Climate change is not the dominant factor. Pre-1800, about 1.8 million hectare burned each year in CA: https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservatio

Climate change is not the dominant factor. Pre-1800, about 1.8 million hectare burned each year in CA: https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/FireForestEcology/FireScienceResearch/FireHistory/FireHistory-Stephens07.pdf https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/Fi... > The idea that US wildfire area of approximately two million ha annually is extreme is certainly a 20th or 21st century perspective. Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period. And from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345#d3e1427 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201... > Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. Regarding fire severity, limited data are available. For the western USA, they indicate little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement. We have simply been lucky, so far, that mass settlement in an area of the US that experiences very regular fires and 200-year droughts has happened to affect us so little. In the past other civilizations have had to leave the area completely.