This is something I never remember hearing much about 40, 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. Now it seems to be as common as the ones we have in the Western US every year:
Thousands of firefighters are battling to bring under control summer wildfires that are spreading across parts of southern Europe.
At least seven people have died in fires that have struck Spain, France, Greece and the Italian island of Sardinia in the past few days.
Spain has been the hardest hit with at least seven major fires raging in the south and east.
Strong winds have fanned the flames during the hot dry weather.
A European Union monitoring agency has warned that the risk of fire along the Mediterranean coastline remains high with soaring temperatures predicted for the coming days.
So, what’s your hypothesis for why this is happening? Take the poll:
(cont.)
Eh, global warming?
All part of God’s intelligent design.
Before citing climate change/global warming as the cause, we should determine what the patterns of vegetation manipulation have been in the area over the past few decades.
I assume, given the Mediterranean locale, that the vegetation is similar to the chaparral we have in California. If so, and if over the past 20 or 30 years smaller fires have been suppressed, leading to an accumulation of dead, flammable material, then larger, catastrophic fires would be expected, regardless of any climatic changes.
That’s one explanation. Mean, invisible dragons is another.
Who knows, but the push into wildlands has greatly increased the wildland/urban interface in the arid west. People are building homes in the midst of the forests, on ridgelines and accessible only by long, winding dirt roads. Recipe for disaster, global warming or not.
in one word…. dig.
Now, the execution and logistics would be crazy complex and difficult, but would be nice to see–the restoration of groundlevel scenery and vegetation. Cutting back on emissions? Maybe (dunno–that could be a complex subject, with an equally complex resolution).
Underground cities get revisited every generation or so, with a spate of futuristic drawings, and tomes on why it would be a good idea. Then somebody trots out ‘The Time Machine’, with its Morlocks, and the idea gets shelved for another generation….
I think it was two summers ago when the fires were pretty bad. A whole town in Greece was burned, people burned in their cars trying to escape–horrible. And fires in Tuscany, as well as high temperatures and mosquitoes…remind me never to go to Tuscany in July!
Meanwhile, we’re having another wet summer…which is why we should refer to “climate change” rather than global warming.
And here in the Hudson Valley it’s endless rain. And I mean near-daily showers and storms. Sometimes multiple storms within a day.
These extremes tend to lead to one choice above.
The Illuminati?
California has the same climate as Southern Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_climate
It’s not surprising these regions are changing in similar ways.
Soaring temps? What? High 90s again? They are used to cool weather over there except maybe for the Spanish. Remember they had all that chaos with the 95 heat wave a few years back and we thought they were insane cuz we get that every year?
Try 95F without air conditioning, and then tell me we’re insane to complain about heat.
Marginal family plots going feral and turning into big balls of Chaparral tinder.
“It’s just a cycle”.
I know that wildfires have been common on the Mediterranean island of Corsica since the late 1970s. I was in Isle Rousse, Corsica about 1984 and there had recently been one in the hills behind the town, I think some campers were killed. Interesting to read what David Abram writes about the Corsical wildfires in his book Corsica, p. 116. He connects it pretty convincingly to the beef cattle industry. You can find it on Google books.