A new study finds that forest fires will exceed human activities to become the major cause of air pollution by 2100 and deaths caused by forest fires will double by then.
Every summer, forest fires occupy the headlines of major media over the world for a long time. Over the past a few years, fires were so intensive and widespread that we had no better words to describe than "the worst in history". Unfortunately, the situation will not go better at all in the future in the face of global warming.
The burning of forest does not only make the beautiful words like green, fresh and peaceful that come to mind when thinking of nature become "Gone with the Fire", more importantly, it leaves us with chaos, debris and smoke. We are not fearful of chaos. We can rebuild a city even after catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis. We are not fearful of debris, the delicate but vigorous seedlings sprout over the debris will tell you the unbelievable vitality of nature. But we do fear smoke, because it can kill people and we don't know it well yet. When fire happens, we know how to extinguish fires, but we don't know how to get rid of smoke. We barely hear of people burned by forest fires, but we do hear of people choking on fire smoke. Given increasing wildfires in global warming, how badly can fire smoke impact our life and health is particularly concerning but not known yet.
Now with the new study lead by Ford and Pierce at Colorado State University, we might have an answer. They estimate that by the end of this century, wildfire will, for the first time, exceeds human activities to become the biggest reason for air pollution and the number of deaths attributable to fire-related air pollution will double! That's not a happy answer. But just because of the cruelty of the future in global warming should we be serious and start to take actions right now to prevent it from happening .
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