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Thanks for the clinical discussion around environmental droughts. As usual such technical views ignore the on-the-ground experience for people to provide conte

Thanks for the clinical discussion around environmental droughts. As usual such technical views ignore the on-the-ground experience for people to provide context for the language you’re criticizing. Yes, to the ecosystem itself, in a vacuum, it’s not bad. To human existence there it’s been problematic. Emotions are up over it. Perhaps that’s an alternative argument you’re not considering? This is like telling people dealing with cancer “We all die some day.” Damn those humans and their generalizing to maintain social connection. We should all just stick to highly technical interpretations (even though not all of us want to!)

phkahler 8y ago
The problem is that California has the flu and people think its cancer. Getting the flu sucks but you're probably not gonna die. I remember forest fires as well as mudslides in CA back in the 1970s. Perhaps the last few years were an extreme, but note that going to that extreme and back took about a decade. Most people haven't been there long enough to know what normal is and just buy in to all the media hype.
- gdubs 8y ago
  Sorry, but this is just flat out wrong. Yes, drought and fire have always been a fact of life for California. But if you map the frequency and severity of fires alone, it’s on a remarkably upward trajectory over the past two decades. It’s climate change.
  - pdonis 8y ago
    Over the past two decades, yes. But humans have been in California for a lot longer than two decades. Over all the time humans have been in California (which is basically since the last Ice Age at least, possibly longer since we don't know exactly when it was first settled by Native Americans), what we're seeing now is probably well within the range of variation. We can't know for sure because we don't have 12,000 years worth of records to tell us. Which means we don't have the basis for saying that what's been happening in California over the past couple of decades is an emergency. It might just be part of the long term cost of choosing to live in California.
    - gdubs 8y ago
      Yes, but this is the same argument people make about how you can’t attribute a given hurricane to Climate Change (although science has becoming more capable of those kinds of attributions in recent years). Yes, climate fluctuates. Yes, there have plausibly been years of drought and fire in centuries past that would rival recent years. But absent the specific data you say is lacking, if you believe that climate science is generally correct, then more drought, more warming, more fire is the obvious trend. Not just California, but the entire world. Regardless of whether similar events have happened in the past, there’s an obvious reason for the dramatic uptick between the 1970s and today: CO2 in the atmosphere, put there by humans.
      - pdonis 8y ago
        > there’s an obvious reason for the dramatic uptick between the 1970s and today: CO2 in the atmosphere, put there by humans The fact that this reason is "obvious" doesn't mean it's correct. Climate models based on the assumption that human CO2 emissions are the primary cause of warming have been significantly over-predicting warming. So I don't think we can say human CO2 emissions are the primary cause. We are still too uncertain about how the climate works for that.
  - UncleEntity 8y ago
    > But if you map the frequency and severity of fires alone, it’s on a remarkably upward trajectory over the past two decades. It’s climate change. ...or it could be because the forests are so out of balance because they need fire to thrive that smaller events have oversized effects. Before people started blaming severe forest fires on climate change they blamed the fires on the policy of systematically putting out all fires which allowed fuel to pile up on the forest floor allowing them to burn much hotter resulting in the trees dying. Before this policy the fires would just burn through the underbrush and the trees would survive as this is how they evolved.
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    If go back a bit further you'll find that (for example) one of the big, deadly wildfires from a couple of years ago was almost identical to a wildfire that happened in that same area back in the 1960s (IIRC). And during that earlier fire a few structures burned too (there weren't that many around at the time), so thinking ahead they banned any further construction in the most dangerous part of that area. Only to conveniently forget about that ban during the 1980s and later, so in the second fire you now had a much higher human toll. So two almost identical fires but with very different outcomes, at least in human terms. Also, most people apparently don't understand the distinction between "wildfire" and "firestorm". Since upwards of 97% of wildfires are actually human-caused these days, of course a human has to be present for that to happen. No humans means far fewer wildfires. But a lot of what we've been seeing lately are actually firestorms, where a single structure catches fire and then that spreads uncontrollably to the next structure and so on until everything flammable is basically burned out. Firestorms happen because there are few if any resources available to put the fire out while it's still small. So while the original source of ignition may very well have come from a wildfire, the firestorm can keep burning and spreading long after the wildfire itself has basically played out, at least in that immediate area. And no, climate change has little or nothing to do with this.
    - gdubs 8y ago
      The Native Americans used to set fire to the landscape every year - at least in Oregon, and I’m pretty sure California to a degree as well. I think California was literally on fire the first time missionaries sailed up the coast. I agree - controlled burns are effective at keeping brush at manageable levels, and fire is a natural part of the forest ecosystem. And part of California’s climate. Developing too close to the wilderness edge is putting more human lives at risk. (I own farm and forest land, and am involved in conservation and restoration; I’m familiar with the challenges.) But Climate Change is rapidly becoming the dominate factor for one simple reason: hot, dry, things burn. And Climate Change is making things hotter and drier. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/climate-change-california-wildfire/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/clima...
      - 8y ago

phkahler 8y ago

The problem is that California has the flu and people think its cancer. Getting the flu sucks but you're probably not gonna die. I remember forest fires as well as mudslides in CA back in the 1970s. Perhaps the last few years were an extreme, but note that going to that extreme and back took about a decade. Most people haven't been there long enough to know what normal is and just buy in to all the media hype.

gdubs 8y ago
Sorry, but this is just flat out wrong. Yes, drought and fire have always been a fact of life for California. But if you map the frequency and severity of fires alone, it’s on a remarkably upward trajectory over the past two decades. It’s climate change.
- pdonis 8y ago
  Over the past two decades, yes. But humans have been in California for a lot longer than two decades. Over all the time humans have been in California (which is basically since the last Ice Age at least, possibly longer since we don't know exactly when it was first settled by Native Americans), what we're seeing now is probably well within the range of variation. We can't know for sure because we don't have 12,000 years worth of records to tell us. Which means we don't have the basis for saying that what's been happening in California over the past couple of decades is an emergency. It might just be part of the long term cost of choosing to live in California.
  - gdubs 8y ago
    Yes, but this is the same argument people make about how you can’t attribute a given hurricane to Climate Change (although science has becoming more capable of those kinds of attributions in recent years). Yes, climate fluctuates. Yes, there have plausibly been years of drought and fire in centuries past that would rival recent years. But absent the specific data you say is lacking, if you believe that climate science is generally correct, then more drought, more warming, more fire is the obvious trend. Not just California, but the entire world. Regardless of whether similar events have happened in the past, there’s an obvious reason for the dramatic uptick between the 1970s and today: CO2 in the atmosphere, put there by humans.
    - pdonis 8y ago
      > there’s an obvious reason for the dramatic uptick between the 1970s and today: CO2 in the atmosphere, put there by humans The fact that this reason is "obvious" doesn't mean it's correct. Climate models based on the assumption that human CO2 emissions are the primary cause of warming have been significantly over-predicting warming. So I don't think we can say human CO2 emissions are the primary cause. We are still too uncertain about how the climate works for that.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  > But if you map the frequency and severity of fires alone, it’s on a remarkably upward trajectory over the past two decades. It’s climate change. ...or it could be because the forests are so out of balance because they need fire to thrive that smaller events have oversized effects. Before people started blaming severe forest fires on climate change they blamed the fires on the policy of systematically putting out all fires which allowed fuel to pile up on the forest floor allowing them to burn much hotter resulting in the trees dying. Before this policy the fires would just burn through the underbrush and the trees would survive as this is how they evolved.
- southern_cross 8y ago
  If go back a bit further you'll find that (for example) one of the big, deadly wildfires from a couple of years ago was almost identical to a wildfire that happened in that same area back in the 1960s (IIRC). And during that earlier fire a few structures burned too (there weren't that many around at the time), so thinking ahead they banned any further construction in the most dangerous part of that area. Only to conveniently forget about that ban during the 1980s and later, so in the second fire you now had a much higher human toll. So two almost identical fires but with very different outcomes, at least in human terms. Also, most people apparently don't understand the distinction between "wildfire" and "firestorm". Since upwards of 97% of wildfires are actually human-caused these days, of course a human has to be present for that to happen. No humans means far fewer wildfires. But a lot of what we've been seeing lately are actually firestorms, where a single structure catches fire and then that spreads uncontrollably to the next structure and so on until everything flammable is basically burned out. Firestorms happen because there are few if any resources available to put the fire out while it's still small. So while the original source of ignition may very well have come from a wildfire, the firestorm can keep burning and spreading long after the wildfire itself has basically played out, at least in that immediate area. And no, climate change has little or nothing to do with this.
  - gdubs 8y ago
    The Native Americans used to set fire to the landscape every year - at least in Oregon, and I’m pretty sure California to a degree as well. I think California was literally on fire the first time missionaries sailed up the coast. I agree - controlled burns are effective at keeping brush at manageable levels, and fire is a natural part of the forest ecosystem. And part of California’s climate. Developing too close to the wilderness edge is putting more human lives at risk. (I own farm and forest land, and am involved in conservation and restoration; I’m familiar with the challenges.) But Climate Change is rapidly becoming the dominate factor for one simple reason: hot, dry, things burn. And Climate Change is making things hotter and drier. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/climate-change-california-wildfire/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/clima...
    - 8y ago