5 ms·

Because sometimes a completely preventable thing caused it. Dismissing any attempt to reduce causes because "it will just burn anyways" doesn't seem right.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
Having the hook start a fire is completely preventable. Having a fire start is not preventable. Reducing the number of fires that start doesn't make fires better -- it makes them worse. That was the lesson of the Yellowstone fire. There's a total amount of fuel to burn, and all of it will burn; the question is whether you want it to burn in more little fires or fewer enormous ones. That second point -- all of the fuel an area produces will eventually burn -- is why it doesn't really matter what started a fire. It's 100% correct to say that if one cause had been prevented, another cause would have started one later, and that later fire would have been worse the one that did happen (barring controlled burns to manage the amount of fuel in the area). You can think of wildfires using the same model as earthquakes. The movement of two tectonic plates against each other builds up a store of potential energy as one plate is driven out of alignment. The release of that energy is an earthquake. The amount of energy released by earthquakes is fixed by the amount of potential energy accumulated over time. The form of release is not -- you might see harmless earthquakes or city-destroying ones. If dynamite from a mining operation triggers a huge earthquake, that's bad, because huge earthquakes are bad. But the dynamite didn't cause anything that wasn't going to happen anyway. The same amount of energy gets released regardless, just at different times. For fires, the growth of plants in the area builds up a reservoir of potential fire energy over time, and you have the choice of either releasing that energy in fires or physically transporting the fuel somewhere else. Only the first is practical.
- akiselev 8y ago
  Sure, if fires existed in vacuums that would be the end of the story. Instead, they often exist near camp sites and other inhabited areas. Tracking down and minimizing causes of man-made fires, which tend to cluster around inhabited areas, happens to minimize the chance of death in forest fires - regardless of the total energy built up.

thaumasiotes 8y ago

Having the hook start a fire is completely preventable. Having a fire start is not preventable. Reducing the number of fires that start doesn't make fires better -- it makes them worse. That was the lesson of the Yellowstone fire. There's a total amount of fuel to burn, and all of it will burn; the question is whether you want it to burn in more little fires or fewer enormous ones. That second point -- all of the fuel an area produces will eventually burn -- is why it doesn't really matter what started a fire. It's 100% correct to say that if one cause had been prevented, another cause would have started one later, and that later fire would have been worse the one that did happen (barring controlled burns to manage the amount of fuel in the area). You can think of wildfires using the same model as earthquakes. The movement of two tectonic plates against each other builds up a store of potential energy as one plate is driven out of alignment. The release of that energy is an earthquake. The amount of energy released by earthquakes is fixed by the amount of potential energy accumulated over time. The form of release is not -- you might see harmless earthquakes or city-destroying ones. If dynamite from a mining operation triggers a huge earthquake, that's bad, because huge earthquakes are bad. But the dynamite didn't cause anything that wasn't going to happen anyway. The same amount of energy gets released regardless, just at different times. For fires, the growth of plants in the area builds up a reservoir of potential fire energy over time, and you have the choice of either releasing that energy in fires or physically transporting the fuel somewhere else. Only the first is practical.

akiselev 8y ago
Sure, if fires existed in vacuums that would be the end of the story. Instead, they often exist near camp sites and other inhabited areas. Tracking down and minimizing causes of man-made fires, which tend to cluster around inhabited areas, happens to minimize the chance of death in forest fires - regardless of the total energy built up.