Global Warming – and denial

We watched a segment on 60 Minutes last night about how much worst forest fires have gotten in the Western U.S, in the last 10 to 20 years.   They were interviewing the fellow who is the top firefighter after working his way up from the lines for 30 years – a guy who’s seen it all first hand.

He said that a decade ago, of they had a fire over 100,000 acres, it was big news.   Now, we had two at over 500,000 acres last year and one of those was over 600,000 acres.   The fires are so big and the resources so small to fight them, that they have to let many of them just burn and the only time they will really focus and fight is if a town is under threat.

They asked him, directly, if he thought Global Warming was a factor in all of this and he said it would be hard to find a man on the front lines fighting these fires who doesn’t think so.   He also said that high fire season has increased by 78 days per year and that fires in the high mountain areas are much more common because the higher temperatures are drying things out now that used to remain damp and incombustible for a much long part of the year.   Some of the forests that are burning are burning so thoroughly that they will not be back in our life times.   And that in 100 years, half of the forest in the western U.S. that’s standing now – could be gone.

Deniers ought to take a look at this piece.  These are not pointy-headed intellectuals from the universities talking here.   these are the folks who are looking at and fighting the consequences of the climate change happening around us everyday.  Chilling stuff.

Check it out:

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