Question:
Are warnings of San Diego fire conditions another example that we need to listen to scientists?
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Are warnings of San Diego fire conditions another example that we need to listen to scientists?
Ten answers:
?
2007-10-25 09:56:49 UTC
yes, and the fact that it isnt funny that people are using arson to start these fires because this is the cause
gg
2007-10-25 09:58:00 UTC
No....those things were set by arsonists.



Kansas scorches their ground in the flinthills every year, so fires don't run rampant, and it has nothing to do with global warming. It has been this way for a long long time.
kmcpmgoodson
2007-10-25 09:57:42 UTC
It is time to start listening, but I doubt that the fires have anything to do with global warming. California and Florida have had issues with fire for years.
2007-10-25 09:57:00 UTC
yes but here is just very dry...we need rain.
2007-10-26 06:51:33 UTC
"I'm not saying global warming magically started the fires. I'm saying researchers have pointed out that climate change is creating conditions ripe for strong wildfires."



That's exactly right Dana.



To me It's the idea that if we overbuild in sensitive areas, ignoring natural cues, nature will come back and bite us. As others have stated, doesn't matter what started the fire, we shouldn't be in the way. But that's another matter.
Greywolf
2007-10-25 10:02:53 UTC
Well, the short answer is "yes".



There are more factors involved in the destructiveness of fires than global warming. Urban sprawl is a big reason that fires are causing so much damage.



I suppose the 80mph winds could have some link to global warming, but there have always been strong winds there, so maybe not.



Anything that impacts global weather patterns is going to have an impact on pretty much everything that is impacted by weather.



Reducing global carbon emissions isn't the same as eliminating the use of certain types of chemicals (ozone). I don't know that San Diego and California could have done anything differently even if they listened to the scientists last year.
steinwald
2007-10-25 10:02:26 UTC
Um, YES, wildfires are totally new and are caused by global warming. It has NOTHING to do with alleged arsonist who started this fire as the news is now claiming, nothing to do with building communities in fire prone areas, nothing to do with wacko environmentalist that prevent maintenance of the forests that could have prevented this. Yes, You're right, it's Global Warming. Wake up already.
Danny K
2007-10-25 09:56:50 UTC
Excerpts reprinted with permission from Tom Gremillion

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Global warming is a hoax, invented in 1988, that combines old myths including limits to growth, sustainability, the population growth time bomb, the depletion of resources, pollution, anti-Americanism and anti-corporate sentiment and, of all things, fear of an ice age. Those that espoused and supported the old myths have joined forced into a new group called “Environmentalists.”

Most environmentalists have no technical or scientific credentials whatsoever. What they have are major news outlets ready and willing to publicize their every utterance regardless of whether or not they are backed up by scientific proof. Atmospheric science requires highly technical knowledge and skills, not possessed by the vast majority of the so-called environmentalists, who yet feel qualified to demand that human activity subjugate itself to the whims of their new deity, Mother Nature.

Environmentalists claim that the Earth’s atmosphere is getting hotter. They claim that the polar icecaps and glaciers will melt and sea levels will rise over two hundred feet, flooding most coastal cities. They claim that many areas of the Earth will turn into deserts. They make all these claims but cannot substantiate them with real scientific evidence. Parts of the polar icecap and glaciers are melting but other areas of the polar icecaps and glaciers are thickening. The environmentalists base their “proof” of the existence of global warming on the melting areas but are strangely silent, even militant to the point of violence, if anyone mentions the areas that are thickening, and those thickening areas are many.

In the past, there have been many times when the global mean temperatures were warmer, sometimes much warmer and colder, much colder than they are now. Global mean temperatures are cyclical with the seasons but also with other normal cycles, as they have been for the entire history of the Earth. Scientific data from ice cores, tree rings and other indicators of global mean temperatures prove this. Human activity has never been the cause of these global temperature swings as the “global warming” advocates claim. If human activity was the cause, where were the SUVs, the power plants and industries in our historical past? They did not exist. If human activity was not the cause of these global temperature swings, what was?

The energy output of the Sun is far greater in one second than human activity could produce in a million years. The Earth rotates around the Sun. Its orbit is slightly elliptical. The energy reaching the Earth from the Sun varies slightly as the distance from the Sun to the Earth varies due to its elliptical orbit. The Sun activity increases and decreases with fluctuations in the solar flares emitted by the Sun. Differences in these fluctuation rates cause increases and decreases of solar energy hitting the Earth. This causes fluctuations in the global mean temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere.

In 2004, the energy from massive solar flares bombarded the Earth with solar energy. This solar energy caused heating of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. Most of the energy of the solar flare eruptions dissipated into space. The amounts of energy ejected were massive, much greater than normal. Had the Earth received a full blast of the solar energy from one of the numerous flare eruptions in 2004, the consequences to life on Earth could have been disastrous. The higher than usual amounts of energy that struck the Earth’s atmosphere did have their effects, however, including some heating of the atmosphere.

Then there is the eruption of volcanoes, such as Mt. St. Helens, ejecting dust and ash into the Earth’s atmosphere. The amount of dust and ash in the atmosphere varies the amount of energy that can cause heating or cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere. Volcanoes also eject the kind of compounds that environmentalists call greenhouse gases. A single eruption the size of the Mt. St. Helens eruption released more of these gases, dust and ash into the atmosphere than all such emissions by human activity since the beginning of recorded human history. And there are numerous volcanic eruptions yearly.

The oceans are also a major source of greenhouse gases, as are trees. Trees and other vegetation take in carbon dioxide and give off other gases such as methane, a major greenhouse gas, and a host of other compounds, many of which are also greenhouse gases. Decaying vegetation also gives off methane gas. Studies of smog in the Los Angeles basin indicate that over 90% of the smog is generated by the vegetation in the area. To aid in perpetuating the hoax, however, environmentalists, aided by major news media outlets, censored and suppressed this study.

Studies have shown that greenhouse gases produced by human activity accounts for around 1 percent of the gases in the atmosphere. The total elimination of human generated greenhouse gases would have a negligible effect on Earth’s global mean atmospheric temperatures. The elimination of all U.S. gasoline powered vehicles would reduce worldwide “greenhouse” emissions by less than 0.2%.” What would be the effect on global mean temperatures? None. Doubling of manmade greenhouse emissions above current levels would increase the global mean temperature by one degree Centigrade, which is within the normal range of temperature swings.

It is the fluctuations of the Earth’s orbit around the sun, volcanic eruptions, the emission of gases by oceans and trees, all natural occurrences, that cause rises and declines in global mean temperatures, i.e., “global warming” and “global cooling,” not human activity.

Satellite data taken over the past 25 years indicate no surface or atmospheric warming. If anything there has been a very slight cooling, on the order of 0.01 degree Centigrade.

Recently, astronomers have noticed a thinning of the polar icecaps on Mars.

Is this “global warming, Mars style” and do Martian SUVs, power plants, and industries cause it? Hardly, but the “environmentalists” think so. Some even blame it on us here on Earth.

Global warming IS a hoax. Those claiming that “global warming” is real have an agenda other than saving the planet from human activity.
Brian s
2007-10-25 09:58:44 UTC
Most of these wild fires are caused by lightning strikes or even reckless campers. This area does not get much rainfall, but has a lot of dried out plant life. This is a bad combination. The warming of the Earth has little to do with these fires.
2007-10-25 19:31:55 UTC
Yes of course we need to listen and take some action now.



Some of the answers to this question are very, very, frightening. In essence many are saying, no matter what humanity does to the environment, it is ok, it can be fixed somehow, it will not have any negative impact because it is all natural cycles that we can not influence so we don't need to take any action to minimize the effects at all?



It is not just a frightening attitude but an extremely dangerous one too.



I quote from Jablob Yahoo Answers October 2007see link below for source of question:



The Question: Does Human-caused disturbance in ecosystems ever turn out well?



Jablob's Answer: 'Of course not. Every intervention leads to a greater, even more intractable problem. We can't engineer an entire planet or apply a "fix" to 4 billion years of evolution.



I know you know these things already, but heres some food for thought for you to use and the denialists to consider.



Fundamentalist thiests believe that a god will make everything right in the end regardless of what we do. Cornucopian economists believe human ingenuity will find a solution to whatever problems we create, and be able to stay one step ahead of disaster. I won't bother to list all our failed interventions; it's common knowledge and the irrational don't comprehend / won't believe anyway.



We live in a closed system. From a purely logical standpoint if we allow uncontrolled population growth and development, eventually resources will be exhausted and the ability of the ecosystem to regenerate will be degraded to the point where it will no longer function. The idea that Jesus will return and wave his hand making everything right is beyond silly; it's dangerous. The idea that an improved technology can circumvent fundamental limits is a fallacy. We are many generations away (or perhaps an infinite distance away) from such a complete understanding of the natural world that we could substitute technology for natural systems.



Start with the premise that the world is finite. The earth is a bounded sphere. Furthermore, the biosphere is smaller than you might think. The crust, the ocean and the atmosphere are a small portion of the earth. 90% of life is in margins of the land where it’s not too dry, too hot or too cold, in the shallow and upper portions of the ocean, in the lower portions of the atmosphere. The atmosphere you can breathe is only a few miles thick; the entire troposphere no more than 10 miles. You can see farther than the atmosphere is thick on a clear day. The biosphere doesn’t reach up and down endlessly. In the words of the shuttle astronauts, when you see it from space, the biosphere is a thin gossamer veneer wrapped around the planet.



Taking this further, the web of life has been in a state of dynamic equilibrium since the beginning of life on earth. Every corner of the globe is populated by exactly the right number and types of species that keeps things in balance. It’s possible that everything here is related and interdependent; biological processes, weather, geology, solar and astronomical cycles, even the position of our solar system within our galaxy. Since the beginning of the earth all have influenced one another and we now have the exquisitely balanced system that allows for our existence. However you believe this came into being; it is the objective reality to us humans and is the current unalterable state of affairs on this planet. You cannot change the laws of physics. You cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics. No matter how much you or I wish it were not so, how much you believe we can somehow circumvent the limits, how much you believe someone will come and save us before its too late, every bit of objective science in existence today only reinforces the fact that we are bound to and by the environment we live in.



Taking this to the logical extreme, if you change anything at all, anywhere, you potentially disturb the balance and the outcome is not knowable with any certainty. When you disturb an ecosystem the first thing that happens is the number of species declines by an order of magnitude. A diminished system does not function in a regenerative capacity anywhere near as efficient as the original did, and becomes vulnerable to total collapse. Would you say that this gives humanity license to change things at will? Or would it be more prudent to wait and perhaps for example apply the great law of the Iroquois – “In our every deliberation we must consider the impact on the next seven generations”. With our current state of knowledge our attempts to engineer the planet amount to a giant uncontrolled global experiment. Right now we have several of these experiments running concurrently, and it's been suggested the solution is to add more! Every intervention tried so far has lead to greater, even more intractable problems, with unforeseen consequences only to be found later, after Pandora's Box has been opened. No magic technology will be found. Our excesses will always outstrip our attempts to mitigate them. As has been the case throughout human history, up to this very moment, our wisdom will always lag behind our knowledge. Our curiosity is at the same time our greatest strength and weakness; except now we have a lever so big we can move the whole world'.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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