Californian or Not … Now May Be a Good Time to Talk About Climate

California Fires & Climate Change

Now that millions of acres of land have burned in California due to wildfires, now may be a good time to have a grown-up conversation about climate change. Like so many other issues in the United States, it has become a polarizing issue.

California is a good example of why the issue is so confusing to so many. It’s confusing because even if you can see the irregularities, you may not be able to see the trends. Something else that makes California’s dilemma interesting is when we think of climate change, we generally don’t think of wildfires.

In the case of California, 2020 has clearly been a tough year for fires. If you use acres burned as a metric, it is hands down the worst year on record. At the same time, 2019 was a fairly quiet year for fires by California standards. But then look no further than 2018 to see another record-setting year.

With irregularities like these, I don’t see any resolution coming to the public discourse on this any time soon.

Hear the Scientists Out

For those who need a little help making up their mind about this, it’s not just a large number of scientists in the United Staes who think climate change is a problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for a reason.

The IPCC website is a good place to start if you want to know what researchers are finding out about this phenomenon. They do issue regular reports, but if you’re not a report reader, it’s pretty easy to follow them on social media.

I can’t say the world is going to end tomorrow or next week, but if our best & brightest can figure out a way to lessen the number of homes and businesses burned to the ground or underwater, I’m all ears.

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