The San Diego fires are one symptom of a bigger problem.

If you watched the news this week, you watched the fires in Southern California destroy houses as they roared out of the canyons around San Diego and north of Los Angeles. Just evacuating people who live in the fire zone meant the biggest relocation of humans in United States since the Civil War. The Santa Ana winds mean fire season in Southern California. But these fires are typical of a trend throughout the American west, one that CBS's venerable newsmagazine 60 Minutes covered last Sunday.

Among the facts in Scott Pelley's story that jumped out as us: the prediction that within decades, half the forests in the western United States could burn so thoroughly that they'll never regrow. And when Pelley says, "You know, there are a lot of people who don't believe in climate change," Tom Boatner, who runs firefighting operations in the west for the federal government is matter-of-fact: "You won't find them on the fire line in the American West anymore, 'cause we've had climate change beat into us over the last ten or fifteen years. We know what we’re seeing, and we're dealing with a period of climate, in terms of temperature and humidity and drought that's different than anything people have seen in our lifetimes."