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Fire risk linked to global warming

Funny, you'd think somebody would look at thermometers to guage climate change. Instead, they blame all kinds of natural phenomena on the elusive "global warming" without any scientific support.

Look at the data! U.S. rural areas have not warmed by more than a fraction of a degree in over a century. How could that cause fires?

Perhaps the 10+ year western drought might have something to do with the fires!

This seems almost to easy of an answer. I really don't think it is that simple. So what I'm hearing is if we reduce greenhouse emissions, we will have less forest fires? It seems ending "global warming" is the end-all, cure-all solution.

Just the facts please...I was here this winter when it got colder than I can ever remember it getting in southern Utah. We also had more snow than ever before. I was also here this spring when, because of cooler temps, the snow didn't leave the Abajo range until July! I've never seen that in the 20+ years I've lived here.

I don't buy it. It just doesn't make sense to me. Call it global warming and everyone will believe you, right?

I want our natural world to be preserved and our way of life protected for our children like everyone else. But I also demand the truth. Is that too much to ask? Political propaganda making con artists like Gore insanely rich, and whose hypocritical actions speak volumes, disgust me.

I believe in recycling, biking to work, and being good stewards of the earth, but not in the name of global warming.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling, oh wait its just global warming.

I thought it was due to the proliferation of cheat grass.

Then again, the National Wildlife Federation isn't exactly what you would call an objective source.

Climate change is a good thing. It's been changing since the last ice age. If it wasn't for climate change we'd still be under ice here.

Other planets in the Solar System are also experiencing warming. Perhaps the global warming guru's should be preaching to the Saturnians, Neptunians and Martians about altering their lifestyles.

Perhaps the drought has something to do with the fires? Or, perhaps global warming has something to do with the drought? Cheat grass has complicated and worsened the fire situation, so it's another component in a complex world. Nothing in science is simple or one dimensional. And let's, really, extrapolate what will happen on Earth by looking at the gas giant planets of Saturn and Neptune.
I know some people who work in fire management with the BLM and USFS, and they uniformly tell me that the warming climate is affecting their fire seasons. They are scientists, and that's what the data is telling them. I have every reason to be convinced by them. For some of you, it won't matter from which science someone suggests global warming effects, you will reflexively deride it on no good scientific basis, and no amount of science or data will budge you.

The global warming folks continually assume that becasue the world is getting warmer, that proves people are doing it. The earth has been, on average getting warmer, since the last ice age. "Proving" that the earth is getting warmer, and that there are effects as a result, is NOT proof that it is all due to human activity.

You have to love the nonsense.. I hope this "global warming" keeps up.. I snowmobiled till the end of April this year and could have kept goin into May.. Best snow in years!

My scientist on staff assures me that global warming is not happening, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and is indeed a political ploy by the evil liberals to ruin the economy and this great country. Man is arrogant to assume that they can some how change the climate of the earth! So don't worry about it.

Double mega super kudos with sugar on top!

If George Bush says there isn't global warming, there isn't! I believe everything he says. I'm from Utah.

I find it signficant that you would use the name of another Doom-and-Gloom scientist that has been proven wrong again and again, Thomas Malthus, who incorrectly predicted imminent mass human starvation some 200 years ago.

Of course we've been warming for the past 150 years; for the 300 years prior to 1850 the earth was locked in a "little ice age". Perhaps the earth is merely returning to the "normal" climate that existed during the Middle Ages.

When scientists can explain exactly why our earth has cooled and warmed several times over the past 10,000 years without any help from humans, then perhaps I'll listen to their hysterical projections of environmental collapse.

Until then, I'll just note that the actual global temperature record since 1998 shows a slight decline, in spite of an increase of almost 10% in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Global warming? Ok, I'm a firefighter. I love how our "spokesmen" say all firefighters believe in global warming. I don't think fighting fire on the Arizona strip and southern Utah is any hotter than it was 10 years ago! And we have had 5 years of record setting winters down this way. Here's what I see:

#1: Fuel loading, fire suppression, no logging/thinning have increased plant growth tons! More fuel=larger fires. Wet winters also give us more fine fuels to burn.

#2 Invasive species...cheatgrass and red brome. Both are not native to this part of the country, or in the case of cheatgrass, not native to the US. It is the primary carrier of over 90% of our large fires in southern Utah/Northern Arizona. It has increased like you wouldn't believe over the past 5-8 years down here. It also follows the highs and lows we get with precipitation. Remember the St. George floods? Our biggest fire season down here was after that winter, all due to the cheatgrass boom.

There are some real climate experts around here, aren't there?

First of all, some of you don't understand the difference between climate and weather. The fact that we got lots of snow last year says nothing (for or against) global warming. Global warming is a long-term trend, not something you can tell by looking at one year's weather.

Next, we're not in a drought right now, as some of you seem to think. Our last drought ended in 2007.

Finally, there's really no debate that the world is getting warmer, particularly in the west. Fire season is getting longer (17 days longer than 50 years ago), the average snowline during winter is rising (250 feet over the last 20 years.....remember when we used to have snow in SLC during Christmas?), the flowers in your garden are blooming 22 days earlier than they were in the 1960's. There's plenty of debate left on WHY the world is getting warmer, but the fact that it IS getting warmer is no longer a question.....at least, everywhere outside of Utah.

CO2 is not a pollutant. No matter how many fires are burning, or have burned, CO2 is not the problem. As a chemical engineer, and having studied the issues, there is not a shread of evidence that says CO2 is causing all the earths bad weather. The real problem will come when the EPA will have to rule the nation by forcing calamitous regulations on every man, woman, and child that breaths because of the false notion that the CO2 they give off is a harmful pollutant. This, my friends, is the greatest fraud in memory, other than the WWII ethnic cleansing of the Jews.

This is nothing but junk statements made without peer reviewed research to back up their claims.

If global warming is a long term trend, why did they just start using data from the mid 80's and try to extrapolate that for all of human history?

"combined with decades of fire-suppression tactics that allowed unsafe fuel loads to accumulate, as well as severe bark-beetle infestations that are rapidly decimating trees and ever-expanding human settlements in and near forests,"

This is the reason for increased fire numbers and intensity. It has been extreme environmental policies that keep us from taking dead trees out of the forests. Nature is not as benign as many want to believe.

Global warming is for the liberals to have some more things to blame their troubles on because we all know it's never their fault.

shouldn't the temperature of the globe be going up if there is global warming?

I remember immediately after 9/11, when the airports where shut down and all planes were taken out of the sky. I found it laughable that many in the media and even some "scientists" as reported in the news noted that the United States had miraculously cooled by 10 degrees. They based this totally on the lack of emissions from planes. Talk about "looking out the window".

I really don't know the cause of the weather and I doubt anyone does. There are many far smarter than me with "theories", but I find it amusing that they can't even predict the weather a week from now. Although I know "weather" does not mean "climate", I still find it silly that we fill we know what the cause of it all is. Unfortunately Global Warming is the go-to epidemic and the world has bought into it.

Perhaps the world is getting warmer. Why is this so alarming? The earth's been there before. The way I see it is that the far-left have always wanted their radical environmental agenda to be out in front of the political landscape. They've finally done it by introducing Global Warming and are getting away with it.

You have got to be kidding? There is no way that global warming is a natural phenomenon. I am right and the scientists are wrong, If you search my Internet (You know I invented it!) then you will learn that I am right, excuse me I have to leave on my private Jet to go to my massive (wasting energy) villa to live it up on the public dime, If I was worth anything I'd get a job and act like a man, but alas I don't have to...Ha! Ha!