writeaboutwarming

September 7, 2011 - Texas has been on fire since November of last year. Over 3 1/2 million acres have burned. The Texas Forest Service now gives daily updates regarding the status of various fires occurring within the state. Let's talk, first of all, about why this is happening. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report in 2007 which said, among other things, that the arid regions directly north and south of the U.S./Mexican border would become even drier in the future, as a result of climate change. Mother Nature must have read the report, because those chickens have already come home to roost. While the report predicts that these regions will become 10-20% drier by the end of the century, the weather forecast for west Texas tomorrow predicts humidity of anywhere from 5 to 20 percent, i.e., very, very low (desert humidity is 25%). How much lower than 5% can the humidity go? The answer is not much. It's an old story by now: climate disruption is happe...