As climate change warms and dries the state of California (along with the rest of the planet), the deck is increasingly stacked in favor of catastrophic wildfires. But there's also a joker in the deck: human beings. The New York Times took a look at the human factor in a recent story in the paper's "California Today" section (see: "California Today: The Human Element in California’s Wildfires," by Tim Arango and Inyoung Kang).
The recent headline-grabbing California conflagrations were all started by humans, the paper noted: "A flat tire on a trailer drags against the asphalt, sending a spark into dry vegetation and setting a racing inferno that kills people and destroys homes. That is how the Carr Fire began. A person with a hammer is believed to have mistakenly set the fires of the Mendocino Complex blaze, now the largest in California history."
"Scientists agree that extreme weather patterns brought on by climate change have made fire seasons more destructive, partly by drying out more vegetation that serves as the fuel for wildfires," the paper went on:"Experts also worry that not enough attention is given to all the ways people have made the problem of wildfires worse. Population growth in California means there are more people on the roads — cars are a prime culprit in wildfires — and more homes built in wilderness areas."
Southern California's Cleveland Fire, the paper noted in a companion article, appears to have been arson (see: "Behind Most Wildfires, a Person and a Spark: ‘We Bring Fire With Us’," by Tim Arango). "The suspect, Forrest Gordon Clark, is being held on $1 million bail and faces the possibility of life in prison," the paper reported.
Human error (or human malice) and the spread of human activity combine with climate change to up the odds of catastrophe, the paper observed: "Many scientists and experts ... say that climate change plus rapid development in wilderness areas allow for ever more destructive fires. 'You’ve got a warming climate and you’ve got more people living in flammable places,' said Jennifer K. Balch, a professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder who has studied the human causes of wildfires. 'And we’re literally putting homes in the line of fire, and these are fires that people are starting.'"
