Subarctic wildfires a 'runaway climate change' risk

Australia is burning. Extreme heat and drought during the country's summer wildfire season have helped fierce winds spark about 100 bushfires across southeastern Australia. Sound familiar?

DOHA — Cheap, short-cut ideas to cool the planet such as shading sunlight are failing to win support from U.N. delegates looking to improve on the slow progress made by existing technologies. Many scientists say the proposed solutions, known as geo-engineering, are little understood and might have side effects more damaging than global warming, which is projected to cause more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

Israel's worst-ever forest fire earlier this month confirms predictions on the impact of global warming in the Mediterranean basin, according to one of Israel's leading climate experts."The fire disaster in the Carmel Mountains near Haifa is a taste of the future," Guy Pe'er, co-author of Israel's National Report on Climate Change, said on Wednesday.Nearly a decade ago, Pe'er and other scientists warned that warming would create conditions such as heat waves, decreased and delayed rainfall, leading to a higher risk of intense forest fires.

OSLO — Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions. Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

To make one more point on the Manzi/Plumer debate, I really think the concept of "the planet" should be more central in the debate over global warming.

For years, readers of this site know that I have argued that:

National Public Radio reports today on how the federal government's "takeover" of America's forests with the creation of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 has led to more, not fewer, forest fires in the long run.  Among fire historians it's known as the "Smokey Bear Effect," thus the title of the segment "How The Smokey Bear Effect Led To Raging Wildfires," here's a slice: 

EVEN by the standards of recent periods of extreme weather, this summer has been a doozy. High temperature records have been broken around the globe. Arctic sea ice is tracking record low levels. America has been battered by wildfires and freakishly strong storm systems. And an ongoing American drought is sending commodity prices soaring and threatens to match the Dust Bowl in intensity. No single weather event is "caused" by global warming. But warming raises mean temperature and increases the incidence of extreme temperatures and weather events.