Forest Thinning Challenged as Tactic to Control Fires
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of scientific support for thinning in the manner that Bush proposes, but they’re moving on ahead:
Mr. Cohen, who acknowledges that the science on thinning beyond a house's red zone is incomplete, nonetheless supports widespread fuel reduction as quickly as possible to head off ecological disaster.
In the "I can't believe he did something so dumb" area:
To drive home the benefits of the agency's programs, Mr. Bush pointed to two areas along a road, one unthinned and devastated and the other thinned and relatively unharmed.
This seems like a typical misinformed attempt to mix up differentiation with causality. I might as well pick the smartest kid from California and the dumbest from Texas, compare them and say, "See, kids from California are smarter than those in Texas." Argh.