Climate change is fueling wildfires, warns National Climate Assessment

Climate change is why California is burning, and thousands of its citizens displaced, injured, or killed by the wildfires that spread with never-before-seen intensity.

Says who?

The just-released U.S. National Climate Assessment, which Donald Trump's own administration released, but which the president seems to believe is a work of fiction.

The 2018 National Climate Assessment clearly links the rise of catastrophic wildfires with anthropogenic climate change.

Just this month, 85 people died in the Northern California Camp Fire, which is finally 100% contained.

That firestorm began on November 8, and raged with unprecedented speed, destroying nearly 14,000 homes and burning nearly 154,000 acres (62,000 hectares).

That's a burn area roughly five times the size of the city of San Francisco.

There's questions about what's going to come back where that fire burned through, John Abatzoglou, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Idaho, told the New York Times. Is it not going to regenerate as a forest? Are we going to see more grassland and shrublands?

We may be witnessing the permanent deforestation of large swaths of indigenous forest in the Great West.

From an interactive feature by @PopovichN and @KendraWrites at @nytimes:

A warmer world makes for a more combustible country. Thats the conclusion in the most comprehensive assessment of the effects of climate change on the United States, released by the Trump administration just weeks after the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

The report says the continued release of greenhouse gases from cars, factories and other sources will make fires more frequent, including very large fires that burn more than 12,400 acres.