How Do Wildfires Start?

As the smoke settles from 2018's fires at the close of the year, it serves as a stark reminder of the raging wildfires that have plagued California and the rest of the American West. More than 8.5 million acres (34,600 square kilometers) burned this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, and they burned faster and hotter than experts have ever seen.

A wildfire burns in America's Montana.

But how do such wildfires start in the first place?

Fire arises out of three ingredients: fuel, heat and oxygen. Oxygen is readily available in the air, so that leaves fuel and heat. The fuel is anything that will burn, including brush, grass, trees and even houses. The dryer the fuel, the more easily it burns. And the last component — heat — burns the fuel and desiccates, or dries up, the surrounding area as the fire spreads. [What Is Fire?]

Read the Live Science story by Donavyn Coffey - “How Do Wildfires Start?"

Climate contrarians given oxygen as IPCC report nears

Rupert Murdoch - giving oxygen
to the climate contrarians.
 

Denial in any sense is classic in its format, and with imminent arrival of the fifth Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change, the climate denial machine in full swing.

The world-wide Murdoch press is leading the charge giving oxygen to the climate contrarians and within that cherry-picking what is already known and binging on doubt.

The Guardian in a story headed: “The five stages of climate denial are on display ahead of the IPCC report” we are alerted to how the contrarians are already at the barricades spreading their misinformation.

A race between the reality of climate change and the fantasy of skeptics

Jonathon Green.

Climate change is settling on the world at an alarming rate and moving equally quickly is the conversation that gives oxygen to the skeptics.

Interestingly it not just on the fringes of society for in Australia it is at the heart of the national conversation with Federal Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, arguing the country’s emissions trading scheme is a “so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no-one”.

An article on the ABC’s The Drum headed: “An invisible nod to the climate change sceptics” by Jonathon Green helps the reader understand more about the Tony Abbott tack.