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The smoke levels in the Western USA are horrible, and are only going to get worse due to the inability of state administrations to allocate proper funding for b

The smoke levels in the Western USA are horrible, and are only going to get worse due to the inability of state administrations to allocate proper funding for brush clearing and controlled burns, and this is only compounded by the drought we're experiencing.

mc32 4y ago
The western US is only able to support this level of population due to modern infrastructure. In other words the population density is being subsidized by technology to accommodate beyond its carrying capacity. So more technology and resource management (diversion) or relocate the population to naturally sustainable areas.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  We have been above the environmental carrying capacity due to technology since the first guy in Mesopotamia realized if he dug a ditch to grab some of the water from the Euphrates he could get water to repeatedly water his crops. Thats the whole history of humanity has been figuring out a way to make a locality more hospitable to human beings using technology. What you say on the surface sounds reasonable but really is just a veneer of neo-ludtisim over a malthusian mindset. Humanity has changed the environment, we will do so again and again to improve the quality of life we experience.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    > veneer of neo-ludtisim over a malthusian mindset sure, I will take that veneer and counter -- there is such a thing as balance in dynamic systems. Tragedies of excess are being played out now, seventy years after a "boom times for all" expansion by any means necessary. Before 1970, outrageously excessive pollutors in many areas of the USA were given slap on the wrist oversight, calling the outraged greens things like "neo-luddites" ..
  - mc32 4y ago
    You can't expect things to output 100% 100% of the time. Things will fail and if you make plans on 100% always being there, you will then have catastrophic failures. That is if your plan is to rely on your ducks always being in a row, you will fail because systems being systems will have ducks that stray resulting in failure. So yeah maybe we can sustain 100MM people in the west if all things work perfectly, but when they fail, then there will be pain and suffering because there is no surplus to play with.
    - buscoquadnary 4y ago
      “spend all the wages they earn and enjoy themselves while they can appears to be evident from the number of families that, upon the failure of any great manufactory, immediately fall upon the parish,” - Sir Thomas Malthus Who predicted that we'd all be dead and the collapse would come hundreds of years ago, and said letting the Irish potato famine kill them off was natural, requisite and just. Yet, here we are still defying the Malthusian imperative, just like when everyone said the world was going to end when the Gulf states controlled all the oil, then we figured out how to make shale oil work, or before that when we invented the iron plow, or a dozen other things that have shown Malthus wrong time and time again. Meanwhile the people protesting scarcity and the need to reduce the consumption of resources have consistently been behind the greatest man made famines in history. We figured out things before we will figure it out again, I have faith in the ability of humanity to innovate, to adapt and to overcome.
    - 8note 4y ago
      This is why we have so much food waste - things are running way above 100% all the time, and failures bring us closer to 100%
someguydave 4y ago
Not to mention millions of acres of federal forests where natural fires are quenched and logging is prohibited
pengaru 4y ago
In CA, which amounts to a good junk of the west coast, over half the forest acres are under the Fed's purview. AIUI that split of jurisdictions is a significant part of the problem.
- jfk13 4y ago
  > a good junk of the west coast What a delightful turn of phrase!
  - pengaru 4y ago
    Hah! The sad thing is that wasn't even autocorrect, just being half asleep.
newaccount2021 4y ago
Plenty of CA money available to fund pissing-match billboards in FL and TX though, go figure Apparently the people have spoken...teacher pay, water management, brush clearing? These are less important than the "war" with Rick DeSantis over....what exactly?
- azinman2 4y ago
  Most of what burns is federal land.
DiffEq 4y ago
This is a wild idea…but perhaps people can spend a few less hours watching the tv and surfing the social web and volunteer to clean up the dead underbrush that allows such fires to spread so violently and frequently.
- dbrueck 4y ago
  Hehe, you are woefully underestimating the size of the Big Blue Room.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  They never talk about who did all that brush clearing and controlled burns back in the day. Something something native Americans did 200 years ago, do they expect them to return?
- bombcar 4y ago
  This basically occurs in other parts of the country where much of the existing forest is maintained timber land. The problem is the absolute scale of the size of the western "unmaintained forest land" which includes national parks, state parks, BLM land, etc.
x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
I remember reading an article about the wildfires which was super eye-opening. Basically they said they could burn 100K acres a year, and still have an unacceptable fuel load for about 40 years. While controlled burns are the prescription, the political risk is too high in the sense that if a controlled burn breaks containment heads will roll. It doesn't help that even during controlled burns that don't escape, localities will complain about the smoke to their local reps who put the kibash on controlled burns.
- jerlam 4y ago
  100K burned acres a year though isn't a lot though. The past five years, California has averaged well over 1 million acres burned a year. Even in the decade before that, 250K burned acres would be considered a light year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires#Area_burned_per_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires#A...
  - x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
    Goodness, the amount of area burned in the past two years is enormous compared to the years prior.
dahart 4y ago
> are only going to get worse I’m so thankful this year was mostly smoke free, but last year was a dystopian nightmare for like 3 or 4 months, it ended all outdoor activity for most of the summer and fall. Out of desperation, I resorted to riding my bike a few times wearing a ventilator mask, but wow was that uncomfortable. I’m really not looking forward to worse, but of course I know you’re probably right. With the size & scale of these fires I keep wondering how everything flammable hasn’t burned already in the last five or six years?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Which mask were you using? The quite expensive "all day" ones for painters can be relatively comfortable, and the ones that look like beekeeper hats even more so.
  - dahart 4y ago
    I was using a cheap disposable N95 ventilator from Home Depot. Yeah if it gets bad again I will take your advice and invest in a professional mask. Sweating into the mask was probably the worst part, I was having to remove it often to wipe everything down, and the mask was kind of starting to disintegrate after a couple hours. It was, in a weird way, nice to get shocked with the taste & smell of smoke every time I took off the mask, I could tell it was working and helping keep my air much cleaner.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Yeah, the slightly more expensive N95s are nice (I use https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-N95-Professional-Multi-Purpose-Valved-Respirator-10-Pack-48-73-4014/310392944 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-N95-Professional-Multi... for example) but the big ones are really more comfortable. Sweat is always the main problem after you tighten the bands enough that you're not leaking air on the sides. And if you're getting irritants in your eyes, you may want to go to a full face mask; zee goggles don't do much except against falling nails, dirt, etc.
      - 4y ago
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
> brush clearing and controlled burns If you think you can combat climate change with "brush clearing and controlled burns" you are mistaken.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  that brush clearing and controlled burns is specific to drought-stricken forests
  - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    So maybe just burn the whole forest down? That'll solve it.
    - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
      This happend in France last summer a few times. Control fires got completely out of hand and turned into full apocalypse wild fires. Turns out that fire is hard to manage...
      - mistrial9 4y ago
        yeah - here also with the Hermit's Peak fire due to a prescribed burn, Las Dispensas, Sante Fe New Mexico National Forest, May 2022. They had to evacuate the Los Alamos National Labs ! iir.. catastrophic wildfire
ortusdux 4y ago
https://crosscut.com/environment/2022/02/billions-federal-dollars-headed-western-forests-manage-fires https://crosscut.com/environment/2022/02/billions-federal-do... https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/04/inside-washingtons-328m-push-prevent-disastrous-wildfires https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/04/inside-washingtons-328... Unfortunately, it seems that forest management funding is a political issue, so there is a good chance these funds will dry up depending on the outcome of the midterms.

mc32 4y ago

The western US is only able to support this level of population due to modern infrastructure. In other words the population density is being subsidized by technology to accommodate beyond its carrying capacity. So more technology and resource management (diversion) or relocate the population to naturally sustainable areas.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
buscoquadnary 4y ago
We have been above the environmental carrying capacity due to technology since the first guy in Mesopotamia realized if he dug a ditch to grab some of the water from the Euphrates he could get water to repeatedly water his crops. Thats the whole history of humanity has been figuring out a way to make a locality more hospitable to human beings using technology. What you say on the surface sounds reasonable but really is just a veneer of neo-ludtisim over a malthusian mindset. Humanity has changed the environment, we will do so again and again to improve the quality of life we experience.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  > veneer of neo-ludtisim over a malthusian mindset sure, I will take that veneer and counter -- there is such a thing as balance in dynamic systems. Tragedies of excess are being played out now, seventy years after a "boom times for all" expansion by any means necessary. Before 1970, outrageously excessive pollutors in many areas of the USA were given slap on the wrist oversight, calling the outraged greens things like "neo-luddites" ..
- mc32 4y ago
  You can't expect things to output 100% 100% of the time. Things will fail and if you make plans on 100% always being there, you will then have catastrophic failures. That is if your plan is to rely on your ducks always being in a row, you will fail because systems being systems will have ducks that stray resulting in failure. So yeah maybe we can sustain 100MM people in the west if all things work perfectly, but when they fail, then there will be pain and suffering because there is no surplus to play with.
  - buscoquadnary 4y ago
    “spend all the wages they earn and enjoy themselves while they can appears to be evident from the number of families that, upon the failure of any great manufactory, immediately fall upon the parish,” - Sir Thomas Malthus Who predicted that we'd all be dead and the collapse would come hundreds of years ago, and said letting the Irish potato famine kill them off was natural, requisite and just. Yet, here we are still defying the Malthusian imperative, just like when everyone said the world was going to end when the Gulf states controlled all the oil, then we figured out how to make shale oil work, or before that when we invented the iron plow, or a dozen other things that have shown Malthus wrong time and time again. Meanwhile the people protesting scarcity and the need to reduce the consumption of resources have consistently been behind the greatest man made famines in history. We figured out things before we will figure it out again, I have faith in the ability of humanity to innovate, to adapt and to overcome.
  - 8note 4y ago
    This is why we have so much food waste - things are running way above 100% all the time, and failures bring us closer to 100%

someguydave 4y ago

Not to mention millions of acres of federal forests where natural fires are quenched and logging is prohibited

pengaru 4y ago

In CA, which amounts to a good junk of the west coast, over half the forest acres are under the Fed's purview. AIUI that split of jurisdictions is a significant part of the problem.

jfk13 4y ago
> a good junk of the west coast What a delightful turn of phrase!
- pengaru 4y ago
  Hah! The sad thing is that wasn't even autocorrect, just being half asleep.

newaccount2021 4y ago

Plenty of CA money available to fund pissing-match billboards in FL and TX though, go figure Apparently the people have spoken...teacher pay, water management, brush clearing? These are less important than the "war" with Rick DeSantis over....what exactly?

azinman2 4y ago
Most of what burns is federal land.

DiffEq 4y ago

This is a wild idea…but perhaps people can spend a few less hours watching the tv and surfing the social web and volunteer to clean up the dead underbrush that allows such fires to spread so violently and frequently.

dbrueck 4y ago
Hehe, you are woefully underestimating the size of the Big Blue Room.
hindsightbias 4y ago
They never talk about who did all that brush clearing and controlled burns back in the day. Something something native Americans did 200 years ago, do they expect them to return?
bombcar 4y ago
This basically occurs in other parts of the country where much of the existing forest is maintained timber land. The problem is the absolute scale of the size of the western "unmaintained forest land" which includes national parks, state parks, BLM land, etc.

x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago

I remember reading an article about the wildfires which was super eye-opening. Basically they said they could burn 100K acres a year, and still have an unacceptable fuel load for about 40 years. While controlled burns are the prescription, the political risk is too high in the sense that if a controlled burn breaks containment heads will roll. It doesn't help that even during controlled burns that don't escape, localities will complain about the smoke to their local reps who put the kibash on controlled burns.

jerlam 4y ago
100K burned acres a year though isn't a lot though. The past five years, California has averaged well over 1 million acres burned a year. Even in the decade before that, 250K burned acres would be considered a light year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires#Area_burned_per_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires#A...
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
  Goodness, the amount of area burned in the past two years is enormous compared to the years prior.

dahart 4y ago

> are only going to get worse I’m so thankful this year was mostly smoke free, but last year was a dystopian nightmare for like 3 or 4 months, it ended all outdoor activity for most of the summer and fall. Out of desperation, I resorted to riding my bike a few times wearing a ventilator mask, but wow was that uncomfortable. I’m really not looking forward to worse, but of course I know you’re probably right. With the size & scale of these fires I keep wondering how everything flammable hasn’t burned already in the last five or six years?

bombcar 4y ago
Which mask were you using? The quite expensive "all day" ones for painters can be relatively comfortable, and the ones that look like beekeeper hats even more so.
- dahart 4y ago
  I was using a cheap disposable N95 ventilator from Home Depot. Yeah if it gets bad again I will take your advice and invest in a professional mask. Sweating into the mask was probably the worst part, I was having to remove it often to wipe everything down, and the mask was kind of starting to disintegrate after a couple hours. It was, in a weird way, nice to get shocked with the taste & smell of smoke every time I took off the mask, I could tell it was working and helping keep my air much cleaner.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, the slightly more expensive N95s are nice (I use https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-N95-Professional-Multi-Purpose-Valved-Respirator-10-Pack-48-73-4014/310392944 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-N95-Professional-Multi... for example) but the big ones are really more comfortable. Sweat is always the main problem after you tighten the bands enough that you're not leaking air on the sides. And if you're getting irritants in your eyes, you may want to go to a full face mask; zee goggles don't do much except against falling nails, dirt, etc.
    - 4y ago

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

> brush clearing and controlled burns If you think you can combat climate change with "brush clearing and controlled burns" you are mistaken.

mistrial9 4y ago
that brush clearing and controlled burns is specific to drought-stricken forests
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  So maybe just burn the whole forest down? That'll solve it.
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    This happend in France last summer a few times. Control fires got completely out of hand and turned into full apocalypse wild fires. Turns out that fire is hard to manage...
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      yeah - here also with the Hermit's Peak fire due to a prescribed burn, Las Dispensas, Sante Fe New Mexico National Forest, May 2022. They had to evacuate the Los Alamos National Labs ! iir.. catastrophic wildfire

ortusdux 4y ago

https://crosscut.com/environment/2022/02/billions-federal-dollars-headed-western-forests-manage-fires https://crosscut.com/environment/2022/02/billions-federal-do... https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/04/inside-washingtons-328m-push-prevent-disastrous-wildfires https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/04/inside-washingtons-328... Unfortunately, it seems that forest management funding is a political issue, so there is a good chance these funds will dry up depending on the outcome of the midterms.