Study: Greenhouse gases from wildfires damaging

Ben Goad in the Press-Enterprise (Riverside, California): Wildfires raging across California have belched out hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases since the beginning of the century, significantly adding to the problem of global warming, a new study has concluded. State and federal officials have speculated for years that increasingly long and severe fire seasons can be partly attributed to the effects of climate change.

But the study, released by forest expert and author Thomas Bonnicksen, is novel in that it suggests the trend isn't a product of global warming -- it's causing it. The assertions have met with a mixture of interest and skepticism. Between 2001 and 2007, fires in California torched about 4 million acres and spewed 277 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, Bonnicksen found.

That's the equivalent of running all of California's 14 million cars for about 3 ½ years, according to the study. "If we really are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the first place to look is to reduce the severity and extent of wildfires," Bonnicksen said Thursday. "We could make a greater impact in the short run than we could ever make by converting to hybrid vehicles."….

The 2007 Castaic and Aqua Dulce fires in Southern California shot from Santa Clarita, by Jeff Turner, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License