Wild Fires Become a Reality

My wife started a novel a year or so ago. It had at its basic premise that the world was being consumed by wild fires, the reasons for which were somewhat obscure. Today this prophesy has in part come true, except the disasters are worse than she imagined and the reasons are well known. The southwest has been burning for the past two months. Wildfires have consumed huge areas in the State of Arizona and are still burning out of control.  Thousands of fire fighters have been employed along with hundreds of helicopters and tanker planes. The cost to the state and municipalities could do much resolve or at least ease their budget shortfalls. But the wild fires are just one aspect of the disaster. We had the Mississippi rivere flooding on its lower reaches flooding farmland and homes and only through extreme measures not being the worst flood in history. Right now the upper reaches of the Missouri river in Iowa and Nebraska also flooding. Wildfires aren't just confined to Arizona, Colorado and the northwest. Texas ans the south East are suffering huges areas of prolonged drought. The year 2011 has been declared the most disastrous year in recorded history. Tornadoes have killed hundreds of people this year and destroyed hundreds of homes. What is going on here?

The disasters are part of what is now widely recognized as global warming. The United States is not the only place suffering disastrous floods and wild storms. We are told by scientists that we should expect more of this type of weather in the years to come even if we stopped spewing green house gases into the atmosphere today, and of course we know that isn't going to happen. We must stop trying to suck up all of the possible fossil fuels in the world so we can continue to burn them, and we should make every efrfort to develop clean energy which doesn't add to the green house emission. All of our best efforts may still not be adequate to turn the situation around.