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Weekly Updates(6) Gumbel, Peter. "Global Warming: What Now?" Time magazine, April 9, 2007.
(7) Goergen, Michael. "The Role of Forests in Climate Change." Testimony for the House Natural Resources Committee, May 1, 2007.
(8) Park, Alice. "What Now?" Time magazine, April 9, 2007.
(9) Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy (www.eere.energy.gov).
(10) Epstein, Paul R. "Climate Change and Human Health," The New England Journal of Medicine, October 6, 2005.
(11) www.governor.mt.gov.
Rising Temperature Cause More Severe Fires
The Impacts climate changes have probably been the on Montana's forests where there has been a four in the number of wildfires and a six-fold increase in the acreage burned since 1986, Running says.
"It's mostly because of climate change," Running says in a recent interview with Ian Marquand of KPAX-TV. "The forest is vulnerable to ignition for many more weeks every summer. When the landscape is completely dry, it's just a matter of fires getting really big to where humans can't control them any more."
Before the Yellowstone Park fire of 1988, fires were rarely more than 50,000 acres, and they occurred every 20 to 30 years. The Yellowstone fire scorched 793,000 acres, or 36 percent of the park. (2)
"About every three years, we just have one of these meltdowns," Running says. "Every summer is becoming a higher probability of becoming a serious fire year."
In the last decade, drought, insect infestations, rising temperatures, and a growing number of homes being built in the wildland-urban interface have caused larger, more severe fires that are increasingly expensive to fight. (3)
In fact. the 10-year average firefighting cost for fiscal 2008 was $911 million, a 23 percent increase from last year. The Forest Service projects that costs could exceed $1 billion by 2009.
Shannon Furniss is editor of the Montana Business Quarterly.
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