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@cpncrunch - for some reason it's not letting me respond directly to your comment. The link you have provided seems to show a decrease in total fires but some

• cpncrunch 3y ago
  I think HN does that deliberately to slow down arguments. >The link you have provided seems to show a decrease in total fires but some increase in actual area burned. There seem to be two aspects to area burned: many years it is very low, and then every few years there is a very large burn. Those very large burns were bigger in the 80s than in the past 10 years. You could look at the average, but that probably isn't going to show anything useful (which is probably why they haven't put it on the graph). Both the Mercury News article and this Canadian Natural Resources document say that the main reason for the changes is due to human behaviour rather than climate: factors such as chopping down burned trees instead of leaving them, putting out every fire that is found, more people going into the wilderness, etc. If someone is arguing that climate change is causing drier areas which results in more wildfires or larger wildfires, it's a poor argument if the data doesn't actually show that there are more wildfires or larger "big burns" now than in the 80s (or pre-gold rush).