Oppenheimer, Running and Frumkin… ‘nough said. Lack of US disasters must’ve been weighing heavily on these guys over the last 7 years. I’m pretty sure if you drop by Steven Goddard’s site he’s probably got clippings from plenty worse fire seasons posted. Poor Oppie et al are really clutching at straws now.
Scorching heat, high winds and bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic wildfires in the U.S. West that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists said on Thursday.
“What we’re seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like,” Princeton University’s Michael Oppenheimer said during a telephone press briefing. “It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster … This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future.”
In Colorado, wildfires that have raged for weeks have killed four people, displaced thousands and destroyed hundreds of homes. Because winter snowpack was lighter than usual and melted sooner, fire season started earlier in the U.S. West, with wildfires out of control in Colorado, Montana and Utah.
The high temperatures that are helping drive these fires are consistent with projections by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said this kind of extreme heat, with little cooling overnight, is one kind of damaging impact of global warming.
Others include more severe storms, floods and droughts, Oppenheimer said.
Wildfires were far worse until the 1940s. Land management and mechanized firefighting changed everything.
What we really need is forest management – logging and letting fires burn to prevent massive spreads of fires. The greenies have destroyed the Colorado Forests!
Government “Wilderness Area” designations and tight regulations has led to fuel build up on “public lands.” This fuel has led to horrible fires. Allow lumber companies to harvest trees and stock men to run their livestock on “public lands” and the fuel will be diminished appreciably. Better yet, give the federal government public lands to the states.
We can never blame the real culprits, green advocacy and environmental fools who don’t understand that regular fires scourge the high, dry forests of the compost and dead trees that fuel these “disastrous” fires. And of course, allowing people to build entire communities inside what was, until very recently, a “fire zone”. Just as building in a “flood plain” is a recipe for getting flooded out every so often, building in a “fire zone” in the high mountain forest will get you burned out every so often
Don’t forget that in many forestland developments that CCRs prohibit the removal of most if not all trees. The pathetic thing is on top of the loss of life, houses, structures, livestock, etc is that few if any of the trees will be salvaged. For as soon as that is attempted, lawsuits will rain from the heavens and subsequent decisions by judges will stop it.
Yes, Steven Goddard has some interesting historical data on fires. I was researching past fires last night when I was tired of hearing about how bad this year is. The Large Fire Incidents map is not nearly as covered as in the past and yes, people live where things burn. I live on the prairie and have seen huge wildfires. It’s called “Nature”. The media just has to make everything a disaster when it comes to the weather.
Does anyone find it disturbing that Americans have no understanding whatsoever of what a record is and how statistics work? When it comes to the Olympics, record breaking is good. With weather, it’s terrifying. Record hot in 1930 didn’t do us in–why would it now?
The heat wave/fires is sooo juicy for the Greenies. Where I am (the tropics) the weather is normal as it is in most of the planet, except where it is freezin ass cold.
Meanwhile in Argentina…
No heating, no cooking, streets with 8 feet (2.5m) of snow.
——————————————————————————–
Eduardo Ferreyra President of Argentinian Foundation for a Scientific Ecology (FAEC) reports;
“We’re having in Argentina a series of Antarctic polar waves that has people shuddering. In Ushuaia an entire neighbourhood had to be evacuated because the cold froze water pipes and blocked natural gas valves. No heating, no cooking, streets with 2.5 metres (8 ft) of snow. In two weeks snowed more than an entire normal winter season.”