Virgin Galactic SpaceshipTwo disaster: Branson counts economic loss

UK hedonist billionaire declared his intention to continue with his, 'for profit' pursuit of Space tourism, using the failed Virgin Galactic Spaceship.

He declared that he was undaunted by this 'setback,' i.e. the death of a pilot, the critical injuries to another pilot and the catastrophic loss of the aircraft.

It is clear that the human loss and misery will not affect his economic assessment of the viability of this venture or perhaps Virgin is not willing to write off the enormous expenditure on another loss-making, ill-conceived and badly managed Branson concept.

U.S. federal investigators are cautioning that it may take up to a year to learn exactly what went wrong.

In grim remarks at the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the craft known as SpaceShipTwo was under development.

UK Hedonist billionaire Branson gave no details of the accident and deferred to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, whose team began its first day of investigation.

Picture: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

SpaceShipTwo test pilots Peter Siebold (left) who parachuted to safety but was seriously injured and Michael Alsbury who was killed in the accident

Credit: AP

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Scale Composites inspect wreckage at one of the debris fields

Credit: REUTERS/David McNew

Investigators will review video from multiple cameras that were on the spaceship, on the mother ship, on a chase aircraft and at nearby Edwards Air Force Base. 

They also have six "nonvolatile" sources of information from the aircraft, and radar data to sift through

Credit: REUTERS/David McNew

The investigation could take up to 12 months to complete

Credit: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

At 60 feet long, SpaceShipTwo featured two large windows for each of up to six passengers, one on the side and one overhead. 

Credit: AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu

New Climate Change study shows Indonesia's disastrous deforestation

This photograph taken on February 24, 2014 during an aerial survey mission by Greenpeace in Central Kalimantan province on Indonesia's Borneo Island, shows cleared trees to make way for a palm oil plantation in a Borneo forest

Satellite images have found that Indonesia's ancient forests, a cradle of biodiversity and a buffer against climate change, have shrunk much faster than thought, scientists said on Sunday.

Between 2000 and 2012, Indonesia lost around 6.02 million hectares (14.4 million acres or 23,250 square miles) of primary forest, an area almost the size of Sri Lanka, they reported.

Primary or ancient forests are distinguished from managed forests, which are plantations of trees grown for timber and pulp.

The researchers found that primary forest loss accelerated during the period under review, reaching an annual 840,000 hectares by 2012, nearly twice the deforestation rate of Brazil, which was 460,000 hectares in the same year.

"Indonesia's forests contain high floral and faunal biodiversity, including 10 percent of the world's plants, 12 percent of the world's mammals, 16 percent of the world's reptile-amphibians and 17 percent of the world's bird species," said the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"Extensive clearing of Indonesian primary forest cover directly results in habitat loss and associated plant and animal extinctions."

Deforestation is also a blow to the fight against climate change, as ancient trees store more carbon emissions from the atmosphere than new ones do, and for a longer period, thus mitigating global warming.

The research, led by geographer Belinda Margono of the University of Maryland, looked at long-term satellite images.

During 2000-2012, total forest cover in Indonesia retreated by 15.79 million hectares, of which 6.02 million, or 38 percent, was primary forest, the investigation found.

Distinguishing between primary and managed forest is vital in the campaign to preserve biodiversity and combat climate change, the paper said.

"It is critically important to know the context of forest disturbance, whether of a high-biomass natural forest or a short-cycle plantation," it said.

"Similarly, the clearing of natural forest has very different implications on the maintenance of biodiversity richness."

It noted that in 2010, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) put Indonesia's overall forest loss at 310,000 hectares per year from 2000-2005, and 690,000 hectares annually from 2005-2010.

Indonesia itself, in a report to the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2009, estimated forest loss of 1.1 million hectares annually from 2000-2005.

Margono's study found the biggest losers were lowland and wetland forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan, where trees are typically chopped down by loggers for use in farming.

In other islands or island groups, Papua, Sulawesi, Maluku, Java and Bali and Nusa Tenggara, primary forest cover fell back only slightly or remained stable from 2000-2012.

More information: Nature Climate Change, dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2277

Jet engine icing research tackles dangerous flight problem

Credit: NASA

Technicians install water sprayers in the jet engine icing test chamber at Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center. The sprayers will produce tiny ice crystals that can clog or damage engines.

On a stormy July evening in 2004, more than five miles above the South China Sea, the engines powering a large passenger jet en route to Taiwan suddenly failed.

A simultaneous engine shutdown on a large, modern aircraft is almost unheard of.

After a harrowing 75 seconds, the pilots managed to restart them, and the jet landed at the Taipei airport without further problems. But the incident set off alarms in the aviation community.

Minutes before its engines quit, the jet had been skirting thunderstorms spawned by a distant typhoon.

Investigators first thought the storms' powerful updrafts had pulled rain high into the atmosphere, temporarily smothering the engines when they sucked in gouts of water instead of air.

The jet's pilots had seen and heard droplets hitting the windshield, bolstering the rain theory but the jet's radar sweeps were clear, with no echoes from rain and the temperature at the altitude where the trouble began was a frigid minus-44 degrees, far too cold for liquid water.

Researchers eventually concluded the engines must have been choked by tiny ice crystals as small as flour grains, a dangerous, unexpected phenomenon that aviation officials urgently want to learn more about so they can lessen its risk.

Much of that work will take place at Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center, where engineers are readying a unique test chamber capable of mimicking the odd weather conditions that threatened the Taipei-bound jet, and have caused more than 150 other in-flight incidents.

"These things are happening pretty frequently, like one incident every month or so," said Glenn project manager Ron Colantonio. "NASA is working with the aviation community to understand what's causing the problem and how to mitigate it."

Glenn officials recently unveiled the silvery, boxcar-sized engine icing tunnel during a visit by NASA administrator Charles Bolden.

Glenn engineers previously had used the tunnel for other types of jet engine tests. With $15 million in Recovery Act and NASA money, they've retrofitted it with water sprayers that will produce the minute ice crystals believed to be causing the engine problems.

Sensors will track the performance of jet engines mounted on a frame in the icy air stream.

Aviation safety experts have long recognized the danger from ice buildup on wings and other external aircraft surfaces.

The hazard is caused by super-cooled liquid water freezing on contact, disrupting smooth airflow and hampering lift.

For decades engineers in Glenn's Icing Branch have led international efforts to develop better ice forecasting methods, icing sensors, anti-icing aircraft designs, and improved pilot training.

Read more on this article here: 

Costa Concordia cruise ship's Bell

Police scuba divers inspect around the Costa Concordia cruise ship which ran aground off the west coast of Italy at Giglio island

Picture: REUTERS/Centro subacquei dei Carabinieri

Costa Concordia: Satellite image

View of the stricken cruise ship which ran aground and capsized near the island of Giglio in Italy on 13 January. The image was taken on 17 January.

Americans mark 10th anniversary of September 11 attacks

Americans Sunday remembered the horror of September 11, 2001, and the nearly 3,000 people who died in the hijacked plane attacks as authorities worked to ensure the emotional 10th anniversary was peaceful.

Law enforcement authorities in New York and Washington were on high alert against what was described as a "credible but unconfirmed" threat of an al Qaeda plot to attack the United States again a decade after the toppling of the World Trade Center's twin towers by hijacked airliners.

Security was especially tight in Manhattan, where police set up vehicle checks on city streets as well as bridges and tunnels coming into the city.

President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush, who was president at the time of the attacks, were scheduled to be among the dignitaries at the Ground Zero site in New York.

They were set to join victims' families to hear the reading of the names of those who died on September 11. Bells will toll across the city.

In the attacks, 19 men from the Islamic militant group al Qaeda hijacked airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Amazon Spaceship fails on test flight

An unmanned spacecraft bankrolled by Amazon.com supremo Jeff Bezos has failed during a test flight.

The vehicle became unstable at 45,000 feet and ground controllers had to terminate it as a precaution. Additional details about what went wrong were not released.

"Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard," Amazon chief executive Mr Bezos wrote in a blog post.

Mr Bezos founded Blue Origin to develop a vertical take-off and landing rocketship that would fly passengers to suborbital space. It recently won money from Nasa to compete to go into orbit as a space taxi now that the space shuttle fleet is retired.

The mishap occurred during a test flight last week from Blue Origin's West Texas spaceport. The ultra-secretive company notified the Federal Aviation Administration about the launch and only acknowledged the accident publicly yesterday.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the failure, said the test did not use government funds and was not part of the development agreement with Nasa.

Blue Origin's failure shines a spotlight on the risks of commercial space ventures.

SpaceX, which has a Nasa contract to develop a commercial vehicle to haul supplies and astronauts, suffered three rocket failures before it found success. Later this year, the company, run by PayPal founder Elon Musk, will launch a capsule on a cargo test run to the International Space Station.

Virgin Galactic, founded by the UK hedonist Richard Branson, lost three workers in 2007 after an explosion rocked a California airport during testing of a propellant system for its space tourism vehicle.

The company is currently conducting flight tests in the Mojave Desert and has not yet been able to set a potential date for the first passenger flights.

Russian Crash Could Delay SpaceX Mission to Space Station

Last week's crash of a Russian cargo spacecraft could delay the first-ever private mission to the International Space Station, according to NASA officials.

Space Exploration Technologies — better known as SpaceX — is planning to launch its Dragon capsule toward the orbiting lab on Nov. 30, with a historic docking slated for nine days later.

BUT as a result of the Aug. 24 crash of the unmanned Russian Progress 44 supply ship, there might not be any astronauts aboard the station to receive Dragon in early December.

If that's the case, Dragon's launch would have to be postponed, officials said

CHINA Rocket malfunction causes satellite loss

An experimental satellite launched on Thursday failed to enter its designated orbit after its rocket malfunctioned. It was the first launch failure to occur in China since August 1996, when a Long March III launch vehicle proved unable to send Chinasat-7, a communications satellite, into orbit.

The latest failure followed on a string of successes China has seen this year in its attempts to send equipment into space and came before the country's first mission to have a space craft rendezvous and dock with a space module in outer space.

The satellite, SJ-11-04, was launched atop a Long March II-C rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China's Gansu province at 5:28 pm on Thursday. The mission marked the first time that type of rocket had failed.

A report from Xinhua News Agency on Thursday did not say when the rocket first ran into trouble during its flight. Nor did it cite a specific cause of the malfunction, a matter that is now being investigated.

Wang Jiaqi, an academician at the China Academy of Sciences, told Beijing News that the satellite was to be used in scientific experiments.

In the past, three satellites have been sent into orbit for scientific purposes atop the same type of rockets, according to media reports. The first satellite, SJ-11-01, was launched on Nov 12, 2009. Another, SJ-11-03, followed on July 6 and the third, SJ-11-02, on July 29.

It remains unknown what effect the recent failure will have on the possibility of further launches taking place this year.

The wreckage of Air France Flight 447

Click on the picture to see more pictures of the stricken aircraft

At a press conference held on April 4, 2011, investigators from BEA, the French air accident investigation agency, present photographs of portions of Air France Flight 447, an Airbus 330 which disappeared en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, May 31, 2009, with 228 people aboard.

Read more:

Titanic team locate missing Air France AF447 Airbus A330

The mysterious crash of an Air France airliner in 2009 may be a step nearer to being solved: wreckage of the aircraft, and the bodies of some of the victims, have finally been located on the mid-Atlantic seabed by a trio of robotic search submarines operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

It means investigators may finally be able to find the plane's flight recorders and find out why the 228 people on board lost their lives.

Flight AF447, an Airbus A330 twin-engined jet flying from Rio to Paris, inexplicably entered a series of violent tropical storm cells in in mid-Atlantic in the early hours of 1 June 2009 - when all other air traffic was avoiding the storms.

The plane never emerged - and wreckage and bodies of passengers and crew were found afloat on the ocean in following days.

Why the plane entered the storm system, and what downed it, is a mystery - and data on its cockpit voice and flight data recorders may be able to reveal the answers. But the plane's flight recorders were not recovered from the floating wreckage and three prior submarine searches organised by the BEA, the French air accident investigator, have failed to locate them.

The submarine robots WHOI is using in the BEA's latest search are far more agile than in previous searches - and use a novel sonar image mosaicing technique honed during WHOI's 2010 mapping of the complete debris field of the RMS Titanic.

The way the sonar image stripes are stitched together reduces the risk that detail will be lost where the images are joined, says WHOI project leader David Gallo.

It seems to have worked. On 3 April the BEA announced that pieces of an aircraft had not only been found in the circa 4000-metre-deep search area - a similar depth to Titanic - but had also been positively identified as belonging to the doomed Air France Airbus.

Speaking on Inter Radio today, French transport minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said that a "large part" of the Airbus had been found, surrounded by a large debris field, and that part of the cabin contained bodies. Some of the bodies should be identifiable, she added. The Telegraph has translated her interview here.

Peter Neenan, lawyer for one group of AF447 victims' families at Stewarts Law in London, is cautiously optimistic that the finding will lead to the location of the flight recorders - and some answers. "The families will be waiting anxiously for further updates from the BEA," he says.

MISR Provides Unique Views Of Gulf Oil Slick

MISR Provides Unique Views Of Gulf Oil Slick


These unique images of the Deepwater Horizon oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico were obtained by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft on May 17, 2010, at around 16:40 UTC (11:40 a.m. CDT).

The top panel is a false-color image created by combining data from the red band of the 26-degree forward-viewing camera (where the oil appears dark) with the blue and green bands of the nadir (vertical-viewing) camera (where the oil appears bright).

The result causes the oil spill to stand out dramatically in shades of cyan, while other features like clouds and land appear close to their natural color. The Mississippi River Delta is visible in the upper left portion of the image.

The red symbol represents the former location of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. The image dimensions are 346 by 258 kilometers (215 by 160 miles), and north is toward the top of the image.

The white arrow in the right-center of the image points to a plume of smoke, most likely from a controlled burn of oil collected on the surface. Controlled burns of oil began in early May to attempt to remove oil from the open water.

The plume appears as a dark streak against the brighter reflection of sunlight off the ocean surface. The lower two panels are enlarged images of the area around the smoke plume acquired by MISR's 46-degree forward-viewing and 46-degree backward-viewing cameras.

At these viewing angles and under the viewing conditions on this date, the smoke particles appear bright and sunglint from the ocean surface is much weaker. The views at the two different angles cover the same physical
area of 42 by 30 kilometers (26 by 19 miles).

The clouds in the lower right quadrant of these panels appear to shift in position, due to the different camera view angles. However, a bright point to the south of the plume does not show such a shift, and is likely a boat observing the controlled burn. The apparent shift in position of the smoke plume itself places its altitude at about 560 meters (1,840 feet) above the surface.

Polluted by profit: Johann Hari on the real Climategate - Climate Change, Environment

Polluted by profit: Johann Hari on the real Climategate - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent

Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen to lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests – and runaway global warming? Why are their staff dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic"? Why are they clambering into corporate "partnerships" with BP, which is responsible for the worst oil spill in living memory?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups such as Conservation International (CI) and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) are among the most trusted "brands" in the world, pledged to protect and defend nature.

Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organisations meant to be leading the fight are busy shovelling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters – and simultaneously burying science-based environmentalism.

In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

Read the full article by following the link

Gulf Oil Disaster: How big is the Deepwater Horizon oil disasterl?

The current size of the Deepwater Horizon spill is hard to measure exactly, but attempts can be made to estimate it.

Based on oil flow calculations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Dr Simon Boxall, a marine pollution expert, says a total current spill can be estimated at about 7,000 to 10,000 tonnes of oil. (See factbox below for how this was worked out.)

But such estimates should always carry a caveat, he says, as these can be affected by factors such as the condition of the rig, the well and the quality of information available.

In terms of lives lost (11 workers died in the rig explosion), financial cost and environmental damage, the Deepwater Horizon incident is clearly serious. But it is not one of the world's largest spills in terms of size alone.

In fact, based on the estimate above, it would not register in the largest 50 single incident, offshore oil spills that have occurred worldwide. Even the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill - despite the controversy and coverage - is not in the top 10.

However the potential for damage caused by Deepwater Horizon is apparent when looking at the events of June 1979 in the Bay of Campeche, also in the Gulf of Mexico.

In that spill, the exploratory oil well Ixtoc 1 suffered a blowout and wasn't capped until more than nine months later, having released 461,000 tonnes of oil in total.

Space Balloon Launch Disaster - Lives in Danger

The launch of a giant space balloon went terribly wrong Thursday in the Australian Outback when a heavy payload of scientific equipment broke from its mooring and dragged across the desert, slamming into a vehicle and narrowly missing bystanders.

One witness said she felt lucky to be alive after the car-sized, unmanned gondola hanging beneath the balloon careened out-of-control into the vehicle parked next to hers at the launch site near Alice Springs, in central Australia.

As the huge balloon filled with air, the bundle of equipment was ripped from its mounting and dragged across the desert, crashing into and upturning a parked four-wheel-drive vehicle and strewing debris across a wide area before coming to a halt.

No one was injured in the incident, which was captured on video by an Australian Broadcasting Corp. television film crew.

Cairo Tries to Save Face after H1N1 Pig Slaughter Disaster

Cairo and Egypt are claiming to be able to turn trash into treasure, and at the same time keeping it green in Cairo.

In an attempt to help curb the city's stifling pollution and meet their energy needs too, a few Cairo families have begun to recycle waste by generating biogas from rubbish.

Recovery from disaster

This is felt to be a face saving gesture following a disasterous decision to slaughter all the nation's pigs, on the pretext that they were a threat to public health. The pigs were wholly owned by the zabaleen, a Coptic Christian sect that, for generations had used them to consume and clean up the city's garbage.

It is an ambitious project that is still in its infancy but may just catch on in this teeming city of 18 million people, currently obscured in a dirty grey veil of haze produced by the fumes from millions of car exhausts.

American sponsored solution
The initiative to transform organic waste into alternative energy, not in itself a new idea, was started by an American, Thomas Culhane, in east Cairo's Manshiet Nasser slums, which are known locally as Garbage City.

He runs Solar Cities, a non-governmental organisation that looks to design and develop technologies that aim to solve very local problems.

Following a grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2007, he has been installing solar panels to produce hot water for families in Garbage City.

The Christian zabaleen

This is where thousands of zabaleen, freelance trash collectors, hand-sort through tons of rubbish collected from the streets of the megalopolis and then sell recyclable material. In the past, the pigs consumed the edible waste material and in turn the zabaleen would eat the pigs and sustain their families.

Muslim acceptance

The Solar Cities idea was well received and began to spread to the neighbouring mainly Muslim area of Darb al-Ahmar, prompting Culhane and Hanna Fathy, a Manshiet Nasser resident involved in the scheme, to offer families "biogas digesters."

Simple solution

Made from two simple plastic tanks and tubes, the digesters convert organic matter into biogas through a process in which bacteria decompose the matter to produce methane for cooking and fertiliser which can then be resold.

"One man's garbage is another man's gold mine. One woman's trash is another woman's treasure," Culhane said.

The alternative would be that "I would be throwing this garbage out in the streets, there would be rats, flies, cats and dogs."

Spend money to save

The solar panels allow a family of 10 to save around 30 Egyptian pounds (5.4 dollars) a month, and biogas trims a further 10 pounds monthly.

This can mean valuable savings in Egypt, where the average household salary is around 100 dollars a month.

So far, however, Solar Cities has installed just 30 solar panels and seven biogas digesters.

The main hurdle is cost. Solar panels cost up to 2,400 Egyptian pounds and the digesters cost 700 Egyptian pounds, in a country where gas and fuel are heavily subsidised by the government.
"It's a very good system which has a future here, especially now that they have killed our pigs," insists Fathy, who says he remains optimistic about the project despite the obstacles.

Unnecessary Pig Slaughter
In May, Egypt ordered the slaughter of the nation's 250,000 pigs as part of swine flu prevention measures, even though the World Health Organisation said that taking such a drastic measure was not scientifically justified.

The pigs, which ate the teeming city's organic waste, were already involved in a recycling process that provided revenue and food for their owners.

"In the past they fed the organic waste to the pigs but even the pigs could not eat it all," Culhane said.

"Now the pigs are gone and there is nothing to transform Cairo's organic waste into safe products except biogas digesters."

"I miss the sound of the pigs," Fathy said, gesturing to the slum's rooftops where the zabaleen have now taken to raising goats and chickens.

"These animals can't swallow what the pigs use to," he said.

"We don't have big goals, we just want to be catalysts, to spread seed by seed a garden of solutions that make sense," Culhane said.

If the systems were applied on a large scale, he said, "we could solve 50 percent of Egypt's pollution problem and eliminate mechanically the organic garbage problem."

Radiation Leak Incident at Three Mile Island leads to Evacuation

A radiation leak at Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, has sent home about 150 workers, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported Sunday.

"They had an airborne radiological contamination alarm," NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci told AFP. "They evaluated all the workers, a handful of workers -- I don't have a precise number -- had contamination. They since have been decontaminated," she said.

About 150 people work in the building where the leak occurred.

Screnci said what she called a "leak... happened at 4:00 pm Saturday (2100 GMT) and they resumed work in the contaminated building" near Middletown, Pennsylvania.

"There was no impact on public health safety and it does not appear to have an impact on the workers," she said adding that "this kind of incident occurs once in a while."

So far, "they don't know the origin of the contamination," Screnci said. "There were a lot of activities going on at the time and when the alarm sounded. The engineers are working to determine what the cause was."

"It's a minor incident," she said stressing it was "under control."

Three Mile Island suffered a major accident in 1979, with the core of a reactor partially melting down. Since then no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States.

Nuclear energy supplies 20 percent of power in the United States with 104 reactors, while 50 percent comes from coal burning plants.

The rest is from natural gas, oil and renewable sources such as hydroelectric power as well as solar and wind power.

Chernobyl: The aftermath goes on!

Souz Chernobyl

The monument to Chernobyl in Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea. On its base is part of a poem about the fate of the people who were drafted or volunteered to clean up the reactor: "We thought that our Motherland was with us. We were proud of the glitter of our golden epaulets. The steps of our rubber boots took measure. Of Chernobyl's deadly testing ground."

NY Times Article

Alaskan tundra fires rage - Global Warming fears

Alaskan tundra fires rage. Fueling Global Warming by increasing levels of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere. (Image: MODIS Rapid Response Team / Goddard Space Flight Center / NASA)

The fire that raged north of Alaska's Brooks mountain range in 2007 left a 1000-square-kilometre scorched patch of earth – an area larger than the sum of all known fires on Alaska's North Slope since 1950.

Carbon Dioxide increase

Now scientists studying the ecological impact of the fire report that the blaze dumped 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – about the amount that Barbados puts out in a year. What's more, at next week's meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Albuquerque, New Mexico, two teams will warn that as climate change takes hold tundra fires across the Arctic will become more frequent.

Increased Frequency of Fires

Tundra fires only take off once certain thresholds are reached, says Adrian Rocha of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. "But projected changes in climate over the next century – increased aridity, thunderstorms, and warming in the Arctic – will increase the likelihood that these thresholds will be crossed and thus result in more larger and frequent fires."