The headline of this long feature in Rolling Stone suggests an epitaph: Climate Change and the End of Australia I’m generally a fan of Jeff Goodell’s work, but everything I find frustrating about the climate debate is on display in this paragraph: In the past year ““ one of the hottest on record ““ extreme…Continue Reading…
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the horrible fires in Australia can be partly attributed to global warming. It’s a legitimate storyline, which many in the media have picked up on. By and large, these stories have been measured, with the appropriate caveats. (See here and here for two good examples.) The brutal…Continue Reading…
No one knows more about the history and ecology of fire than Stephen Pyne. “Australia,” he writes today, “is a fire continent: it is built to burn. To this general combustibility its southeast corner adds a pattern of seasonal winds, associated with cold fronts, that draft scorching, unstable air from the interior across whatever flame…Continue Reading…
Several years ago, when Australia was baking from an extended drought and its agricultural economy was near collapse, Australians partly blamed global warming and soon booted their conservative Prime Minister (who advised everyone to pray for rain) out of office. Now, in the wake of southern Australia’s catastrophic fires, which has leveled whole villages and…Continue Reading…
Residents in Boulder, Colorado got spanked by their sheriff this weekend, for their chuckle-headed behavior during a January 7 fire that forced the evacuation of 25,000 people. At a community meeting, the lawman chastised homeowners who filled pickup trucks with numerous personal items and left them parked in front of their driveways until they had…Continue Reading…