Conventional, Ephemeral Wisdom

A couple of senators are asking for a study on the effect of wildfires on air quality:

Currently, federal agencies track industrial emissions, but not those related to wildfire, Republican Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Larry Craig of Idaho said in a letter to Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth.

New research shows that forest fires are a major and increasing source of dioxins, ''greenhouse'' gases and other harmful fumes, Smith and Craig wrote.

Of course, the left will denounce this, because the current line is that we caused these terrible fires by preventing forest fires in the past. That's a pretty ludicrous idea, but all it takes is a few press releases to elevate a questionable theory into Hard Science these days. I didn't know that forest fires release dioxins. I thought those were only made by factories and power plants. I did know that living trees fix carbon dioxide, while burning them releases it.

Maybe every area of a wildfire be treated as a Superfund Site and buried. Then we could do away with the US Forest Service.