Less snow melt and rain coupled with longer summers and drier conditions are fueling wildfires in places like California and Australia. The dry conditions and parched vegetation are ripe conditions for wildfires. However, I wonder as ecosystems shift or disappear over time, how long will the wildfires continue? I am taking into consideration climate change, as we know it, computer models, observations, and extreme weather that are breaking records the world over. If environmental conditions change so should ecosystems. As a result, wildfires should balance out once drought tolerant ecosystems take over, and the kindling is gone. According to a scientific study, “Plants found only in California may need to migrate about a mile (1.6 kilometers) a year into cooler or wetter regions to survive as global warming makes traditional habitats less hospitable….”

These wildfires are occurring on a massive scale and causing millions of dollars in damages. Wildfires are not the only extreme phenomenon that is consuming our civilization. There are floods and hurricanes.

Extreme weather and the consequences will result in the loss of billions of dollars and precious infrastructure. However, skeptical environmentalists and conservatives in America and abroad argue that taking action will be too costly, and a waste of resources. However, we are wasting resources by allowing them to be destroyed by these record events. We will continue to waste resources as we unnecessarily rebuild. Furthermore, while these conservatives and skeptical environmentalists throw their monkey wrenches into policy efforts, they enable their arguments to fruition, because the longer we wait the more difficult it will be to remedy climate change. As a result, expensive policy measures to remedy climate change will be wasted, because these remedies came too little too late. Maybe it is already too late. From The Santa Barbara Independent, CA:

Wildfires in the western U.S. now occur more frequently, last longer, and cover more ground than they did in the past. A 2006 study published in Science found that since 1986, the number of major wildfires has increased by 400 percent, and the amount of land these fires burned increased by 600 percent, compared to the period from 1970 to 1986.

Until recently it was often assumed that spiking population growth and expanding land use patterns were mainly to blame for any increase in the number of big fires. But the Science study, which was conducted by researchers at the Scripps Institute and the UC Merced, concluded that these factors have had “relatively little effect.” Instead, the authors wrote, the change has come about mainly because summers have gotten longer, hotter, and drier. “The transition has been marked by a shift toward unusually warm springs, longer summer dry seasons, drier vegetation, and longer fire seasons.”

Recommended environmental news to related to wildfires and shifting ecosystems due to climate change:

1. Massive California Fires Consistent With Climate Change, Experts Say
2. Australia climate report ‘like a disaster novel’: Australia is facing severe drought and heat waves on an unprecedented scale, a “disaster novel” of a government report has warned.
3. Officials predict longer, stronger fire season
4. Global Warming’s Twin Evil: Wildfires and Drought
5. Weird Weather Watch: Wildfires
6. Californian Plants Threatened by Warming, Study Shows
7. Climate change threatens two-thirds of California’s unique plants, study says
8. Climate change could severely impact California’s endemic plants

Recent wildfire images from California via Flickr:

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