Wildfires are raging -- why isn't concern about climate change? | By Maywa Montenegro | Grist Magazine | Soapbox | 25 Jul 2006

Maybe because goofballs like James Inhofe R-oatmeal-for-brains, keeps telling people that Global warming is a huge hoax, like War of the Worlds, or something.

Wildfires are raging -- why isn't concern about climate change? By Maywa Montenegro Grist Magazine Soapbox 25 Jul 2006:

Earlier this month, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert delivered a provocative Los Angeles Times op-ed explaining why the public is more scared of terrorism than global warming. Gilbert's basic premise was that human beings are conditioned by evolution to react most strongly to situations that have certain characteristics: they must be personal (have a face or an intention attached), morally repugnant, imminent, or rapid. Terrorism, he said, fulfills all of these requirements; climate change, on the other hand, fulfills none. Thus, while we focus on combating ideological hoodlums around the world, we fail to respond to an even greater global peril.

Evidence suggests that global warming is more imminent and rapid than most people think. But it may take a literal fire -- the kind now blazing through California, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, and Wyoming -- to light a fire under us. As I write this, the Sawtooth complex fire has just merged with the Millard complex, about 20 miles east of California's Big Bear Lake. Together they have charred about 61,000 acres so far and forced hundreds to evacuate their homes; the weather forecast, meanwhile, calls for 'little relief' in the next few days, in the form of 100-degree-plus temperatures.