Total acres burned by wildfire in Washington state, 2002-2014, together with a blue dashed line showing the yearly average, since 2002. The red dashed line is the acres burned by wildfires in Agust 2015. Graphic: Tamino / Open Mind

By Tamino
22 August 2015 (Open Mind) – Here (shown as black dots) is the total acres burned by wildfire in Washington state each year, together with a blue dashed line showing the yearly average, since 2002. The red dashed line is the acres burned by wildfires that are burning in Washington state RIGHT NOW. That’s not the yearly total, like the black dots show. It doesn’t include the fires that have burned this year but were already extinguished. And it doesn’t include the acres yet to burn. Many people are wondering, “why is the wildfire season so horrible?” It’s global warming, stupid. But Matt Pearce just had to write an article for the LA Times pushing the idea that it’s not unusual. And Cliff Mass updated his blog post to say “we are finally at normal … and according to their projections, we should stay that way…” [more]

It’s global warming, stupid