Friday, July 23, 2004

Cause Unknown

One isolated story after another, about the wildfires scorching thousands of acres in southern California, Nevada, Arizona and Alaska, derive their import as news items directly from the number and type of homes threatened or destroyed. Big fire but don't worry, no homes were destroyed.

Some recent stories from southern CA and the southwest mention that there has been six years of drought in the area, and that this spate of huge fires is appearing about two months earlier than past "fire seasons." Which certainly doesn't mean the season will be over two months earlier as well. They fear another season like way back in '03. That was a real bad year. Hey, wasn't that actually like...last year?

What causing the fires? It's either something very specific (one of them was reported to have been caused by a bird, electocuted on a power wire, whose burning body touched off the ensuing inferno) or it's "cause unknown."

So it's not just the deliberate ostrich heads of the Bush administration, refusing to believe in global heating and the climate crisis. It's the ostrich habits of the news media, brains full of sawdust that will eventually catch on fire, along with their permed hair, though of course by then it will be cause unknown.

You'd think that obvious and quite violent evidence that climate models have predicted would at least attract that level of analysis. But then you would be thinking, and that drops you right out of this happy nightmare.