> This fire is going to continue to grow -- the extremely dry vegetation and weather are not in our favor," said Joe Hessel, an incident commander for the Oregon Department of Forestry.
So clearly they acknowledge that the weather is a factor, and that seems pretty related to climate change.
Why does it have to be an either/or thing? If a fire magnitude becomes newsworthy because several factors aligned to make it that way, it seems silly to point fingers at scapegoats as an excuse for continuing to do nothing on any front.
Of course it could be. The problem is that there's no proof that "dry vegetation and bad weather" can only be caused by climate change, or that the cause of these events is climate change. There has been bad weather before humans walked this planet according to scientists, and dry vegetation also.
> There has been bad weather before humans walked this planet according to scientists, and dry vegetation also.
Oh sure, but climate change deniers also like to say temperature changes have existed since the dawn of time (while conveniently ignoring magnitude[0]).
The thing is forest management people have been warning about increasing risks of large fires for years and fires have been consistently getting bigger and worse (just off the top of my head, there was big basin last year, lytton, yakutia, dozens of others, and now this). There's literally hundreds of peer reviewed studies showing correlation between our polluting ways and ice cap melting and correlation between that and extreme weather events.
Besides, climate change is a symptom of a larger problem. Depletion of water sources for example is also related to dryness and is also a byproduct of human activities. I think it's shortsighted to say "onoes climate change, throw carbon offsets at it, problem solved!" just as it is to say "onoes forest fires, do better forest management, problem solved!"
Solving eco problems is going to require a lot more than cherrypicking and addressing only darling themes. Ignoring whichever factor you don't understand the underlying data for is pretty much the same as inaction where there should be action.
> This fire is going to continue to grow -- the extremely dry vegetation and weather are not in our favor," said Joe Hessel, an incident commander for the Oregon Department of Forestry.
So clearly they acknowledge that the weather is a factor, and that seems pretty related to climate change.
Why does it have to be an either/or thing? If a fire magnitude becomes newsworthy because several factors aligned to make it that way, it seems silly to point fingers at scapegoats as an excuse for continuing to do nothing on any front.