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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

Wait... it's arson? But the global climate crisis forced these people to set the fires, right?

(Just want to get my talking points right.)

Stop with the strawman. A dryer, hotter climate will cause fires to get larger and do more damage. No one says that a hotter climate will cause the initial burn spontaneously.

Given the initial spark is usually lightning, which will have a higher chance of causing an out of control fire in dried out conditions, and which is certainly "spontaneous" in my view (as in, nothing we can do about it apart from monitoring), why not?

I'd say it qualifies.

That’s my point; the OP’s argument that it’s an “either or” between arson or climate change is a strawman.

Dried out conditions make initial triggers (like lightning or arson) more likely to have disastrous consequences.

Right. I'm saying that I AM saying a hotter climate will cause the initial burn spontaneously. By my definition of spontaneously, being "without human input".

What I mean is you're being needlessly defensive. The strawman completely fails even on its own terms.

That's what it sounds like sometimes. "Fires caused by climate change".

It's because no one wants to have these philosophical arguments about whether making an issue significantly "worse" constitutes causation.

Regardless of the side you fall on, making something significantly worse is still a problem to be solved.

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