Hurricane Irene may be front and center today, but wildfires commanded U.S. headlines earlier this summer. Via yesterday’s Guardian, here’s a spot-on observation from the lookout tower: There is a saying among some of my colleagues in the wildfire community: that during the 20th century, despite our phenomenal success in suppressing fires on public land,…Continue Reading…
Joe Romm never misses a disaster to beat the global warming drum. You name it– floods, fires, hurricanes–if they’re in the headlines, then he finds a way to connect them to climate change. It’s tricky stuff because he’s smart enough to know that no single climatic event or catastrophe can be pinned exclusively on greenhouse…Continue Reading…
This brilliant post by environmental historian Steve Pyne might be the first time that anyone has compared wildfire to Wall Street: Like economic transactions, fire is not a substance but a reaction ““ an exchange. It takes its character from its context. It synthesizes its surroundings. Its power derives from the power to propagate. To…Continue Reading…
There is a simplistic way to talk about the link between climate change and catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters: The science makes clear that many extreme weather events have increased in recent years “” and that there is a link to climate change. You can shout from the rooftops: CNN, ABC, WashPost, AP, blow…Continue Reading…
Residents in Boulder, Colorado got spanked by their sheriff this weekend, for their chuckle-headed behavior during a January 7 fire that forced the evacuation of 25,000 people. At a community meeting, the lawman chastised homeowners who filled pickup trucks with numerous personal items and left them parked in front of their driveways until they had…Continue Reading…
Journalists love it when scientists cut right to the chase in a journal paper. It means we don’t have to read the abstract. Just kidding. But we will pounce when your title is, Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions.” Predictably, we will “go all doomsday” in our interpretation, as the good scientists at…Continue Reading…