The increase in fires and fire severity is caused by the Bureau of Land Management and Department of Forestry no longer allowing preventative burning of undergrowth in the forests, leading to a buildup of flammable material.

The U.K.'s national weather service has found that the global temperature increase has only been 0.75 degrees centigrade since 1880 and most occurred before the man-made global warming hysteria and supposed increase in carbon dioxide. Finally, it has been shown that fear of worldwide drought is also fallacious. Recent studies by Eric Wood of Princeton and fellow scientists have proven that worldwide drought estimates are in gross error and that there is no statistically significant increase in drought from 1950 through 2008.

Why would Westerling ignore such facts? Could it be because the majority of the university's research income comes from government grants, from agencies with a built in bias toward man-made global warming?

LESLIE PALOCSAY

Los Banos