Year 2, Month 7, Day 1: Who Burned Cock Robin?

When it comes to those disastrous forest fires (still raging as this is being written on June 16), the experts are reluctant to point the finger of blame:

The fires searing parts of the West are an eerie echo of the past, a frightening reminder of a once terrible danger that had been held largely at bay for decades.

The number of large wildfires has been rising for roughly the past 25 years, and they are lasting longer during fire seasons that also last longer.

Is it global warming? Experts won’t say that, pointing instead to a variety of factors, including weather, insect infestations and more people living and camping in the woods.

Fortunately, I’m not an expert.

Sent June 16:

The unwillingness of climatologists to assert that global climate change has caused the Arizona wildfires says a lot more about scientific integrity than it does about the way those conflagrations got started. Ethical and responsible scientists are reluctant to describe a complex situation in simplistic ways; a climate specialist who asserted direct causality between global warming and increased forest fires would be rightly criticized by his or her professional colleagues. But when we dig a little deeper (something our media often forgets to do), we discover that these same scientists have been predicting for decades that an accelerating greenhouse effect will create conditions likely to bring more frequent fires, floods, snowstorms, tornadoes, and any other extreme environmental event you can imagine. While professional responsibility prevents scientists from stating unambiguous causality, moral responsibility demands that our politicians stop wasting time on trivialities, and address the looming threat of catastrophic climate change.

Warren Senders