http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/milstein112206.html

Wildfire Threat Is at Breaking Point, Officials Warn

A "perfect storm" of conditions favoring destructive wildfires threatens to push the nation's firefighting capacity toward the breaking point, top federal fire officials have warned Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.........

..............A record 9.4 million acres burned this year across the country, surpassing the previous record of 8.7 million acres that burned in 2005, and all signs suggest the trend will continue. More severe fires are likely to threaten more homes.

"Five of the 10 worst seasons since 1960 in terms of acres burned have occurred in the last seven years," said the memo to Kempthorne from the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group, which directs firefighting crews and equipment from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

If wildfires burn at the same pace next year as they did this year, the firefighting budget will be exhausted by July, the U.S. Forest Service said..........

.........Climate studies predict that the West will grow warmer and drier, making forests more flammable and blazes more dangerous and unpredictable. The period from January to August of this year was the hottest on record, the fire managers told Kempthorne.............

..........Fire seasons once limited to the summer may extend over nearly the whole year as warmer temperatures allow blazes to ignite earlier and burn later, said Timothy Ingalsbee, a fire ecologist from Eugene, Ore., who is secretary of the association.

"It's going to force a radical rethinking of our whole approach to wildland fire," he said. "We couldn't fight them all if we wanted to."..........

Speaking of longer fire season's, in So Cal we continue this year to get wildland fires, and its only a month till Xmas! Just yesterday there was one burning in the foothills near Yuciapa. Australia, as representative of a very large land mass in the southern hemisphere, is facing bleak prospects this year, with climate change induced drought conditions ongoing for many years, vaporizing water supplies, and increasing heat fromt the same, and also is currently in an ongoing battle with many major fires, since they are into thier summer period. So we have all time record burned acres all over the world, on all continents, pumping mind boggling amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, creating even warmer global temps, causing even drier vegetation and more drought conditions, and even more wildland fires. Just one of the many positive feedback loops that are causing world scientist great concern, in regards to growing CO2 induced climate change.