How Megafires Are Remaking the World
... This incendiary age, which some scientists have called the Pyrocene, could lead to “a wholesale conversion of what habitats are where on the planet,” Hodges said. “Right now, everybody is talking about fires and smoke and who dies, because of the immediacy of this fire year. But really, truly, the long-term consequences are much more severe and sustained.”
... But in many regions and ecosystems, fires are becoming larger and more severe. In the United States, wildfires burn far more land today than they did three decades ago, especially in Western states. Globally, the risk of catastrophic fires could increase by more than 50% by the end of the century, the United Nations reported.
Climate change is partly to blame, scientists said, but so are other factors, such as the expansion of highly flammable invasive grasses, which helped the deadly fires in Maui spread so quickly. More than a century of fire suppression has also left some forests thick with trees, giving flames more fuel. “When fires burn, they burn with so much intensity,” said Chris French, a deputy chief of the National Forest System in the United States....
Fires are also spreading into ecosystems where flames are an unfamiliar threat. The megafires that erupted in Australia in 2019 and 2020 scorched the country’s rainforests, which contained many plants that cannot regenerate after burning.
The animals in those ecosystems might be “fire naive,” said Dale Nimmo, an ecologist at Charles Sturt University in Australia. “They may not have been under any natural selection to detect the subtle cues of fire in the air, or through sound. And so they may not recognize the threat as it approaches.” ...
Go Montana Youth Go, but:
I guess the practical effect is uncertain. Anyhow:
Ummm, why bother appealing if it's just a "stunt"? Sounds like they're worried about real policy implications.
