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Earth United States

New Wildfires Are At A 10-Year High In The Hot, Dry Western US (npr.org) 85

Posted by msmash from the watch-out dept.
The number of new wildfires in the U.S. so far this year is at a ten-year high, according to federal data, prompting warnings of a long, potentially dangerous summer of fire. From a report: One of the biggest areas of concern right now is the high desert Great Basin region in Utah, Nevada and eastern Oregon. "When you have standing dead grass that's already out there and when we have high heat, that ignition potential raises dramatically," said Paul Peterson, a fire management officer for the Bureau of Land Management. Since January, more than a million acres have burned from more than 28,000 wildfires â" the highest number of fires for this date since 2011. There are currently 33 active large fires across the West. The biggest has scorched more than 175,000 acres in the canyons and valleys east of Phoenix. It is 73% contained. A record-breaking heat wave across the West this week isn't helping ease fire danger. Temperatures have soared into the triple digits in Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Montana, where new wildfires are sparking weeks earlier than normal.
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New Wildfires Are At A 10-Year High In The Hot, Dry Western US More

New Wildfires Are At A 10-Year High In The Hot, Dry Western US

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  • Those Jewish (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    space lasers are becoming a real menace. The USSF must put a stop to this!
  • You sceptics have always got to find ways of polluting more than your share,
    • Exactly. Let's see how well the media can connect excessive lifestyles, e.g. all-meat diets, SUVs, low-efficiency housing & urban planning, etc., with the increase in extreme weather events & the resulting losses, damage & deaths. It's a systemic issue with systemic, i.e. political & government, solutions. We ain't gonna shop our way out of this. As individuals & consumers we're essentially powerless.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Fly Swatter ( 30498 )

        As individuals & consumers we're essentially powerless.

        That's the spirit! Keep up the good work!

        The underlying problem is overpopulation. Read into that however you want.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          More specifically, the problem is overconsumption: too many people consuming too many resources. But yes, better access to birth control would help a lot.

        • You quoted:

          As individuals & consumers we're essentially powerless.

          And then you commented:

          That's the spirit! Keep up the good work! The underlying problem is overpopulation. Read into that however you want.

          What I actually wrote & meant was:

          It's a systemic issue with systemic, i.e. political & government, solutions. We ain't gonna shop our way out of this. As individuals & consumers we're essentially powerless.

          I was assuming that readers would be able to relate the systemic issue vs individual/consumerist solutions together without me patronisingly spelling it out. I guess you're one of the readers for whom it wouldn't have been patronising. So, just for you:

          Systemic issues, like global heating, require systemic solutions rather than just more of the same, e.g. leaving it to 'the market' & 'the invisible hand' & simply offering tax breaks or other market-oriented financial incentives. For an issue of this magnitude & urgency, we need deliberate, planned, coordinated solutions on a corresponding scale. The kind of planning & coordination that markets are not capable of. This is the obvious & necessary work of governments. Just as government create the conditions for corporations & their corresponding markets to exist & function, so they must create the conditions for global heating mitigation responses to exist & function on an appropriate scale.

          Is that patronisingly explicit enough for you?

        • Maybe Slashdotters could refrain from sex :-)

      • e.g. all-meat diets

        I don't doubt there are some people who try to do this, an actually all-meat diet, but how common is it actually (versus varying amounts of people eating meat + fruits + veggies, or eating meat + processed crap, etc)?

        • OK, I exaggerated. Not literally all-meat but unnecessarily, unhealthily & environmentally damagingly large quantities of meat. I mean the kinds of quantities of meat farming that lay to waste large swaths of the Amazon jungle among other regions around the world so that westerners, particularly Americans, can give themselves bowel cancer, among other diet related diseases.

  • So, that means it was higher eleven years ago?

    Somehow, I can't get very excited about that....

    • That was my first thought as well, cherry picking stats to make something appear extreme.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      It's early in the fire season.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      It's a poor way to relate statistics as it doesn't tell you how frequently you should expect to see a bad year and at what magnitude.Consider the numbers (0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1....) every other year is the worst for two years. (0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100) - only bad once every 5 years so much better. Or maybe not. Maybe the figures for wildfires are (100, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100), in whic

  • Climate change has consequences. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Saturday June 19, 2021 @06:10AM (#61501060) Journal

    Might have something to do with climate change. [youtu.be]

    • What shall we do to fight global warming? We need solutions.

      Here's an idea, we should make a list. A list of solutions that offer the most gain for the least effort and resources. Say a top five list so we don't get bogged down in going off in too many directions at once.

      Start with defining the problems so we know what metrics to use in our selection. Too much CO2 being emitted from energy? And construction? Well that's actually two problems, maybe we need two top five lists. A shortage of workers?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        A carbon tax and cap-and-trade would allow the market to find the most economically efficient way to reduce emissions. You could make the carbon tax revenue neutral by reducing other taxes, say income tax on corporations. You wouldn't have to do much if any of that complicated and controversial problem and solution metric definitions, private industry *as a whole* would adapt to the novel idea that CO2 emissions equals operating cost.

        The political problem with any solution is that it won't affect everyone

        • A carbon tax and cap-and-trade would allow the market to find the most economically efficient way to reduce emissions.

          That is until the next election and people vote the taxes away.

          Can anyone come up with a solution that does not require the heavy hand of government? Something that doesn't require convincing people to vote themselves into too much month at the end of the money?

          If you convinced people of a need to do something or the world burns then you don't need to vote for government involvement to tell people to do what they were already going to do anyway. If people don't want to do it then a government that answers

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            Can anyone come up with a solution that does not require the heavy hand of government?

            Not using the heavy hand of government hasn't worked until now, so unlikely. There's no strong incentive to avoid externalities and people have too many other things to be concerned enough to vote with their cheque books strongly enough, and that's even despite some effect in this or other areas (e.g., animal welfare).

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
              Cap-and-trade is the most free market of options likely to work.

              • For cap-and-trade to work people have to agree to be taxed, that's how things work in a democratic republic, no taxation without representation.

                To get people to agree to see the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel they need for transportation, and prices go up for natural gas used for heating, cooking, and electricity, they need to have an alternative. You give people an alternative then they will agree to a new tax.

                Telling people that they need to tax themselves so that in the future maybe there will be an

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

                  For cap-and-trade to work people have to agree to be taxed, that's how things work in a democratic republic, no taxation without representation.

                  That's a slogan, not reality. Lots of people get taxed without representation.

                  To get people to agree to see the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel they need for transportation, and prices go up for natural gas used for heating, cooking, and electricity, they need to have an alternative.

                  There are alternatives now. Also, it can be done in a revenue-neutral way. OK, there will be some individual winners and losers, but it can be tweaked to do reasonably well and then phased in over a period of time to allow people to adapt. That's assuming you are talking about cap-and-trade down to an individual level. When it is discussed going down that far then revenue neutral is pretty much the default presumption amongst poli

  • Fact is, that pine beetle (and now spruce beetle ) have come through killing the trees. Rather than allow logging of the dead/dying trees, they left them standing. Now, wildfires are dangerous due to how fast they spread. Worse, adding lots of CO2, with little new growth. Politicians, mostly Dems, are to blame.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

      Fact is, that pine beetle (and now spruce beetle ) have come through killing the trees. Rather than allow logging of the dead/dying trees, they left them standing. Now, wildfires are dangerous due to how fast they spread. Worse, adding lots of CO2, with little new growth. Politicians, mostly Dems, are to blame.

      Leaving dead trees can be good for habitats, but you have to balance that against risk. Controlled burns are useful (it happens naturally, so changes the habit but still leaves it in a natural state in a sense), but if it gets uncontrolled and burns homes who pays? No one wants to be on the hook for that.

  • So? The population in the West is also at a 10 year high. More idiots = more wildfires.

  • In 1930... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There were 190,980 fires and 52,266,000 acres burned. In1935 there were 226,285 fires and 43,207,000 acres burned. Fires were up to 5x times worse in the 1920s and 1930s than anything since. Oh noooos! I'm a WITCH for going against the dogmatic beliefs of the religious zealots on this site, that believe that "The Science" is without question.... BURN ME AT THE STAKE!!!

    Here, look for yourselves if you're brave enough to go against what you've been TOLD is the truth:
    Archived Site:
    Look at how much wor

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