Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Unlikely figure
Last night CBS asked the only meaningful question about the latest Colo wildfire: Should we be building so many houses in the middle of forests? The answer is absolutely NO.
The video from that fire certainly illustrated the problem. HUGE houses with lots of forest between them. Just begging to be smashed by wind or crisped by fire.
In the same report CBS said that "One-third of all Americans now live in exurban forest land." I've heard similar figures before, sometimes given as a hundred million people instead of 1/3.
Really? This seems highly unlikely. Half of Americans live in suburban/exurban areas overall, but the vast majority of those exurban areas are former farmland or river bottom, not forests. I could go along with 1/10 of the population in former forests, but not 1/3.
¶ 2:45 AM 
