Letters to the Editor
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Friends of the Earth, as usual, are on the front lines
www.FOE.org
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Bullcrap!
If the California government had allows firebreaks to be made and thinning of the older growth, the extending burning would not occur.
Sorry but there it is.
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Can we please have less BS?
The whole solar system is heating up due to sun activity.
Not to ignore that indeed we ALL should be cognizant of the effect of human habitation on our biosphere, to engage is inaccurate, sensationalistic dribble abotu overheating planets reduces the believability of any message the Left is trying to send out.
The Right is full of crap, can the Left become the party of honesty?
Didn't really think so, either.
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This is a bad example for the cause
Chaparral burns. California summers are dry. Southern California is subject to Santa Ana winds. Any ecologist will tell any reporter who cares to asks that chaparral is a fire based ecosystem that will burn during the summertime and be flamed by Santa Ana winds regardless of how wet the winter is or how long the summer is. The destruction caused here is not an example for climate change, it's an example of why it's not a good idea to put housing developments onto hillsides vegetated with chaparral.
The danger is that once you associate something with climate change, people will start doubting climate change when the predictions based on that association don't prove true. Katrina was a disaster, but the last few years have not shown a dramatic increase in major hurricanes. Is the fact that we haven't had a Katrina level hurricane touch down in the U.S. since Katrina proof that climate change isn't real? Of course it isn't, any more than Katrina was proof that climate change is real. We have to be careful in making associations. Presenting false evidence is not going to gain support, in the long run. There is plenty of real evidence to make the case.
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Amazing posts here
From global warming deniers to people who say global warming will not make fires more likely and bigger.
No one said this fire was caused by global warming. But higher average temperatures mean that low-water areas like SoCal will get less water and high-water areas will get more (warm air sucks up more moisture drying out dry places and has to dump it somewhere).
Yes, CA is a fire-prone place and always has been. Yes, stupid to build houses in the middle of matchsticks. But it is tantamount to being a flat-earther to deny that global warming a) exists; and b)exacerbates forest fires.
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Dry, dry, dry
Southern California burns every year. Most years it's not so bad; some years it's very bad, like this year. But it is indeed a yearly occurence and always has been. (I can still remember the HUGE Malibu fire in the 80's that rained ashes down on Los Angeles.) Global climate change doesn't cause the fires at all, although it can make them worse as the article said, by bringing more growth to the region to feed the fires.
The way climate change will have a significant impact on the situation is not through fire, but through water. Over the last decades, the Colorado River has been keeping an unsteady equilibrium. The river that brings water to just about the all of Southern California is now drying up because of reducing snowmelt and increasing population demands all along its length. The decrease in water has already devastated farms south of the main water-drawing corridor, and it's being predicted that within a decade there will be an exodus from the L.A. area due to rising water prices and/or lack of water.
So over the next years we'll see a reduced ability to fight these fires due to lowering water resources. Not as sexy a problem as "Global climate change makes deserts EXPLODE!!" but far more accurate, nonetheless.
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Blind jingoistic media
Only Drudge is telling the REAL story (behind all these stories of the enviromnent and 'heroism').
The real story is ARSON.
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Decreasing Snowmelt?
I’m confused by Mr. Leonard’s claim that California is experiencing decreasing snowmelt. Unless you are up in the extreme high country of the Sierra, California’s snowmelt does not vary—all of the snow melts! However, what does vary is the rate at which the snowpack melts. Recently, much to the chagrin of backcountry skiers, California’s snowpack has been melting earlier, as night time temperatures in April, May, and June are warmer than normal. Besides ruining the Sierra’s world famous corn skiing, these early springs mean drier forests come September and October.
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Here in NC we have the hottest driest year ever
This year was and continues to be the hottest driest year since records existed. We had a record # of hot days and the hottest days ever and our water is down to a 60 day supply in some counties. And yet we haven't experienced anything like San Diego has. Perhaps it's a combination of climate, land use, development and the natural geography that all mesh together to cause these fires. I'm afraid that 'Global Warming, Dude!' will become the EconoGreenTard's battle cry for everything.
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Is climate change even needed?
Climate change doesn't even have to be brought in as a causal factor for there to be plenty of fuel here (sorry) for environmentally concerned comment. Throughout the rockies and southwest, it's a pretty well-known fact: fire happens. Whether it's lodgepole pines in northern Montana or chaparral scrub in SoCal, fire happens. And, when it happens, you don't want to be in its way. Further, we can't stop it from happening - we can put out the fire now, but it only leads to a bigger fire next time.
Yet in spite of these perfectly simple facts, we're building our homes further and further into these fire-prone (or even fire-loving) ecosystems. How can we claim to be surprised when a house burns down after we've built it in a location that we know is going to burn eventually?
There's an easy environmental message here: sprawl gets your house burnt down. So don't sprawl. Live in locations and housing types appropriate to your locale. (Hint: living downtown means you're at very low risk of wildfires.) We don't need to go into whether climate change means dryer weather, which leads to fires, or whether climate change means wetter weather, which leads to fires - just stop building homes in fire-prone locations.
(This is, of course, a sneaky way to get around to climate change. As stated in the recent Urban Land Institute report, Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, our land use patterns are a significantly more important part of addressing climate change than how fuel-efficient our cars are.)