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This message was self-deleted by its author (OhNo-Really) on Sat Dec 10, 2022, 09:05 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.
Farmer-Rick
(10,163 posts)It almost wiped out Dolly Wood. It did a huge amount of damage to the Smokey Mountains.
They even tried to blame it on a couple of teenagers but had to drop the charges. So far no one has been found guilty of setting those wild fires.
There was also a kid who was fined for setting fires. But there are crazy kids everywhere and those wildfires would not get so out of control if not for global warming. Supposedly he threw a cigarette into a bunch of leaves. That supposedly caused a 300 acre fire.
I believe it is the climate deniers way of claiming it's Not global warming. Better to blame 1 bad actor instead of the filthy rich getting richer by destroying the planet.
I don't buy it.
OhNo-Really
(3,985 posts)This was also an explanation in 2015 & 2017.
Oil, the dinosaurs revenge
bullwinkle428
(20,629 posts)across Australia. It was utterly shocking how widespread the devastation was across nearly the entire country. That had to be one hell of an efficient arsonist, or incredible conspiracy, to have caused any significant percentage of these fires.
Hekate
(90,674 posts)Fire investigators want to know the actual causes of fires, as it is a serious matter with lives at stake. They can pinpoint causes, and they can track the work of an arsonist across a region even if they can't always catch them. Fires that spot all along a highway route are a major clue of an arsonist's work and they all have their "signatures."
California and Australia both have large swathes of area known for their drought ecology. They call theirs the bush and the outback, and we call ours chaparral. Eucalyptus trees, which were transplanted to California from Australia, are born to burn, but so are many other native plants there and here.
During a prolonged drought, it all becomes a tinderbox. There are some cases of spontaneous combustion, dry branches rubbing together in dry heat. Hot dry winds accelerating downhill, gathering ever more heat -- in California we call them Santa Ana winds, and they magnify the danger a fire will start, then magnify its spread. Lightning strikes are a real danger.
The human/environment interface is very important. Our electrical grid gets blown by high wind, power lines rubbing and sparking. Gas and electric appliances can malfunction. Trucks dragging chains that spark along the road. Equipment, whether power tools that generate their own heat and sparks, or even hand-held shovels that can spark when they strike rocks -- all have been known to cause wildfires.
Nearly everyone in California knows better than to start a campfire or bonfire in a restricted area, or in the wind. Yet some college students did just that on their private college campus a number of years ago, setting off a major regional fire that killed a couple of people. They were either idiots or non-Californians, probably the latter. I'm sure they were very sorry.
Anyway, arsonists do it on purpose. Perhaps some arson inside cities is targeted, for murder or revenge or insurance, but otherwise what you have is sick minds who love the sheer power and destruction. They must feel like gods. Like the very gods themselves.
What you have presented is, I am sorry to say, a combination of nutball conspiracy theory and disinformation. It serves no one to propagate it.
ansible
(1,718 posts)Australia's mental health system isn't that great and there's a lot of nutters out there who are deliberately setting fires on purpose.
Farmer-Rick
(10,163 posts)"As one scientist tells Carbon Brief: There is no question whatsoever that climate plays a role in the increase in fires.
Yeah there have always been wackos but there have not been record setting burns year after year after year.