Fire is still the problem

In February, Bill Ritter appointed another study group, Colorado Forest Health Advisory Council.

We're not sure if this is good or bad. Bill Ritter has a habit of leaning over backwards to appoint an over abundance of environmentalists to these kinds of groups.

The Denver Post has a guest editorial by a Merrill R. Kaufmann, a contract scientist for the Nature Conservancy. That editorial lays the blame for future hot and large forest fires on global warming:

Climate changes will most likely contribute to substantial forest changes in the
decades ahead. Given the climate changes in the last 20 years and projected
changes for the next several decades, large fires and other natural disturbances
are anticipated in many forests of Colorado and southern Wyoming.

Let's use some common sense. Large fires in dead forests can best be contained by prepared fire breaks. That means new forest roads to remove the material and it means actually removing the material before the fire starts.

If we have a three or four hundred thousand acre fire in Colorado in the next year or two, global warming won't have caused it. Forest mismanagement will be the cause.

If Bill Ritter can overcome the resistance of the environmentalist extremists on the subjects of clear cutting and forest roads, he will be a hero. If he cannot, he deserves to be a goat.