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This last summer, I drove through most of the California national forests on the eastern side of the state. After seeing all the devastation from the previous f

This last summer, I drove through most of the California national forests on the eastern side of the state. After seeing all the devastation from the previous fires, I'm not sure that there is that much left to burn at this point. I feel like between PG&E fixing their shit (saw lots of trucks doing repair work) and all the existing damage, that we're going to get to some sort of equilibrium where we won't have as bad of fires every year.

baggy_trough 4y ago
There is much, much more left to burn.
scifibestfi 4y ago
It's more about forest management, which they largely stopped doing in past decades and were supposed to start back up. They are far, far behind. Until they catch up the wildfires will continue burning massive amounts of fuel unimpeded.
- olivermarks 4y ago
  In California Newsom actually lied about this with zero media pushback. https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/06/23/newsom-misled-the-public-about-wildfire-prevention-efforts-ahead-of-worst-fire-season-on-record/ https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/06/23/newsom-misled-t... 'Newsom overstated, by an astounding 690%, the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities. Newsom has claimed that 35 “priority projects” carried out as a result of his executive order resulted in fire prevention work on 90,000 acres. But the state’s own data show the actual number is 11,399.' This is outrageous on so many levels, but the media is far more interested in the relentless drum beat around climate anxiety than they are in pushing for any practical measures. Meanwhile the Sierra club are heavily invested in burning wood to make electricity. What a mess! Look up 'biomass' here: https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/ https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/
  - Melatonic 4y ago
    No idea about Newsom but that is definitely not true about the Sierra Club
    - olivermarks 4y ago
      ? The film 'planet of the humans' went into this in great detail followed by. lot of discussion. https://planetofthehumans.com/2020/04/29/response-to-the-sierra-club-and-aspiration-about-planet-of-the-humans/ https://planetofthehumans.com/2020/04/29/response-to-the-sie...
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Yea, but then you watch something like this [0] and realize that things are a lot more depressing in the world than what Newsom does or the news reports on. I'm not saying we (in Calfornia) should continue to contribute to the problem, but the problem is a lot bigger than what we can see or do anything about. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTio_0rwR1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTio_0rwR1s
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > the media That's a pretty useless qualifier. There's no massive conspiracy amongst journalists. In fact, one of the single most popular news outlets in the world is actively pushing an agenda opposite of climate anxiety.
    - coryrc 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        So there are ~6500 journalists, and about 400 (about 6%) of the ones who consider themselves left-leaning joined a club. It dissolved almost 15 years ago and got replaced with another group that has less than 200 members. If that's your idea of a massive conspiracy, I don't know what to say, other than thank you for affirming that 'the media' does not describe anything like a monolithic group of people with shared ideology (aside, from, you know, thinking it is important to report the news).
- rnk 4y ago
  forest management is a multifaceted and complex topic. For some people that literally means cut down all the trees to reduce the fire danger. It could mean letting fires burn so they destroy the accumulated fuels from suppressing fires but maybe stop them if they get close to buildings and people. It could mean actively burning areas during the wet season to reduce the fuel. It could mean just do nothing, let it burn and go back to natural. It could mean actively cleaning up undergrowth. Different groups hate and love all of these.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  I've been hearing about how we (California, not sure about other states) aren't doing proper forest management, and that we need to allow it to burn, since I was a kid in elementary school in the late '80s. Don't hold your breath.
crumpled 4y ago
I live near a National Forest in California. I wonder about this sometimes. I also drove on the East side this year. I have reached the opposite conclusion. I think that narrative is appealing in a way that is harmful.
Syonyk 4y ago
Don't drive. Fly if you want to get a sense of the problem. We have somewhere in the range of 360 million acres of forest in the western United States, counting Alaska [0]. Wildfires in the US burn about 7 million acres a year [1]. > To date, 61,390 wildfires have burned 7,251,835 acres. This is the most wildfires reported to-date in the past 10 years. The number of acres burned this year is above the 10-year average of 6,859,200 acres. That's about 2% of the "western forest land" burned every year, and do recall that it grows back. We are nowhere near being out of forest to burn. [0]: https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Climate-Change/Habitats/Western-Forests https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Thr... [1]: https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/nfn https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/nfn
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Siberia is also having huge problems with this as well - so much damn forest!
- bombcar 4y ago
  I wonder what the average "no humans involved at all" lifespan between burns of a forest is. If we knew that, we could calculate backwards from 360 million acres to work out how many acres "should" burn a year. Of course, there are different kinds of "forest fires" - quick ground ones in forest without much brush and slow hot ones that eat everything, including the biggest trees in clogged forests.
lazide 4y ago
You’re just seeing the areas close to the roads, which also tend to be those that burn more often or get treated easiest. Go a little further back or look at aerial photos, and it’s just a tiny drop in the bucket. And those more remote areas are often far worse/more heavily overgrown.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > close to the roads, which also tend to be those that burn more often That's a good point. Maybe we need to do a better job clearing the brush near roads? Seems like that's a common place for fires to start. One careless cigarette, or a malfunctioning wheel bearing that sparks, or a blowout that puts the rim on the pavement. All sorts of things can go wrong mechanically that will start a fire when things are dry enough. That's always what sort of amazes me. I gather there must be sparks all the time, but normally things are humid enough that it just goes out. When we get a few days of abnormally dry, hot weather, fires seem to start practically out of thin air. Everyone starts getting jittery wondering why people are starting fires. That can't really be the reason, right? The triggers are always there but usually amount to nothing, that has to be it.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Well, in many ways, it’s good for them to catch on fire. You can think of a forest like a giant spring or capacitor. The more it grows (and doesn’t burn or rot), the more energy is in the system, and the bigger ‘sproing’, ‘zap’, ‘omg wildfire’ you’ll get. The forests evolved to deal with fire because fire is inevitable. Eventually, something always triggers the spring release or touches the capacitor, either people (pre-historic or modern), lightning, rocks falling and sparking, whatever. more frequent fires means less explosive fires, and more moderate ones. Which are easier for everything to recover from and less damaging. The Sierras have had humans setting fires for 10k+ years for this reason. The fires in Yosemite back in the 90s sterilized the ground for 10+ ft under the surface because it had been 100+ years since anyone had been allowed to burn anything there because of the western ‘fire bad’ mindset. And to be honest, our building and development practices don’t integrate with wildfire. We build too much, too into forests, and are too established. Pre-historic populations were nomadic and set fires on their way out for the year. Many of those areas still haven’t recovered to even have trees - just dense manzanita. It will be 100’s of years before they look anything like they did before. [http://npshistory.com/series/symposia/1/chap6.htm http://npshistory.com/series/symposia/1/chap6.htm] So we’re in a bit of a catch 22 in a lot of places. We have a huge volume of overgrown, dangerous forest ripe to explode in extremely damaging super hot fires, and we also need to get in the habit of letting things burn (when it won’t be catastrophic!) to reduce the accumulation of even more dangerous fuel.
jeffbee 4y ago
There is not an equilibrium that includes coniferous forests in the sierra south of Tahoe. Those are at this point vestigial fossil forests that cannot reestablish themselves under this climate. Mostly they've been killed by bark beetles, which is a side effect of climate change. Burning them is perfunctory.

baggy_trough 4y ago

There is much, much more left to burn.

scifibestfi 4y ago

It's more about forest management, which they largely stopped doing in past decades and were supposed to start back up. They are far, far behind. Until they catch up the wildfires will continue burning massive amounts of fuel unimpeded.

olivermarks 4y ago
In California Newsom actually lied about this with zero media pushback. https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/06/23/newsom-misled-the-public-about-wildfire-prevention-efforts-ahead-of-worst-fire-season-on-record/ https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/06/23/newsom-misled-t... 'Newsom overstated, by an astounding 690%, the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities. Newsom has claimed that 35 “priority projects” carried out as a result of his executive order resulted in fire prevention work on 90,000 acres. But the state’s own data show the actual number is 11,399.' This is outrageous on so many levels, but the media is far more interested in the relentless drum beat around climate anxiety than they are in pushing for any practical measures. Meanwhile the Sierra club are heavily invested in burning wood to make electricity. What a mess! Look up 'biomass' here: https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/ https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/
- Melatonic 4y ago
  No idea about Newsom but that is definitely not true about the Sierra Club
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    ? The film 'planet of the humans' went into this in great detail followed by. lot of discussion. https://planetofthehumans.com/2020/04/29/response-to-the-sierra-club-and-aspiration-about-planet-of-the-humans/ https://planetofthehumans.com/2020/04/29/response-to-the-sie...
- latchkey 4y ago
  Yea, but then you watch something like this [0] and realize that things are a lot more depressing in the world than what Newsom does or the news reports on. I'm not saying we (in Calfornia) should continue to contribute to the problem, but the problem is a lot bigger than what we can see or do anything about. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTio_0rwR1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTio_0rwR1s
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > the media That's a pretty useless qualifier. There's no massive conspiracy amongst journalists. In fact, one of the single most popular news outlets in the world is actively pushing an agenda opposite of climate anxiety.
  - coryrc 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      So there are ~6500 journalists, and about 400 (about 6%) of the ones who consider themselves left-leaning joined a club. It dissolved almost 15 years ago and got replaced with another group that has less than 200 members. If that's your idea of a massive conspiracy, I don't know what to say, other than thank you for affirming that 'the media' does not describe anything like a monolithic group of people with shared ideology (aside, from, you know, thinking it is important to report the news).
rnk 4y ago
forest management is a multifaceted and complex topic. For some people that literally means cut down all the trees to reduce the fire danger. It could mean letting fires burn so they destroy the accumulated fuels from suppressing fires but maybe stop them if they get close to buildings and people. It could mean actively burning areas during the wet season to reduce the fuel. It could mean just do nothing, let it burn and go back to natural. It could mean actively cleaning up undergrowth. Different groups hate and love all of these.
bcrosby95 4y ago
I've been hearing about how we (California, not sure about other states) aren't doing proper forest management, and that we need to allow it to burn, since I was a kid in elementary school in the late '80s. Don't hold your breath.

crumpled 4y ago

I live near a National Forest in California. I wonder about this sometimes. I also drove on the East side this year. I have reached the opposite conclusion. I think that narrative is appealing in a way that is harmful.

Syonyk 4y ago

Don't drive. Fly if you want to get a sense of the problem. We have somewhere in the range of 360 million acres of forest in the western United States, counting Alaska [0]. Wildfires in the US burn about 7 million acres a year [1]. > To date, 61,390 wildfires have burned 7,251,835 acres. This is the most wildfires reported to-date in the past 10 years. The number of acres burned this year is above the 10-year average of 6,859,200 acres. That's about 2% of the "western forest land" burned every year, and do recall that it grows back. We are nowhere near being out of forest to burn. [0]: https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Climate-Change/Habitats/Western-Forests https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Thr... [1]: https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/nfn https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/nfn

Melatonic 4y ago
Siberia is also having huge problems with this as well - so much damn forest!
bombcar 4y ago
I wonder what the average "no humans involved at all" lifespan between burns of a forest is. If we knew that, we could calculate backwards from 360 million acres to work out how many acres "should" burn a year. Of course, there are different kinds of "forest fires" - quick ground ones in forest without much brush and slow hot ones that eat everything, including the biggest trees in clogged forests.

lazide 4y ago

You’re just seeing the areas close to the roads, which also tend to be those that burn more often or get treated easiest. Go a little further back or look at aerial photos, and it’s just a tiny drop in the bucket. And those more remote areas are often far worse/more heavily overgrown.

rootusrootus 4y ago
> close to the roads, which also tend to be those that burn more often That's a good point. Maybe we need to do a better job clearing the brush near roads? Seems like that's a common place for fires to start. One careless cigarette, or a malfunctioning wheel bearing that sparks, or a blowout that puts the rim on the pavement. All sorts of things can go wrong mechanically that will start a fire when things are dry enough. That's always what sort of amazes me. I gather there must be sparks all the time, but normally things are humid enough that it just goes out. When we get a few days of abnormally dry, hot weather, fires seem to start practically out of thin air. Everyone starts getting jittery wondering why people are starting fires. That can't really be the reason, right? The triggers are always there but usually amount to nothing, that has to be it.
- lazide 4y ago
  Well, in many ways, it’s good for them to catch on fire. You can think of a forest like a giant spring or capacitor. The more it grows (and doesn’t burn or rot), the more energy is in the system, and the bigger ‘sproing’, ‘zap’, ‘omg wildfire’ you’ll get. The forests evolved to deal with fire because fire is inevitable. Eventually, something always triggers the spring release or touches the capacitor, either people (pre-historic or modern), lightning, rocks falling and sparking, whatever. more frequent fires means less explosive fires, and more moderate ones. Which are easier for everything to recover from and less damaging. The Sierras have had humans setting fires for 10k+ years for this reason. The fires in Yosemite back in the 90s sterilized the ground for 10+ ft under the surface because it had been 100+ years since anyone had been allowed to burn anything there because of the western ‘fire bad’ mindset. And to be honest, our building and development practices don’t integrate with wildfire. We build too much, too into forests, and are too established. Pre-historic populations were nomadic and set fires on their way out for the year. Many of those areas still haven’t recovered to even have trees - just dense manzanita. It will be 100’s of years before they look anything like they did before. [http://npshistory.com/series/symposia/1/chap6.htm http://npshistory.com/series/symposia/1/chap6.htm] So we’re in a bit of a catch 22 in a lot of places. We have a huge volume of overgrown, dangerous forest ripe to explode in extremely damaging super hot fires, and we also need to get in the habit of letting things burn (when it won’t be catastrophic!) to reduce the accumulation of even more dangerous fuel.

jeffbee 4y ago

There is not an equilibrium that includes coniferous forests in the sierra south of Tahoe. Those are at this point vestigial fossil forests that cannot reestablish themselves under this climate. Mostly they've been killed by bark beetles, which is a side effect of climate change. Burning them is perfunctory.