Popular Science sometimes means not having to say you really thought it through.
Ok, so that was a bit harsh. I like Pop. Sci.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Blotting Out the Sun
Filling the stratosphere with sulfur aerosols could cool the globe, but it could also cause widespread drought and destruction – Jamie Sneddon
Well, I’ll tell you what could go wrong. According to the logic of Al Gore, by cooling the Earth we could make it warmer. Why the hell not? By warming it we’re making it colder, he has as much as said so.
But in my heart of hearts, I agree with Sneddon, that actively seeking to change the albedo of the Earth isn’t something one f***s around with lightly.
And LiveScience where sometimes there’s cool neat stuff and sometimes there’s pure idiocy, they actually uttered this about forest fire severity and the correlation to global warming:
While it’s melting glaciers and creating more intense hurricanes, global warming also seems to be heating up forest fires in the United States. In western states over the past few decades, more wildfires have blazed across the countryside, burning more area for longer periods of time. Scientists have correlated the rampant blazes with warmer temperatures and earlier snowmelt. When spring arrives early and triggers an earlier snow-melt, forest areas become drier and stay so for longer, increasing the chance that they might ignite.
It misses the most glaringly evident root cause of what is making wildfires worse, burning more areas for longer has been correlated with not letting regular fires clear out the undergrowth, so when there IS a fire it’s hot enough that the largest trees don’t survive – they die. You can’t hardly wade through the stuff. And when it dries it dries completely and it burns extremely hot.
There’s absolutely no doubt that hot weather increases the risk of fire – that’s a no-brainer – but to try to pin fire duration on “global warming” without mention of the other man-made problem, which is caused by the fact that we can’t leave well enough alone, is misleading at best and deceptive at worst.