Drought and Heat, Worsened by Humans, Help Fuel California Fires

James Rainey, Oct 10 2017,  Ecowatch

LOS ANGELES — It may take weeks to determine the spark that touched off each of the firestorms that consumed hunks of more than a dozen California communities this week.

But the consensus in the scientific community is that the conditions that cleared a path for the tsunami of flame were made by humans. Decades of aggressive firefighting left too much fuel on the ground. And more than a century of carbon emissions exacerbated the state’s drought and the record high temperatures that baked brush and timber to an explosive dryness.

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