[MCN] Worsening wildfires have something in common with hurricanes

[Lance Olsen]

Excerpts:  

Wildland fires are growing worse in a time of drought and climate change, and the biggest and most destructive fires can't be stopped.   They are a force of nature:  imagine trying to stop a hurricane. “



Steve Inskeep:    Why did it spread so quickly?

Brian Marshall:    Wind .... Hot, dry conditions ….  all we needed was a spark and there was no stopping that fire.



Steve Inskeep:     Is there something the public doesn't get about the really big, fast-moving, dangerous fires?

Brian Marshall:   When you have the extreme fire behavior, when the weather, fuel, and topography sets up there may not be anything that we can do.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wildfires-on-the-rise-due-to-drought-and-climate-change/ <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wildfires-on-the-rise-due-to-drought-and-climate-change/>

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“On our present course, humankind will add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere 
in the next 25 years than our forebears did during the past 125 years.”

“The most painful and expensive way to deal with global climate change will be to ignore it until 
something happens that elicits powerful public demands for immediate and Draconian action.”
 
Jonathan Lash. “As the earth heats up. “  
Journal of Commerce, August 16, 1996.
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“Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state 
to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that 
the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a 
planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence."

Barnovsky et al. Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere. Nature Volume 486, 07 June 2012

doi:10.1038/nature11018


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