How can Global Warming be blamed for the California Fires?

Question

When a boy admits to starting one and they already have an person in custody for starting atleast on other? The trees did not spontaneously combust.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071031/ap_on_re_us/california_wildfires

Before you tell me the fires were made worse by the climate changes, please tell me how extreme emviromental policies and activisim preventing the controlled burns, clearing underbrush and other activites designed to keep the forrest healthy was not a larger contributing factor.

Answer 1

Please list the extreme environmental policies. As an environmental manager I suggest you are ignorant of policies and how the situation was a 'perfect' condition for a fire storm. Single digit humidity. Lack of precipitation. Santana winds. Plenty of chaparral to burn and other native and introduced flora.
Is it possible that GW could have contributed to any of these factors? Yes.
There is no commercial value in harvesting brush. Controlled burns are feasible yet there are air standards that must be met. If you think that reduction of pollution is an extreme environmental policy then you haven't spent much time in So-Cal on a hot and smoggy day.

Answer 2

Power lines fell starting one fire, felled by santa ana winds caused by heat/cool air mass there for causing the fire. The second caused by child playing w/matches, just to see what he could light on fire, his mind was not thinking correctly because the temperature was in the 80's and cooked it -- therefore causing another fire. Another was caused by an arsonist after the others started, by lighting dry brush, which is dry at this time of year anyway in Calif., because it IS DRY out there, so it was caused by GLOBAL WARMING. Let's see, .....

Answer 3

The "climate change" had no impact. The lack of fire access roads did

The underbrush does not need to be burnt off in "control fires". It can be cleared by hand and composted. Sure, it is more labour intensive, but SFAIK there's plenty of unemployed folks taking in money for nothing. Or inmates sitting in jail doing nothing all day.

Answer 4

The drought and extreme high temps this year have said to be the effects of global warning. The drought and high temps made the forest you well know drier and easier to burn than usual, but really all forest burn pretty easily. SoCal happens to be home to believe it not something other than humans. Some of the burned forests happen to be home to many animals who can only live and thrive in old growth forests. Having controlled burns and clearing underbrush would take away from the old growth forests.

Answer 5

It is things like this that make people claim global warming is not real. There is no direct link between global warming and these fires. Claims that there is an obvious link simply hurt the credibility of the "global warming is really bad and all our fault and we have to make sacrifices to fix it" people.

Answer 6

The arsonist that started them is probably mentally deranged because the heat of the sun must be so intense and his home was washed away by the melting icebergs thus causing the polar bear to eat all his food.

Answer 7

As you correctly point out there are forest management practices that can reduce the number and severity of fires in this area. The area of California where the burning is occurring is naturally very dry and highly subject to wildfires. Couple that with dry winds blowing off the desert, any ignition source can set it off. In those situations, the fires quickly go from low intensity (i.e. relatively easier to fight) to high intensity (i.e. nearly impossible to control). Note that there is no "medium" intensity. The high intensity fires create their own weather. It is like opening the damper on a wood stove - the fire creates it's own little low-pressure system. With 30-40 mile per hour winds off the desert (very dry and remove any moisture left in the vegetation) whose speed is further enhanced because of the fires' low-pressure system, it exactly like using a bellow to increase the energy produced by the fire. Increasing the energy increases the destructive power. Even after they get the fires out, they are not out of the woods. If they get rainfall, their is a chance that they will now suffer mud slides (a condition they are also prone too). It is Ironic that they are in a drought and need water, but getting to much water may cause more losses.

The global warming part of the equation deals with changes in rainfall patterns that may cause drought conditions to occur more frequently in parts of the country that don't necessarily see prolonged, sever droughts. It is a larger picture than just California and just this fire. More drought could cause more insect and disease kills in the forest, and lead to more fires. The number of wildfires has been increasing over the past decade or so. Some may be due to a decrease in forest management practices that reduces cutting causing more fuel buildup, some is because people are moving deeper into areas once dominated by forest so more people means more fire (accidental and deliberate) and greater risk, some may be due to variation in rain fall patterns caused by climate change (this would be impossible to prove for a single fire), and some is from other factor I don't know and natural variation. We must look at long term trends and account for all other factors that could cause it before you can begin to even check this hypothesis.

In short, this is consistent with potential impacts of GW, but it is also typical for the area. It does not prove GW. However, it also does not DISPROVE it. You must look at all the impacts (ice melting and thawing permafrost, sea-surface temperatures rising, earlier greening in the north, record heat spells, increasing storm numbers and intensities, northward migration of some species, species extinctions, drought and flooding incidents and duration). You can be sure there is a lot of natural variation in climate and cycles that can cause this, but it is also likely (Look at IPCC, NAS, EPA to name just a few of the scientific reports) that human activity is causes a significant portion of GW that can contribute to these problems.

-Scientists are certain that a significant portion of GW is caused by man.

-Scientists are a little less certain about the potential impacts that GW can cause (more fires, floods, disease, crops and forest growth, algae growth, mass extinctions, species migrations, etc).

-Scientists have much less certainty about the economic consequences (what will they be, who wins, who looses)

-Politicians are totally uncertain how to respond to distribute the potential impacts among the current populations and future populations.

In their own way they are trying to decide if we should hurt our economy now to help our future and all future generations or wait to see if the problem "self-regulates" in an acceptable way. They hope that maybe it won't occur and all these scientist are wrong, Maybe we'll get new technologies in the future that will really help. Maybe the sum of any changes will be helpful to humanity, not harmful. Their are lots of tough decisions for them to make all of which suck..

I think personally that taking steps to reduce CO2 emissions is a good idea to try to slow the pace of the change (it can't be totally stopped). This will be economically painful, no doubt - I drive 250 miles to work each week. At least going slower into an uncertain warmer future gives us more time to react.

Answer 8

The fires are burning because of the heat and the wind is at a high limit.

Answer 9

Ummmm.... The heat from Global Warming made the arsonists a little cranky so they set the fires?

Answer 10

Easy.... Everything that is not Bush's fault is caused by global warming.... and many are convinced that Bush is behind global warming...