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I haven't followed the fire closely - is there a reason I'm supposed to chalk this one up to climate change rather than poor forestry management?

geerlingguy 5y ago
This is my quibble with reporting on weather events lately. Over in Germany, where they had massive flooding due to a ton of rain in a short period, everything about it is pinned on climate change, to the exclusion of discussing any other problems that can lead to disaster. How much could also be other human factors, like building up levees and flood control systems that aren't up to snuff and/or shift worse flooding problems downstream (this has been the case in many parts of the US for decades now; can we presume Europe is better in flood control management than the Army Corps and thousands of small river towns?).
- warglebargle 5y ago
  doesn’t really matter what the problem is attributed to when not enough is being done about either way (at least in the case of the US, can’t speak for Germany) I'd be all for attributing it to not sweeping forests well enough if that actually got the funding to start seriously combating the issue, it’s a positive feedback loop that needs to be mitigated
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    No, how about we be honest with ourselves first as to what the real root cause is? Answering "Yes, but...climate change!" to "Is the cause actually due to poor forestry management over the past 50 years?" doesn't actually solve anything.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      If it is bad forestry management, we can fix that and it's much easier to hold the people responsible for that job because it's a defined role that they failed at. Compared to how much climate change will supposedly cost us to fix and that it's much more arguable who is responsible for what...
      - warglebargle 5y ago
        part of the plan for mitigating climate change is better forest management…
        gjsman-1000 5y ago
        Not hopeful in that, because it wasn't like California did good forest management with what we knew, but there were better strategies available. They did bad forest management, even compared to what we already know, and somehow they're going to do what they should have done already...
        warglebargle 5y ago
        this is the problem… “california didn’t do this” “it’s not X it’s Y” - meanwhile forests burn; we’re going to die arguing. I’m going to go call my congressperson and end this frivolous argument! no offense!
    - warglebargle 5y ago
      Nothing has been done about “poor management” either so why exactly does it matter? Blame it on me for all I care, just convince half of congress do actually do something
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > could also be other human factors The cause for the failures have been unprecedented rainfall. There are a million possible factors that can influence the situation, climate change is the leading one. Let's fix it instead of discussing if climate change represents a 90% of the problem or just a 78%. Let's also spend trillions adding more safety for a worsening and more hostile climate. We could have saved that by taking action earlier, now we need to pay to keep ourselves safe. Let's act before it costs more money and more lives.
- freeflight 5y ago
  > Over in Germany, where they had massive flooding due to a ton of rain in a short period, everything about it is pinned on climate change, to the exclusion of discussing any other problems that can lead to disaster. Germany has had "once in century" floods every decade for a while now. It's a densely populated country, meaning people can't just move somewhere else and there are not large swaths of unpopulated/unused lands that could be repurposed for massive flood control systems. It's also not like we are talking about towns that have been built recently in risk-areas, we are talking about towns that have been in those places for centuries, sometimes over a millennia, which is a testament to how out of the ordinary these floods are.
pwarner 5y ago
What is it's both? Which I suspect strongly is the case...
jeffbee 5y ago
Nor sure if you are kidding or what but western US forests current have all-time-low fuel moisture content. This is a consequence of climate change. https://www.wfas.net/data/firedanger/graphs/NC/NC04_ERCg.png https://www.wfas.net/data/firedanger/graphs/NC/NC04_ERCg.png
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  That graph is only over 2021, and doesn't specify where the "average" came from. It could be the Seasons for all we know. It's not enough by itself.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    It's a 25-year average. "We" know a lot about this. Your ignorance is not its own special kind of knowledge.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      I didn't dispute climate change's existence, and if your graph doesn't show what the Average is (where is your source that it is 25 years?), my point stands that your graph by itself is not proof.
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      Prof. Scott Stephens UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources; dont phone for an appointment, he is busy right now Secondly, after crazy disasterous, world-headlines fires three years ago, Calif. Governor Gavin "perfect hairgel" Newsom appointed a blue-ribbon committee on tracking and dealing with these fires from a forestry point of view.. that committee publishes online and in fact as a Github repo. That committee has to work with aggressive, self-serving entities well entrenched in govt money and commercial licenses, which benefit from "us-vs-them" language and tactics. In this writers opinion, these are truly historic events, not in the good way.
wbeckler 5y ago
This is a hard question because there are multiple factors, but temperature is a known factor. And the recent temperature highs are generally considered to be related to the climate crisis. 2020's historic heat and fires caused a shift toward a stronger climate attribution, and 2021 seems to me to be sealing the deal. If there were record heat waves and less fire this year, then I think the evidence would have pushed things away from climate attribution, but that didn't happen. The scary part of this is that forest fires have not been part of the climate models because scientists hadn't reached a strong enough confidence, but they are becoming a positive feedback loop as they release more carbon each year. And the climate models were already dire without forest fires.
pjc50 5y ago
In practice, you can't attribute a single fire to climate change. You can only attribute the overall number and intensity of fires to climate change. It's rather like asking which specific cigarette gave you lung cancer.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  However, like any scientific theory, it must be falsifiable. In other words, we can't just jump to "it's climate change, but you can't pinpoint it." Because otherwise, how do we prove that there is not a different potential cause? Trying to jump into these huge, world-scale theories comes with the risk of blinding us to alternative explanations that might be more valid.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  > [asking whether a fire is due to climate change is] like asking which specific cigarette gave you lung cancer That is a beautiful analogy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mistrial9 5y ago
yes to both causes

geerlingguy 5y ago

This is my quibble with reporting on weather events lately. Over in Germany, where they had massive flooding due to a ton of rain in a short period, everything about it is pinned on climate change, to the exclusion of discussing any other problems that can lead to disaster. How much could also be other human factors, like building up levees and flood control systems that aren't up to snuff and/or shift worse flooding problems downstream (this has been the case in many parts of the US for decades now; can we presume Europe is better in flood control management than the Army Corps and thousands of small river towns?).

warglebargle 5y ago
doesn’t really matter what the problem is attributed to when not enough is being done about either way (at least in the case of the US, can’t speak for Germany) I'd be all for attributing it to not sweeping forests well enough if that actually got the funding to start seriously combating the issue, it’s a positive feedback loop that needs to be mitigated
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  No, how about we be honest with ourselves first as to what the real root cause is? Answering "Yes, but...climate change!" to "Is the cause actually due to poor forestry management over the past 50 years?" doesn't actually solve anything.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    If it is bad forestry management, we can fix that and it's much easier to hold the people responsible for that job because it's a defined role that they failed at. Compared to how much climate change will supposedly cost us to fix and that it's much more arguable who is responsible for what...
    - warglebargle 5y ago
      part of the plan for mitigating climate change is better forest management…
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        Not hopeful in that, because it wasn't like California did good forest management with what we knew, but there were better strategies available. They did bad forest management, even compared to what we already know, and somehow they're going to do what they should have done already...
      - warglebargle 5y ago
        this is the problem… “california didn’t do this” “it’s not X it’s Y” - meanwhile forests burn; we’re going to die arguing. I’m going to go call my congressperson and end this frivolous argument! no offense!
  - warglebargle 5y ago
    Nothing has been done about “poor management” either so why exactly does it matter? Blame it on me for all I care, just convince half of congress do actually do something
Hokusai 5y ago
> could also be other human factors The cause for the failures have been unprecedented rainfall. There are a million possible factors that can influence the situation, climate change is the leading one. Let's fix it instead of discussing if climate change represents a 90% of the problem or just a 78%. Let's also spend trillions adding more safety for a worsening and more hostile climate. We could have saved that by taking action earlier, now we need to pay to keep ourselves safe. Let's act before it costs more money and more lives.
freeflight 5y ago
> Over in Germany, where they had massive flooding due to a ton of rain in a short period, everything about it is pinned on climate change, to the exclusion of discussing any other problems that can lead to disaster. Germany has had "once in century" floods every decade for a while now. It's a densely populated country, meaning people can't just move somewhere else and there are not large swaths of unpopulated/unused lands that could be repurposed for massive flood control systems. It's also not like we are talking about towns that have been built recently in risk-areas, we are talking about towns that have been in those places for centuries, sometimes over a millennia, which is a testament to how out of the ordinary these floods are.

pwarner 5y ago

What is it's both? Which I suspect strongly is the case...

jeffbee 5y ago

Nor sure if you are kidding or what but western US forests current have all-time-low fuel moisture content. This is a consequence of climate change. https://www.wfas.net/data/firedanger/graphs/NC/NC04_ERCg.png https://www.wfas.net/data/firedanger/graphs/NC/NC04_ERCg.png

gjsman-1000 5y ago
That graph is only over 2021, and doesn't specify where the "average" came from. It could be the Seasons for all we know. It's not enough by itself.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  It's a 25-year average. "We" know a lot about this. Your ignorance is not its own special kind of knowledge.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    I didn't dispute climate change's existence, and if your graph doesn't show what the Average is (where is your source that it is 25 years?), my point stands that your graph by itself is not proof.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    Prof. Scott Stephens UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources; dont phone for an appointment, he is busy right now Secondly, after crazy disasterous, world-headlines fires three years ago, Calif. Governor Gavin "perfect hairgel" Newsom appointed a blue-ribbon committee on tracking and dealing with these fires from a forestry point of view.. that committee publishes online and in fact as a Github repo. That committee has to work with aggressive, self-serving entities well entrenched in govt money and commercial licenses, which benefit from "us-vs-them" language and tactics. In this writers opinion, these are truly historic events, not in the good way.

wbeckler 5y ago

This is a hard question because there are multiple factors, but temperature is a known factor. And the recent temperature highs are generally considered to be related to the climate crisis. 2020's historic heat and fires caused a shift toward a stronger climate attribution, and 2021 seems to me to be sealing the deal. If there were record heat waves and less fire this year, then I think the evidence would have pushed things away from climate attribution, but that didn't happen. The scary part of this is that forest fires have not been part of the climate models because scientists hadn't reached a strong enough confidence, but they are becoming a positive feedback loop as they release more carbon each year. And the climate models were already dire without forest fires.

pjc50 5y ago

In practice, you can't attribute a single fire to climate change. You can only attribute the overall number and intensity of fires to climate change. It's rather like asking which specific cigarette gave you lung cancer.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
However, like any scientific theory, it must be falsifiable. In other words, we can't just jump to "it's climate change, but you can't pinpoint it." Because otherwise, how do we prove that there is not a different potential cause? Trying to jump into these huge, world-scale theories comes with the risk of blinding us to alternative explanations that might be more valid.
Jeff_Brown 5y ago
> [asking whether a fire is due to climate change is] like asking which specific cigarette gave you lung cancer That is a beautiful analogy.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mistrial9 5y ago

yes to both causes