Will the West's giant fires spark a climate awakening?

[Proximate Centurion]

By Shannon Osaka, Grist, on Sep 14, 2020 at 3:59 am

As orange skies dawned across Northern California and parts of Oregon last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom jumped on Twitter to comment.

“California fires in 2019 … 118k acres burned,” he wrote. “California fires in 2020 (so far) … 2.3 million acres burned. CLIMATE. CHANGE. IS. REAL.”

Newsom wasn’t the only one connecting the devastating wildfires to our overheating planet. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden also chimed in, writing: “Make no mistake: Climate change is already here — and we’re witnessing its devastating effects every single day.” Scientists have long warned that rising temperatures could make wildfires more severe; in California, the area torched by fires each year has quintupled since the 1970s.

But, according to polling, only about three-quarters of Americans believe that global warming is happening — and less than two-thirds understand that it is human-caused. Will the horrific wildfires and choking smoke finally convince the country that it’s time to take action?

Researchers have long suspected that if people can see — or, in the case of acrid smoke from wildfires, even feel — climate change happening, they will be more likely to take the threat seriously. “Theoretically and anecdotally, there is absolutely reason to believe that the wildfires are changing people’s minds,” said Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

https://grist.org/climate/will-the-wests-california-wildfire-season-change-minds-on-climate-change/

Thoretically, anecdotally. . .Absolutely??? I'm sorry, Dr Marlon, but those first two words don't lend themselves to the third. And, unfortunately, I strongly suspect the answer to this article's title question will be "no"

[Bayard]

1. Until a monster fire happens east of the Mississippi,

I'd say this is not penetrating a lot of people's attention span. Especially if they think it was Calif.'s fault for not raking their forest floors....

People head to the upper Northwest for the beauty and clean air. This is devastating. I wonder how many new cases of asthma (already rampant in the San Joaquin Valley), and COPD are developing.

[Binkie The Clown]

2. Nope. According to my right-wing sister...

...the fires are all because California didn't sweep up the forest floor. Of course that doesn't explain Oregon, Australia, or Siberia.