Western Wildfires

THURSDAY UPDATE: The next step, calling in federal troops.

Environmentalists blame these big fires on the same ole scapegoat: global warming/climate change. And it's getting boring to listen to. They predict that with warming, more of these fires will occur. And of course, they're right in a way, but for the wrong reasons.

Anyone, including me, who's lived in or around a National Forest and through one of these big fires as I did in the Yellowstone fires of 1988 started by dry lightning strikes, knows a large part of the culpability for these fires are with the eco-extremists themselves.

For the past half century, environmentalists have lobbied Washington, Congress and the USFS for a no timbering/no cutting policy in these public, often roadless areas. Huge amounts of fuel in the form of trees and shrubs have built up in these wilderness areas as a result---fuel that should have been harvested and thinned long ago. Now, since we haven't done our job, nature is taking its course and cleaning out its over-grown forests as it's done for millions of years.

Can you imagine the effects these fires are having on atmospheric CO2 levels? I'll bet these fires in California almost equal a month's worth of Al Gore's carbon footprint as he trots around the globe admonishing us all to turn down our thermostats and screw in new light bulbs.

Meanwhile, it's not politically or environmentally correct to call for the thinning of timber on USFS lands by radical environmentalists. That would be tantamount to treason. Bringing down the economy would be preferable to bringing down trees or shrubs, even if it's done in a environmentally acceptable way.

But it just might just be the most cost effective way to keep man made CO2 levels reasonable. One of these big fire equals 1,000 years of Kyoto bs and wipes out all our good intentions.

So yes, I think we can expect more and bigger fires in the years to come. Because when hot, dry conditions combine with forests and wilderness areas that are over-grown with fuel, then all it takes is one dry lightning strike or a tossed match to ignite a fire that can become a mega environmental event, like a 500-year flood or a class 5 hurricane.

Meanwhile, Climate Change Delusion, a diagnosed disorder, via HotAir.