Originally Posted by
Kalam
If you look at ecological records over thousands of years, the West coast has had hotter, drier periods than the present and cooler, wetter ones.
Brush fires happening during hot/dire periods is a completely normal part of the natural ecosystem, in fact some native species of plants are adapted to this so seeds can't germinate without being exposed to fire.
If anything the problem is we are too good at firefighting and we don't allow enough small fires to run their course naturally, so brush builds up and a threshold is hit and big devastating fires happen.
These fires are a bigger problem to the anthropologic world than the natural world. Nature actually recovers fairly quickly from fires (on an ecological time scale) if people let it.
But yeah, given the realities of our climate/ecosystem I think it is clear we need to completely rethink forest management and get much more aggressive about controlling dry brush buildup. This is much more feasible and useful in the short term than blaming things on climate change. We should of course be trying to shift away from burning fossil fuels for energy regardless for a variety of reasons; but trying to manipulate short term climate change on the West Coast of the US is not a valid reason why.
Have you been looking at the thousand year ecological records again?
Record keeping began in 1850.
So I don't believe anything else you've said.
Here's what scientists say
California’s climate is changing.
Southern California has warmed about three degrees (F) in the last century and all of the state is becoming warmer. Heat waves are becoming more common, snow is melting earlier in spring—and in southern California, less rain is falling as well. In the coming decades, the changing climate is likely to further decrease the supply of water, increase the risk of wildfires, and threaten coastal development and ecosystems.
Our climate is changing because the earth is warming. People have increased the amount of carbon dioxide
in the air by 40 percent since the late 1700s. Other heat-trapping greenhouse gases are also increasing. These gases have warmed the surface and lower atmosphere of our planet about one degree during the last 50 years. Evaporation increases as the atmosphere warms, which increases humidity, average rainfall, and the frequency of heavy rainstorms in many places—but contributes to drought in others.
Greenhouse gases are also changing the world’s oceans and ice cover. Carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid, so the oceans are becoming more acidic. The surface of the ocean has warmed one degree during the last 80 years. Warming is causing snow to melt earlier in spring, and mountain glaciers are retreating. Even the great ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking. Thus the sea is rising at an increasing rate.
www.epa.gov