Are the recent wildfires in Greece an Indication of Global Warming?

Question

There are more and more recent environmental phenomenon including hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes, droughts, record breaking heat waves, and yes wildfires that could be interpreted as stemming from global warming. What is your opinion on this and what facts do you have to support your view?

Trevor, I agree with everything you have said except it would be unrealistic to correlate the wildfires in Greece with Global warming. These fires may or may not have started without the event of global warming, but to which the extent they have ravaged this nation I am more than suspicious of the underlining cause.

Answer 1

Greece has a long history of wildfires but this year is exceptional in that they're compounded by the extreme temperatures that have been affecting southern and eastern Europe for many months now. Greece, along with many other countries, is effectively a tinder-box, once a fire starts it is taking hold very quickly and spreading like... well, like wildfire.

It would be unrealistic to say that the fires in Greece are the result of global warming as they may or many not have happened anyway.

What we do know is that on a wider and more long terms scale there has been a sharp rise in the number of wildfires, this is just one of the many effects we would expect to see as a result of global warming.

Similarly, there have been marked increases in the number of all the adverse weather events you mentioned. This doesn't come as a surprise to those who have studied global warming and have been predicted for a long time now.

Unfortunately these trends are likely to continue well into the future and in the years and decades to come these extreme events will continue to become more frequent.

Answer 2

Many in Greece are blaming these fires on arson. But blame is easy to lay. What is incontrovertible apart from the cause is the conditions which favour the spread of these fires. Weather throughout Europe has been weird. When's the last time the UK had floods like this year?

With fewer hurricanes look also at the severity and areas affected. Are storms moving inland instead of forming over the ocean?

Answer 3

I think you should look further into this story and understand that Greece has many local political and economic differences from what you are used to. There's a good reason that the government suspects arson.

Read this:
"Anti-terror squads were already questioning 32 suspects yesterday afternoon, as the Greek government offered rewards of up to \u20AC1 million (£675,000) for information.

The money appeared to be a concerted attempt to challenge what seems the routine of setting fires every summer.

Dimitris Karavellas, the Greek World Wildlife Fund's director, said yesterday: "It is a culture of arson."

He said Greeks "still consider the forest as an area of land for development" and criticised the country's failure to establish a land registry that sets out which areas are protected from development.

"We are the only country in the EU that doesn't have a land registry," he said. "We get situations where there are forest fires one year and nothing but houses a couple of years later."

Costas Karamanlis, the prime minister, has announced that all burned trees would be replanted to counter the threat of mass development.

Mr Karamanlis faces general elections in three weeks, and the fires are certain to play a role in the campaign.

Smaller fires across Greece in June and July have already prompted large demonstrations in the first public demand for tougher anti-arson legislation."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/28/wgreece128.xml

But you can always count on the knee-jerk reaction of alarmists to make any bad situation a result of global warming...

Answer 4

Sure, why not? They make the news, so they must be **EXTREME**!! We need to take action now!!

No, fires are a cause of poor land management, nothing more.

However, if you're the kind of person who is impressionable by others whom sound like they may be smart, then I have no doubt that you will be told that of course, man made global warming causes wildfires to be **EXTREME**!!!

Try this with another question. Ask if global warming is responsible for the fewer number of hurricanes. The answer is going to be yes.......

Answer 5

Of course not,
evidentally most of the fires were caused by arsonists, during a hot dry season, which can happen during SUMMER,
duh!

Answer 6

YES!

everything that occurs is caused by global warming.

hot days
hurricanes
floods
cold days
snowy days
cavities
droughts
fog
sleeping in late
all can some way be attributed to global warming....

....if you try hard enough.

the question is, are you going to fall for it?