, but they never explain how I am wrong. I can read the projections but the projections never seem to include the increased levels of ocean evaporation that I expect.
Yep, everything.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
First off, I am *not* a climate change denier.
That said, wildfires are a very complicated topic and man is responsible for their increased size and devastation. However the man made activity that has a huge impact here is fire fighting. This has been known for many decades. The problem is that the natural cycle of fires leads to smaller fires. These smaller fires prevent fuel from accumulating and they provide a patchwork of natural firebreaks to a degree. Our habit of stomping out every single fire as it starts just leads to more and more fuel accumulating over larger and larger areas. The result is the larger and more devastating fires.
Preventing the natural burn cycle sets us up for larger fires. We need to be more strategic about our fire fighting in rural and wilderness settings.
Okay, so I accept that the expansive worsening of fire season may be at least in part caused by global warming, climate change, or whatever we are calling it this week. But I squarely point my finger at the logging industry and decades of mismanaging re-forestation as a substantial contributor that is just now catching up with us.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
You're right. Here's a photo of one:
http://www.constantinereport.c...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Increased levels of ocean evaporation are (surprise) mostly over the oceans.
How many times have they talked about moisture "streaming in from the gulf".
Did you think that meant it was piped over? Perhaps by the same tubes carrying your internet?
I wonder what you think the combination of ambient moisture and winds do...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Very true and very few scientists would ever suggest that.
What it typically means you devote your life to pursuing the truth of some small aspect of the universe and study, test and discuss the various theories surrounding this area.This means that you can be considered an expert on the subject.
The "others" are a bunch of people who pull opinions out of their arse at best or purposely malign the truth for their own ends at worst.
For you to say such things betrays a level of ignorance that is truly awesome to behold - assuming you are not just trolling for the sake of it which just makes you a common garden variety douche bag. Regardless of your own insignificant thoughts and motivations the thought process you describe appears to be a relatively common one.
But fear not, the reasons for your ignorance and/or troll-like behaviour is something studied, tested and discussed in the field of psychology by scientists!
Just to clarify my comment: I wasn't referring to winter. I was referring to the characterization of California fires as caused by "global warming", when the warm temperatures there are localized and far from true in the rest of the U.S.
It illustrates exactly how alarmists have grasped at anything out of the ordinary and tried to attribute it to "climate change". But when looking at climate, one has to look at the larger picture. Neither short-term phenomena or localized events are "climate". And in fact extreme weather events have been on a downward trend since the earlier part of the 20th Century, despite the predictions of the "alarmists".
Another record that was set recently was the time it has been in the U.S. since a major hurricane. It has been longer than at any time since records have been kept. (And FYI, before you jump to correct: Sandy was not classified as a major hurricane. It just hit more populated area than usual.)
Wow first four comments are global warming deniers and all post within six minutes. Earn that pay, boys!
Sorry, AC. But the deniers of science here are those who deny the effect of fire suppression policies and land management policies. Sometimes it really is the politics.
The huge factors here are (1) fire suppression policies not allowing natural burn cycles to occur, fuel unnaturally accumulates and it does so over larger areas and (2) land management where people are allowed to build in fire prone areas but not allowed to clear brush to a "safe" distance. The result is larger fires and fires that are a high risk to homes.
CO2 is only one of many man made problems and it is not always the leading contributor.
Yep, because without arson, there would be no wildfires. Oh wait, no, there would.
Or are you going to tell us that plants that are evolutionary adapted to fire or even need it to procreate were really created by God who knew there would always be humans around to start the necessary fires since the earth was created 10000 years ago?
Let's make a deal, global warming (or climate change, or whatever the buzzword of the week) deniers: You can keep your SUVs, your ACs turned to 60 degrees and all your other toys. And once the waters rise you drown like good old idiots and don't try to climb up on my mountains.
Deal?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you filter them through a layer of pants you should be fine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As someone that has been in regions where these wildfires have happened, I can tell you it is actually bad forest management.
Here's the thing. In nature, forests burn on occasion. Always have. Its part of the natural process. Some species either actively encourage the fires or rely upon the fires as part of their life cycle.
Okay, now that it is established that if left alone the forests will occasionally burn... what happens if you don't cut trees down and cut brush back on occasion and instead just leave the whole thing to take care of itself.
It burns.
I live in California and that has been the cause of most of our wild fires. We used to have forest management to the extent that we would subcontract logging companies to go through the forests and thin them out a bit so there was room for new growth and the whole forest didn't go up like a roman candle every 10-30 years (depends on the plant species and local climate).
Well, that was stopped and the logging companies aren't allowed to operate in our forests anymore because they're not environmentally friendly.
Fine... you're now putting nature in charge. And nature is going to burn that fucker down on its own schedule.
Global warming might have something to do with this sort of thing but it is NOT what is causing the vast majority of forest fires in the US. They are caused by moronic forest management that is itself guided by crystal rubbing mystics that will say out of one side of their mouth that the environment is harmed by direct human management and then say out of the other side that nature's natural processes are all our fault.
These people are idiots.
And just to preempt the first fucktard that responds to this post saying I have his misguided asshattery wrong... I don't. I live here. I've seen this happen over years. I saw was we were doing before. I saw what you did, I watched the forest prime itself like a coiling spring, I saw the fires, I watched the clean up, and I've been listening to you same slack-jawed halfwits ever since point fingers at anyone besides yourselves.
Do the Earth a favor and listen more and talk less.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Yes. The Northern part of the Canadian prairie provinces might make a shitload of money selling wheat and corn to the USA, whose own production will drop considerably. However, it's still illegal in Canada to sell you clean fresh water in large amounts, so start building those desalination plants now.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
In case it wasn't clear, wildfires are predominantly caused by accumulation of a sufficiently large amount of sufficiently dry combustible material. Once it's there, it will inevitably catch fire one day or another, arson or not. And climate change has the potential to modulate that "sufficiently dry" attribute. It is equally true that humanity is actively modulating the "sufficiently large amount" attribute (for example by suppressing small undergrowth fires and by not cutting the undergrowth that would otherwise be removed by these fires), which doesn't make things any better. But arson has relatively little to do with it.
On the other hand, putting human beings (specifically, the shareholders of your company) ahead of entire eco-systems makes you a suicidal+ecocidal idiot and a nihilistic life-hater; kind of a super-villain.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You may not care to look at facts, but they exist (search for droughts).
I love how your response contained no links refuting what I said... because you are not basing your arguments from data, but from emotion.
I expect your response to be something about the source of the link, without any more real facts on the matter. Good luck with that approach in life...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree with your overall sentiment. In many cases it is beyond a joke and misguided attempts to help the environment often hurt it, as is the case with banning the disturbance of brush around homes and communities.
While you are correct that the banning of DDT was at the time unfounded scientifically--the egg shells seemed to be thinning that year generally and may not have had anything to do with DDT, but alas it was never really researched. However, had DDT continued to be used on the scale that it was, modern research has showed that mosquitoes would have adapted and become resistant in just a couple of years, ending the use of DDT anyway. Put in another way, banning DDT did *not* directly lead to the deaths of millions of people. Perhaps banning DDT was even a benefit, because now it is used by some countries, on a much smaller scale, to a good effect in controlling malaria.
back in the 80s I heard a forest ranger predict that our forest fires would get worse.
not because of the on coming global winter, but because of the build up of vegetation and dead wood.
"Someday that fuel is going to catch fire and burn"
his point was to not stop forest fires. it's natures way of cleaning house.
First off, I am *not* a climate change denier.
Of course the climate is changing. The real question is are the changes such that we need to try and implement measures to stop them?
Articles like this are from the Warmists, wishing to use tools of Fear to scare us into thinking that we must.
But you yourself note in this aspect a rational reason why we need not be more scared of forest fires because of climate change, when more sensible fire policy would have a far more dramatic impact.
Now think of all the OTHER times someone tried to scare you with climate change. For each of those times there was a person like yourself pointing out why the fear was irrational ad unwarranted.
Far from being a "denier", those trying to counteract acts of raw fear mongering are helping to participate in REAL science, deciding what is actually a problem from climate change and what is not. To refer to the mere act of questioning as "denial" is a form of propaganda, and going forward I hope you and others when you head the rem "denier" used will use your own experience where to question the people who feel the need to use such a dismissive term against ideological opponents...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The reasoning behind this "expert's" opinion seems to be that higher temperatures lead to more drought and thereby to more wildfires. But that's far from certain:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/do...
But actually overall it would mean more moisture in the system, not less...
Exactly, and you know what, water vapor in the atmosphere has been steadily rising since ~1980. However just because there is an increase of water vapor on a global scale does not mean droughts will not become more common on a regional scale. More rain in the tropics actually implies the deserts to on either side of the tropics will widen and become drier. Yes it's "counter intuitive", but not nearly as hard to wrap your head around as (say) quantum mechanics. Google "Hadley cells" for a more technical explanation as to "why", it's quite interesting to read about and not hard to understand. Basically, the tropics expand, the equatorial deserts expand and move pole-wards, the poles melt.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Does it count as climate change-related when these fires are starting due to human activity? It seems part of the problem is that one fire starts, either by accident or on purpose, and then several more pop up as fire bugs start lighting fires all over (as was the case in San Diego). FD resources get strained and it just takes longer to put them out because efforts are spread thin. My guess is that large fires would be just as infrequent if you removed us from the equation.
We haven't had a "large dump" on California since 1969! 2+ years of a lack of sunspots brought the US a very hard winter.
The Eastern Pacific bulge of hot water on the equator looks like it might spawn another "Pineapple Express".
Some geophysists say the sediment record shows that a mega-dump like occurred in 1862 in CA & OR could dump 11 feet of water on CA in about a month.
Will that be "climate change", given that it happens every 40 or 160 years on known cycles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
It's just getting started / warming up.
It's called El Nino. It is a weather pattern that repeats irregularly due to an upwelling of warm water in the Pacific, what you describe is not anomalous at all.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
First of all, it's "climate change" now and not "global warming"... some spots are having much cooler temperatures instead.
It's still global warming, in spite of republican efforts to relabel it climate change. Stop prevaricating.
Secondly, droughts happen.
Red herring. That's totally orthogonal to this point. Stop prevaricating. Also, the current drought is unusual even in Northern California, where the water comes from. You didn't even bother to mention that, most likely because it's inconvenient to your point. Stop prevaricating.
unless you've just moved to San Diego, you're quite aware of the 2003 and 2007 fires. These were (also) not the result of global warming.
This is about global warming making wildfires more likely and worse, not about global warming making wildfires possible. Stop prevaricating.
Fourthly, there's good reason to believe that at least some of the ones this week were started by (d-bag) arsonists.
See last point. Stop prevaricating.
It's over-broad statements like this from "scientists" that give credence to the assertion that climate scientists are thinking with the social policy side of their brains instead of the factual side.
No, it's stupid shit like you just posted that lets stupid people feel smug about stupid decisions even though they have nothing to be smug about.
/signed
Native San Diegan; MRC/former CERT member; non-scientist.
I personally am in favor of the scientific process. You might consider accepting it as well.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When you throw out bullshit like that DDT was banned for treating malaria mosquitoes why should we listen to you and the fact that by spreading the bullshit that DDT was banned for malaria really makes you wonder about the education of the moderators.
Look it up, DDT was not banned for malaria, it just became less useful as the mosquitoes were evolving to like DDT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Riiiight. So this has absolutely nothing at all to do with progressively worse nonmanagement of national forests over the past 30 years, opting instead to wait for a really big fire to clear burn areas?
Nice dogmatic and unfounded supposition, warmers.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It doesn't matter what you call it. What matters is how it physically affects the world we live in.
It works because the universe is a very big place with a lot of complexity.
Sorry, but policy has much more to do with it. The prevention of regular logging operations due to bogus environmentalist claims has a great deal to do with it. National forests that currently have 250 trees per acre used to have around 50 per acre only a few decades ago which keeps fire from spreading and the forest healthier. There are those who think we shouldn't remove dead trees because the birds won't be able to eat the bark beetles (Yes, this B.S. was on NPR). The only problem with that theory is that the bark beetles don't inhabit dead trees. They inhabit live ones until they kill the tree and leave the tree when it dies. As a matter of interest, the Wallow Fire in Arizona wiped out 841 square miles. That will take generations before it returns to a healthy state. That fire also wiped out the bulk of the spotted owl population. The anti-loggers end up torching that which they are trying to save.
Maybe they're just taking better pictures.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
It's called El Nino. It is a weather pattern that repeats irregularly due to an upwelling of warm water in the Pacific, what you describe is not anomalous at all.
You have misunderstood my comment.
In comparison to the rest of the U.S., temperatures in the West are anamolous. Though of course if you want to be technical, you are correct that it isn't the El Nino that is anomalous, but the rest of the U.S. right now.
My point, however, was of course not which local area is seeing more of an anomaly, but the difference between actual climate trends and scare-mongering.
... according to the article there has been a three-decade pattern of fires getting worse in the West:
And the reason for that is well known, and has nothing to do with global warming.
It is caused by environmentalist interference in land management. The major factors are;
- Fuel load: Logging is stopped, or delayed for decades by lawsuits, even of diseased and fallen trees, which are left to rot. Brush clearing, deemed "unnatural", is also stopped. LOTS of little trees and weeds grow up between the big trees. When a fire finally starts, it soreads rapidly and burns big and hot, and is very hard to control. The hot burning sterillizes the ground, killing many types of seeds that would otherwise have fueled a post-fire recovery.
- Access restriction: Loggers and other visitors to the area are the main source of reports of fires when they're still tiny. With logging stopped and most recreational uses banned the woods are essentially deserted. A fire that would have been spotted in tens of minutes might have as much as days to grow before it is discovered. Once it IS discovered, the lack of roads and lack of clearng of those paths still there impedes fire-fighting: Regular equipment, or even four-wheel-drive SUV-based, fire equipment can't access much of the area, and must leave those areas it can access early, to avoid being trapped.
I think it's ludicrous that the blame for the anthropogenic forest fire severity increase is being deflected from the policies and policy-makers that caused it and simultaneously being used as additional "evidence" for global warming. It's tactics like this that cause people to distrust global warming claims.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
DDT isn't banned around the world and it is still widely used to fumigate villages on a limited scale.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
There were some idiot future prediction cooling articles to provide "balance" after reports or warming were published. I'll go with the scientific community instead of whoever picked a bait cover article for TIME once in the 70's any day.
That actually took years, a lot of money spent on PR, a lot of political involvement and a large supply of gullible people willing to regurgate the party line.
News just in! Reporters will comment on anyhing they think is related to the topic of the day.
How long until Jane's keen scientific skillz clue him into the fact that 517714 wasn't responding to his comment at all?
About 5 seconds after I hit "submit".
But since you indirectly brought the subject up: How long until a certain someone stops sock-puppeting under Anonymous Coward? It's called that for a reason, you know.
Isn't it a good idea to perform preventive burns to limit the amount of available fuel that can burn?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
" it's natures way of cleaning house." - as long as its not your house
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
People tend to compartmentalise the world and make it out to be smaller than it is.
Even if you are a scientist straddling several areas this is STILL a small part of the whole.
Also...how the hell is my comment a troll?!
And guess what? When there was 6,000 ppm CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, Earth DIDN'T turn into a copy of Venus - life went on just fine, thank you.
The Devonian? That's your idea of what the world should be like?
No thanks. I've been to Devon.
(He, look at that CO2 drop in the Carboniferous. Wonder where it was all going.)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian.
Please don't forget to prepare places for all your new neighbours from Bangladesh, West Africa, Vietnam and so on.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
"Troll" means you don't believe what you're saying. "Flamebait", which also isn't what this comment was, is when you believe what you're saying but you say it deliberately inflammatorily. The comment I replied to is a troll. HTH, corrupt moderators.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Local governments seem to universally have an answer for areas at risk. Simply issue tons of new building permits. Got a huge fire problem? Isn't it obvious? You simply need tens of thousands of new homes in the hot spots. Got a beach that is vanishing? What the heck, just bang out some really expensive homes on those beaches or maybe put a nuclear reactor on that beach. they work under water don't they? Got a really dangerous, active earthquake zone? Move your high tech companies smack dab onto the fault line. That way when the earth shakes all those companies can crumble and bankrupt the nation and probably touch off a world wide depression. Do you have sink holes swallowing homes? That proves you need a lot more homes on the spot. That way they can suck even more water out of the ground causing more sink holes. And why waste the sales potential of homes that have a view of lava flowing down the side of a volcano. They should be multi million dollar homes every time. That way we can get rid of foolish rich people, bankrupt insurance companies which tend to own our banks, and set of an economioc holocaust. It's all about growth. More building permits, more growth, more pollution, more tragedies, hell it's the American way.
The arsonists are simply setting the fires to not only assuage their own grief over our continued CO2-abuse of Mother Gaia, but to draw attention to the evils of man, and the pollution fomented and created by Big Oil.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Maybe I'm too late commenting and this isn't going to get any attention, but I was under the impression through reading articles about the situation that wildfires worsening in California is mainly due to the fact that we suppress what would ordinarily be small routine burns that need to happen to keep forests healthy. By suppressing these, the buildup of undergrowth makes the ones we can't control much worse.
I'm not saying global warming couldn't be one of the factors contributing to worsening conditions, but I don't think it can shoulder the lion's share of the blame.
Common Sense (+1)
Wait...500 hundred million years?
Isn't that Cherry Picking? :-)
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yeah, these are some of the same scientist that in the 70's predicted a mini ice age. Some of the same people that say eat oat bran, don't eat oat bran, eat fish oil, don't eat fish oil. It's all agenda driven. You look at the places having "wild fires" (we use to call them brush or forest fires), a LOT of the people having problems, are in areas that were either desserts, waste lands, or areas that always had this problem, and since "we've" moved in, planted a lot of vegetation, or areas where "naturalist" won't let them clean the underbrush out, they have problems with fires! Go figure! Also, didn't I read where someone started one of these out in California recently? How did man made global warming cause that?
Carbonic acid is breaking down the Karst. This is not new, but the rate of disintegration is probably increasing.
This is another feature of the current Anthropogenic Carbon Release event.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
you realize its the environmentalists (usually democrat) who are the people who are not allowing people to do proper burns, and as such causing bigger fires.
environmentalists LOVE to talk about how "deniers" only like to think about the now and damn the repercussions. The environmentalists are equally as bad as deniers in the aspect that they dont understand common sense practices like allowing brush fires to burn and clearing brush that would have been burned if allowed to burn.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Wildfires have been with us for a long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Some of the largest occurred in the 1800's when we didn't have the means to fight them. But politicians today want more money so they claim the fires are getting worse. Funny, I remember a few California wildfires in the 70s that were much worse than the San Diego fires we just had. Santa Ana winds are just something that Southern California locals have been dealing with for a VERY long time. The problem for San Diego is the arsonists. Three of them were just arrested. Another problem is aging transformers. We have had a number of the explode here recently and they typically start fires. The secondary transformer across for my mother's house is seriously rusted and it's only a matter of time. California's biggest threats is state insolvency and our power infrastructure. Sacramento would rather spend it on the booty train, impose fire fees and raise taxes.
"It's all agenda driven." I would mod you up to a "5-Insightful" if i had the points. Actually, anyone who makes that astute observation.
Look how wrong you are:
http://www.wunderground.com/hu...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
""climate change will make hurricanes worse and worse!", they said in a year with bad hurricanes"
and they have.
""climate change will make flooding worse and worse!", they said in a year with bad floods"
and they have.
""climate change will make snowstorms worse and worse", they said in a year with bad snow storms"
and they have.
""climate change will make wildfires worse and worse!", they said in a year with bad wildfires"
and they have.
Maybe you should learn to be able to think about complex things and stop reading Black and White fairy tales?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Arsonists and idiots tossing cigarette butts start the majority of the wildfires in the West each year. But instead of blaming them, practitioners of the religion of Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming blame all of humanity for burning fossil fuels. Continuous claims of this nature make the lot of them modern day Chicken Littles (Henny Penny). If they have a dire need to blame someone other than those directly responsible, they need only look into the mirror. The liberal Western states have been sucking all of the water out of the mountains for decades for their backyard pools and lawns, preventing natural run off. This is what turns the grasslands into gasoline. Not global warming.
It's not environmentalists who don't want the burns. Environmentalists (their party affiliation doesn't matter) know that it's beneficial to have controlled burnings. The people who do complain are the land owners, who have acres of prime real estate perched on expensive hills. At least get your facts straight. You railing on environmentalists is hilarious in itself, but highlights a disconcerting pattern - that there are more people like you out there who will gladly and easily substitute their idea of reality for that which they perceive, where they can cleanly paint things in black and white, "them vs. us", team mentality, twisting their perception of the world and the facts it contains simply to give their team a perceived advantage, even though everyone knows their house of cards will come tumbling down at some point.
Grow up. Please. Do the world a favor - you are embarrassing yourself.
Translation: "I am scientifically illiterate - I get my scientific facts from newspapers and TV shows. I don't bother to research the relevant papers, and assume that things are either true or false based on who's telling me, rather than the content of their arguments. I have given up thinking, because it's scary, difficult, and challenges my perceptions of reality which keep me happy."
where I am our people would LOVE to burn on their own land, but the regulations put in place by the environmentalists wont allow us to do so. So while perhaps thats how it works where you are, it works the way I explained where I live
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
wrong, hurricanes are not getting worse and worse. In fact, we are having hurricane seasons with less than average activity.
no evidence of flooding or drought worse than historically normal.
no evidence whatsoever that wildfires are any worse than normal, in fact the only issue causing big wildfires is man's interference preventing the frequent small ones.
maybe you should develop some critical thinking skills, and read some history. we have cycles of these events, that is all. but like most internet children, you have the attention span of a gnat