Europe 2003 – Moscow – Texas – Colorado … the cherry pickers are at it again.
June 29, 2012
As the American West’s fire season races off to a ferocious start, researchers suggest that the increasingly hotter, drier region is just beginning to pay off a “fire deficit.”
By Tom Yulsman
DailyClimate.orgBOULDER, Colo. – As the West has warmed and dried over the past 30 years, headlines describing fire season have grown ever more apocalyptic: “epic” dryness, “monster” fires, new records for damage and devastation.
There is no trend in western precipitation. We were having floods and record snowpack in Colorado during the previous two Junes. The fires in the west this year have been small compared to the giant fires of 1871, 1881 1898, 1910, etc. The only thing that is epic is the level of bullshit from climate alarmists.
This year is no exception. The Waldo Canyon Fire has incinerated hundreds of homes in Colorado Springs, and every indication points to another big, early start to the wildfire season.
The Waldo Canyon fire is not a huge fire. A lot of people built houses in a very vulnerable location, and the inevitable is happening. The monsoons are starting, and as happens every year, fire activity in the southwest will decline during July and August.
Recent research, however, suggests these severe conflagrations could be a prelude. Climate stressors are putting increasing pressure on a “fire deficit” the West has accumulated over the past 100 years, say scientists who have compared today’s burn rates with fire activity over thousands of years. As the West continues to warm, that debt will come due – possibly with interest – triggering fires that are fiercer and harder to contain, they warn.
In other words, a century of fire suppression has left a forest where the tree density is about 10X higher than it was 100 years ago, so the fires are burning very hot. Yulsman completely misrepresented the point of the study – which was that we have been through 100 years of historically low fire activity and that fire activity may return to normal.
You overdevelop an arid region, you are bound to have fires and long term water problems. It comes with the territory and has nothing to do with CO2. We could reduce CO2 to 200 PPM and the fires would not go away.
What a bunch of whiners. Doesn’t anybody remember the 1991 Oakland fire storm?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_firestorm_of_1991
From my observations the forest problems are due to lack of proper management. In the fifties and sixties the US forest service worked hard to keep forests in healthy safe conditions. Since then with this idiotic preservation mindset going on the country has gone the opposite direction and instead of controling and utilizing the resources they are mindlessly doing things in a earth and tree worshiping manner. We should be shaping and controling our destiny instead of letting it go to pot. If we did as we should we would have a healthy employed population and an improved country. But who knows where this country is headed now?
Yulsman is Keith Kloor’s buddy
Totally standard fare.
I am the training officer on a rural fire department.
Everyone knew this was coming…
The primary cause of the intensity of the fires is all of the undergrowth from the previous WET years. All of this fuel (which is normally not even present) is now dry.
Just one example in our area is the recent proliferation of cheat grass…our climate does not normally support extensive cheat grass, however the previous years have been much wetter and cooler. Instead of a desert with shrubs, it looks like prairie with shrubs. That’s a lot of fuel to carry a fire. Now the same holds true in forest areas, only different plants form the fuels, and there is a LOT more fuel in the forests.
The local chiefs have been discussing and planning for months now on a potentially serious fire season, and we are having drills with the local Ineragency Command (state and federal services) to smooth communications and operations between departments and agencies.