THREAD: @SecretaryZinke says "hot and dry weather" and "the fuels that overload our forests" are to blame for the #wildfires raging in California and the West. He got a couple things wrong. usatoday.com/story/opinion/… /1
Scientists have known for over a decade that higher temperatures are making wildfires worse. Fire season is longer, and fires are more intense now. science.sciencemag.org/content/313/57… /2
And what's causing those high temperatures? Higher CO2 emissions. And what's causing that? The burning of fossil fuels. /3 ipcc.ch/report/graphic… 
In other words: "hot and dry weather" IS making wildfires worse, @SecretaryZinke, but let's call it by its real name: anthropogenic climate change. /4
Now let's look at his claim that "the fuels that overload our forests" are to blame. This is true. We put out too many small fires for too long, and now many forests are full of small trees and denser than they used to be. They're primed for big blazes. /5 esm.ucsb.edu/academics/docu…
Removing these small, spindly trees can help keep wildfires from raging out of control. But that's not often what logging companies want: they want the big, old ones. And scientists with @forestservice have found logging doesn't always reduce fire risk./6 fs.fed.us/psw/publicatio…
Also, @SecretaryZinke notes that "beetle-killed trees dot the mountains like matches," worsening #wildfire risk. Well, what's allowing beetles to spread and do so much damage? Warmer winters. And what's causing warmer winters? Climate change. nature.com/articles/nclim… /7
Finally, @SecretaryZinke totally ignores another huge driver of #wildfires, especially in crowded California: us. We cause more than 80% of #wildfires in the US, through things like arson, power line problems, or sparks flying off roads. pnas.org/content/early/… /8
In fact, in crowded areas, people may have even more influence on wildfires than climate change does. /9 pnas.org/content/early/…
That's because we (increasingly) choose to build houses in places with high fire risk: on the edge of open spaces. That not only increases the chances of one of us starting a fire, but also means there's more people in harm's way when fires start. /10 pnas.org/content/early/…
In conclusion: the causes of #wildfires are a lot more complicated than @SecretaryZinke says in his @USATODAY op-ed. And they have a lot more to do with climate change, and where we choose to live, than he acknowledges. /end
