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The worst wildfires in Texas history are now seen from space:
[caption id="attachment_7411" align="aligncenter" width="575" caption="Texas wildfires from space (credit: NASA)"][/caption]
Perhaps an image from NASA's lofty vantage point will provide some connections between temperature increases, drought, and climate change in the Lone Star State and elsewhere.
WHB
448
In 1920, Robert Frost wrote his classic poem, Fire & Ice:
Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great and would suffice.
The astronomer Harlow Shapley wrote in a 1960 "Science and the Arts" presentation that he inspired the poem.
According to a Wikipedia anecdote, Shapley describes an encounter ...
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Drought now affects 17 states in the southern tier of the USA with 10 states categorized by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as being in exceptional drought or Code D-4. The 2011 drought is as extreme as one that occurred in the mid-1950s and may be approaching the level of the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. The current drought now affects over one-third of the nation.
[caption id="attachment_5582" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="2011 USA drought map ...