{"id":841,"date":"2011-07-14T02:24:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T20:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=841"},"modified":"2011-07-14T02:24:48","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T20:24:48","slug":"on-mark-hertsgaards-hot-living-through-the-next-fifty-years-on-earth-and-the-forest-fire-in-my-backyard-almost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/07\/14\/on-mark-hertsgaards-hot-living-through-the-next-fifty-years-on-earth-and-the-forest-fire-in-my-backyard-almost\/","title":{"rendered":"On Mark Hertsgaard\u2019s \u201cHot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth,\u201d and the Forest Fire in My Backyard (Almost)"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I\u2019m continuing in my quest to read every book ever written about Global Warming. (Well, not all of them, but I have read quite a few.) I\u2019m also starting to think only wimps use the term \u2018Climate Change,\u2019 which seems a Republican dodge, too: Let\u2019s just pretend things are changing, maybe for the better!
\nIn that quest, I’m now reading Mark Hertsgaard’s Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth<\/em> (2011). On the political side of things, Hertsgaard does acknowledge that the U.S. is one of the few industrialized countries that are fighting the acknowledgement of global warming and the obvious conclusion that we had better do something about it, fast. Which of course we\u2019re not. And he does mention the mainstream media\u2019s idiocy on the subject, specifically their constant mention of it as being a \u2018theory\u2019 that may be wrong, when scientists have moved on from that nonsense in the early years of the last decade.
\nConsider the hot, dry summer we\u2019re having, and always the statement gets thrust into the forecast, \u201cIt\u2019s not global warming!\u201d It just certainly seems like it, right? When places like Oklahoma and Wichita are breaking records and drought is scorching the South and Southwest, it\u2019s always good to try to convince the populace that this isn\u2019t something we should be concerned about.
\nHertsgaard\u2019s book is not one of the best, but there\u2019s much to like about it. He frames the argument from the point of view of a father with a five-year-old daughter, and since my daughter, Lili, is about to turn five in October, naturally I\u2019m sympathetic. Sometimes he harps on this a bit too much, though. (I\u2019m sure I harp about my darling girl too much, as well.) But here\u2019s a good quote, that matches the world I\u2019m witnessing in the West:
\n\u201cIn the American West, the weather of the last twenty years sparked four times as many large fires as during the previous twenty years. Firefighters are worried: in 2006, their Association for Fire Ecology warned, \u2018Under future drought and high heat scenarios, fires may become larger more quickly and be more difficult to manage.\u2019 In 2009, a study by Harvard University scientists endorsed the firefighters\u2019 concerns. The area burned by wildfires in the American West could increase by 50 percent by 2050, the study found: in the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies, the increase could be as much as 175 percent\u201d (59).
\nThis June my home turf in Colorado, Custer County, had the Duckett Fire, which has now dwindled (thank god), but quickly grew from 100 acres to nearly 5,000 before it was slowed, mainly by the onset of wetter weather and lower winds. My daughter and I watched it one day and she described this picture as a \u201cfire sun.\u201d
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I\u2019m continuing in my quest to read every book ever written about Global Warming. (Well, not all of them, but I have read quite a few.) I\u2019m also starting to think only wimps use the term \u2018Climate Change,\u2019 which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-climate-change","category-the-west"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}