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This sounds like a cogent, well-reasoned argument, but it is not. The summer 2020 fires in the western US are largely a man-made disaster [1]: 1. Suppression
by julienchastang 6y ago
This sounds like a cogent, well-reasoned argument, but it is not.
The summer 2020 fires in the western US are largely a man-made disaster [1]:
1. Suppression of fire over the last century has led to an excessive build-up of biomass fuel.
2. The woodland urban interface has become more crowded in recent decades leading to difficulties in forest management (e.g., controlled burns) and safety.
3. Anthropogenic climate change leading to warmer and drier conditions in forests around the world.
Yes, large fires burned in the past and are a natural part of the forest ecosystem, but their severity has vastly increased (e.g., sterilization of soils, re-burning of forest that had burned just a few years ago). Yes, the climate changes but at no time in recent or medium-term geologic history has it changed so quickly.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/inside-the-megafire/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/inside-the-megafire/
- darkerside 6y agoWe're on a thread about an article where New England was blacked out for 24 hours because of wildfire. How can you claim that severity has increased vastly since then? Edit: I'm sorry this goes against the zeitgeist, but we still need evidence for backing up our claims
- nend 6y agoHere's a source[1]. It also shows that in the US, yearly acreage burned is rising in addition to the intensity of fires. [1] - https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/climate-change-and-wildfires#:~:text=Western%20US%20wildfires%20on%20the,observed%20increases%20in%20wildfire%20activity https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/climate-change-and-wildfire....
- shadowprofile77 6y agoEvery single argument you just made failed to refute anything the parent comment said. Furthermore, despite linking to sources specifically stating how fires in the past could regularly be vastly bigger, you simply state that the opposite is the case now..... just because... And this last bit is a bit of nitpikcing but depending on how you'd like to define "medium-term" geologic history yes, the climate has changed very quickly and drastically in even moderately recent history. It's a conciet to think we really affect the earth so much that it has rarely dealt with equal problems. Quite the contrary, it has many times dealt with far worse catastrophes than man-made climate change.
- conception 6y agoThe earth is a big ball of metal. Of course it will be fine. The creatures that live on it won’t. And many haven’t in the many times in the past that the earth dealt with like climate changes. Sure something will survive, but that’s not really useful as a declaration for humanity’s survival.
- Breza 6y agoThat tangentially reminded me of this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c