For the Gore fanatics who say the current CA fires are proof of Global Warming

[percussivemadness]

Some facts-

Year - Area Destroyed - Place

1903 - 450,000 acres (1,800 km²) - Adirondack Fire - New York
1910 - 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km²) - Great Fire of 1910 Idaho-Montana
1911 - 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) - Cochrane Fire- Ontario
1918 - 100,000 acres (400 km²) - Cloquet Fire - Minnesota-
1933 - 240,000 acres (970 km²) - Tillamook Burn - Oregon
1939 - 190,000 acres (769 km²) - Tillamook Burn -Oregon
1945 - 180,000 acres (730 km²) - Tillamook Burn - Oregon
1947 - 175,000 acres (710 km²) - The Great Fires of 1947 - Maine
1970 - 175,425 acres (710 km²) - Laguna Fire -California
1998 - 300,000 acres (1,200 km²) - Unnamed - Florida

Peace

[Bonobo]

1. Geez, you don't suppose advanced technology might have something to do with that?

Like umm, flight?

[angstlessk]

3. OR selective areas/fires???

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. You've won the nightly

crappiest post on DU award!

Congratulations, this one's a stinker! :hi: MKJ

[annabanana]

4. Go back and watch yesterdays 60 minutes...n/t

[Burma Jones]

5. There is no single "proof" of man made global warming

and forests have been burning since there have been forests......


But, your post does nothing to dissuade me from believing in man made global warming......

[wtmusic]

6. More "Gore fanatics" pulled from the ass

Betcha saw Elvis at a gas station, too.

[angstlessk]

7. JUST FUCKING WOW..NO FIRES BETWEEN 1970-1998

and none since till now.......GO BOOSH!

[The Wielding Truth]

8. Reference please.

[incapsulated]

23. yeah.

and wtf?

[Der Blaue Engel]

9. Yes, belief in Global Warming is only about Gore fandom

You finally caught us. :eyes:

[Sukie1941]

10. Please add Oregon's Biscuit Fire of 2002

499,900 acres

BUT, read this link for some really interesting information about the Biscuit Fire and its ramifications.

http://www.wilderness.org/Library/Documents/WildfireSummary_Biscuit.cfm

[enid602]

11. ????

Did any of the above fires spread over seven extremely large counties over a period of a few hours?

[hayu_lol]

12. The Santana winds are a normal part of the yearly weather...

throughout southern CA. Always strong and electrically charged, they are generally not too damagning, aside from shingles and fences. During a strong wind like this one, all it takes is one spark and a lot of real estate gets burned. There really is no way to fight this sort of fire.

Used to be pics in the papers in CA where lines of semis would blow over...even if they were parked.

[tkmorris]

19. OK, Santana winds made me giggle

No offense intended.

[trumad]

13. Now I gotta do a search on you

I'm pretty sure what I'll find.

[Forkboy]

24. I'm too tired...let us know what you find.

:)

[Bluebear]

27. ditto

[Harper_is_Bush]

14. "Gore fanatics"?? What kind of term is that? How about SCIENCE fanatics? And tell me this....

you do realize there's a record drought in California at the moment, don't you?

If you're not aware of the SCIENCE of global warming that forecasts more drought, well then I guess you're a Glenn Beck fanatic.

[Harper_is_Bush]

15. And who said these fires are proof of anything?

moron.

[Champion Jack]

16. What Gore fanatics?

You ignorant fucking asshole

[applegrove]

17. On 60 Minutes yesterday they did a story on Forest Fires and stated

emphatically that the burning season is much longer and that mixed with too much success this century fighting fires has made for dryer conditions which have caused such massive fires in the last 10 years.

[Bluebear]

18. Flotsam and jetsam in a post.

[zulchzulu]

20. Gore fanatics? Is that what Freepers are calling climate change scientists these days?

I guess since there have been forest fires due to extremely dry weather for many years, we should just keep driving big-ass SUVs and keep the Saudis happy with fossil fuel that is otherwise doing many other things to our environment.

Do me a favor. Put your mouth around an exhaust pipe for ten minutes of a car that's purring along nicely. It should be just fine.

[Harper_is_Bush]

25. no shit n/t

[hatrack]

21. Dude, you forgot the Peshtigo Fire!

1871, 1.5 million acres, between 1,200 and 2,500 fatalities.



http://www.crh.noaa.gov/grb/peshtigofire.php

[Goblinmonger]

35. Cheeseheads prove

there is no global warming :P

[ozone_man]

22. 1903 was likely a result of logging slash.

Turn of the 19th century logging practices left huge amounts of slash which fueled these Adirondack fires. So I'm not sure about including that in with more recent fires.

Data does show that the frequency of large fires in California is increasing.

Obviously huge fires are not a modern phenomenon and have occurred long before fire suppression. The fact that one of the largest fires in US History happened forty years before the government began its massive fire suppression efforts is an issue typically ignored by the "bash Smokey Bear" crowd. It is also important to note that some of the earlier fires were caused by poor logging practices. Logging slash (cut limbs, unusable wood) was left lying in huge piles across the landscape.

In relation to California, see the graph below showing the distribution of fire size in Los Angeles County (dominated by brush fire rather than timber). The graph shows that fires have not been increasing in size over the past century in that region. Unpublished data analyzing fire size in the Sierra Nevada show similar results. This is important because the location of the most destructive fires in the United States occur in California (according to insurance claims). Graphs attempting to demonstrate that large fires are an artifact of fire suppression throughout the past century appear to be constructed from highly selective data rather than a full set. However, something has been happening since the mid-1980's to increase the frequency of larger wildfires in certain areas. And it appears to be getting worse. See article below for more details.

The overall importance of climate in wildfire activity underscores the urgency of ecological restoration and fuels management to reduce wildfire hazards to human communities and to mitigate ecological impacts of climate change in forests that have undergone substantial alterations due to past land uses. At the same time, however, large increases in wildfire driven by increased temperatures and earlier spring snowmelts in forests where land use history had little impact on fire risks indicates that ecological restoration and fuels management alone will not be sufficient to reverse current wildfire trends."

http://www.californiachaparral.com/cforestfires.html

[JackORoses]

26. you don't even list the causes of any of these fires

the California fires are due mostly to a combination of dry conditions and Santa Ana winds

these are both examples of weather events which become magnified under Global Warming

[SOS]

28. So the climate is not undergoing change?

Interesting.

Then why do 99% of scientists say the climate is changing?
Why is the Artic ice cap shrinking?
Why is the average temperature in Alaska up 7 degrees in the past decade?
Why have CA and the Southeast received no rain this year?
Why is Lake Mead down 100 feet?

Got any explanations?

[flyarm]

29. your chart missed these fires..........in SOCAL..

http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sge/jskiles/fliers/all_flier_prose/califfires_brass/califfires_brass.html

Southern California Fires of 1993

snip:

Over the years, NASA Ames's Earth System Science and Aircraft Operations personnel and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS)'s Riverside Fire Lab have collaborated in researching the effects of biomass combustion and, in turn, using the results of their research to assist other agencies in combating fires. The collaboration of these agencies has played a significant part in combating previous disasters, such as the Yellowstone Fires of 1988 and the Oakland Hills Fires of 1991 . Using a thematic mapper simulator aboard NASA's C-130 and ER-2 aircraft, a view of many fires, obtained in a short period of time, can be provided to firefighters, enabling them to make resource and personnel decisions quickly and decisively. In the fall of 1993, this collaboration proved equally efficient in the battle against fires in Southern California.

As additional Santa Ana winds occurred, four new fires flared up bringing the total of major fires to 21. On November 3, at the request of the USFS, California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Office of Emergency Services and L.A. County, NASA's C-130B aircraft, equipped with the thematic mapper simulator, flew over the fires in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains obtaining near real time images, maps and thermal video data of the active fire lines and hot spots (Figure 1).


Although such procedures have been used in previous firestorms, the flights over the Santa Monica and Malibu fires marked the first time that researchers detected fire movement, direction and speed of multiple fires over such an extensive area as the Los Angeles Basin. Figure 2 is a composite image of the Malibu coast taken in the morning (top) and in the afternoon (bottom) of November 3. Burned and burning areas are indicated in orange and yellow.

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http://www.light-headed.com/asite/laguna/laguna_history/laguna_beach_fire.php

Laguna fire 1993

Steve Turnbull ©2001

366 beautiful homes, and 17,000 acres of Laguna Beach burned in one day of fear, panic, bravery and tears. Many stories from this disaster are far more sad and harrowing then ours, but hopefully this small personal snapshot of the exact moment fear and dread arrived for Karen and I will give you a feeling of what our entire town felt on that frightening and sad day.





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http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/10/22/california-fires-kill-1-destroy-homes/7997/


The fire season in 2007 has already been unusually active. As of Friday, 76,285 fires had burned 8,284,271 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That’s second only to last year, during which more land burned than in any year in recorded history.

A combination of climate change (triggering hotter, drier conditions) and decades of aggressive fire fighting (which led to a build up of fuel waiting to burn) have contributed to an unprecedented fire risk across the Western United States. Scientific research has already attributed an increase in frequent and intense fires to global warming, even considering the effect of fire management techniques.

There were four times as many major wildfires between 1986 and 2004 as there were from 1970 to 1986, and a six-fold increase in the area of forest burned in the Western United States. The active wildfire season has increased by more than two months, and individual fires are burning longer — up from barely a week on average to more than five.

[Beetwasher]

30. Holy Crap Are You Stupid!

:eyes:

[Uncle Joe]

31. Your on to us, it's all part of Al Gore's master plan to cause record drought

in California, the West and the Southeast, this is will fool the people in to believing some thing is up with the Earth's climate, damn you're smart. I stand in awe.. this is a symbol of my awe.:wow:

[AlCzervik]

32. so you're for Global warming then.

[dionysus]

33. did you eat a bowl of trollios for breakfast?

[AlCzervik]

34. ok, that was funny.

:D

[dionysus]

36. i'm proud of myself for that one

O8)

[Kool Kitty]

37. Of course they did.

They're magically delicious! Thanks for the best laugh I had today.