forest fire
dblum | January 29, 2010In 1854, the essayist Henry David Thoreau published an ode to a morning fire: "Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird... Lark without song, and messenger of dawn." Scientists, of course, saw the hazing blue of wood smoke - or any smoke derived from burning plant material - as something less poetic. In particular, the smoke from dried leaves of the tobacco plant attracted serious attention from chemists by the end of the 19th century.
Victorian scientists had, for instance, calculated that cigarette smoke was about four percent carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas which directly interferes with the…
ddobbs | May 6, 2009
Science Progress looks at the discouraging feedback loop between climate change and Western wildfires:
New research investigating the impact of climate change on western wildfires presents a bleak picture. CAP Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy covers the latest science in an American Progress column this week, explaining the problematic feedback cycle: higher temperatures from global warming increase the risks of wildfires, and increased fires release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere:
A new paper in the April 24 issue of the journal Science, for example, concludes that scientists have…