California fires caused by global warming

[Zorro!]

Fast-Moving California Wildfires Boosted by Climate Change

Nearly two dozen large blazes have burnt more than 1 million acres of the state

www.scientificamerican.com

Boosted. The continual dryness of the climate due to global warming has contributed to the severity of the wildfires. And the season has just started.

CA has done as much as anyone to try to cut emissions yet these fires not only kill people, and a lot of people, but they foul the water sheds and produce many magnitudes more CO2 than is saved. Are you saying that there is nothing CA can do before next fire season to reduce wild fire risk?

Nothing? I'm sure more can be done.

What a lot of people seem to have forgotten in these divisive times is that all governance is a balancing act. Never is that more clear when the subject is man's relationship to nature.

If I had a magic wand, I would limit the number homes being built in the forested areas. There are wildfires in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Arizona. But all that is talked about are the wild fires in populated areas which happen to be along the west coast. The governors of the aforementioned states are not doing much better than California.

Good points. I think it's important that we focus on solutions, because this is a situation that can be improved with sensible policy.

Prior to the Gold Rush, CA forests were at a density of of about 40 trees per acre. After a hundred years of fire suppression they are now 400 or more per acre, and the fires that that burn at that density are just devastating. Sensible thinning, with the costs offset by selling the lumber is just a win/win for everyone.

These fires are just terrible, the human loss of life is horrific, but, no one even talks about the wild life losses. These fires with a good wind behind them are sometimes traveling 50 miles per hour or more. These fire storms are just horrific. Hopefully they are reaching a tipping point where everyone is willing to do what's necessary to improve the situation. They have a lot of good choices here, and it's clear that the current policy isn't one that is giving anyone the outcome they want.

Hard and unpopular decisions are coming.

Each one of those houses at the end of a cul de sac overlooking a picturesque canyon represents multiple thousands of dollars in property taxes. That is why development is encouraged; the support the programs that people who own those houses do not use directly but (and this is the hard sell) benefit from. Responsible public servants know the programs are important so they have to find a way to fund them. If they can have the county planning department open up development in these areas, they can tax the properties and boom, the program is funded. The calculation of "what if there is a wildfire" seems unnecessary..."what if there is an earthquake and the houses go tumbling down the hill"? Mind you; I'm not saying the calculations are unnecessary, city planners see it that way. Maybe now they'll pump the brakes on endless development

NJ is almost 5 times the population density of CA.

CA isn't even in the top 10 in terms of density.

Population density in the U.S., by state 2021 | Statista

In 2021, Washington, D.C.

www.statista.com

 

[basquebromance]

i call the fires "California's Catastrophic Climate (C)apocalypse Calamity"!

the Green New Deal is really the Green New Nightmare

 

[JimBowie1958]

Wow, Global Warming only affects fires along the West Coast! and not in CaNada!

 

[tyroneweaver]

Fast-Moving California Wildfires Boosted by Climate Change

Nearly two dozen large blazes have burnt more than 1 million acres of the state

www.scientificamerican.com

Boosted. The continual dryness of the climate due to global warming has contributed to the severity of the wildfires. And the season has just started.

Ah, it wasn't due to AGW, but weather. Besides, the fires are out west in the US. That said, isn't the end of the world due to a global fire?

The scientific consensus is that global warming and the dryness it promotes boosts the severity of wildfires. As for the end of the world....who knows.

Man arrested on arson allegation in wildfire west of Eugene, deputies say

Arson suspect arrested after allegedly starting multiple fires in Spokane on Monday

WSP: Man arrested for setting fire in median of SR 167 in Puyallup

Arson investigation underway where human remains found at Almeda fire in Ashland, chief says

Fires burning near Lincoln City scorch 2,400 acres; officials report favorable shift in winds

 

[tyroneweaver]

Is anyone here that big of a dolt to actually believe such a utterly ridiculous claim

The real reason is the “dimwitted drug addicts” who run the California Forrests and parks.
Just have to love affirmative action
You have the biggest morons in the country who receive such important jobs ( and since they have zero education) you see California look like hades .
We can smell the smoke even in Vegas and it’s bad
Such vacuous worms in California

oh the irony. The left coast preaches to us dummies and the rest of the nation about air pollution yet they're dumping more carbon foot prints in the atmosphere than anyone.
We can hardly breath here in Burley

 

[dannyboys]

Here's the real lowdown. We need to vote all the libturd governors out!!!

"Regarding reducing the fuel load, in an interview four months ago, Newsom said that there are “Hundreds of millions of dead trees” in the state and that it cost his father $35,000 to clear “a small little patch of dead trees” on his property.
Newsom didn’t admit it, but the outrageous cost to remove a few dead trees from private land is a consequence of California’s Byzantine environmental regulatory patchwork.

This is California’s big secret: it’s not climate change that’s burning up the forests, killing people, and destroying hundreds of homes; it’s decades of environmental mismanagement that has created a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush.

This dangerous situation attracted attention from President Donald Trump who, during the height of California’s wildfires last year insisted that “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor."

The irony is that forest management is so bad on public lands that a new report, ordered by the California legislature in 2010, shows that the portion of California's National Forests protected from timber harvesting is now a net contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fires and trees killed by insects and disease.

Every year about 3.8 billion board feet of new timber grows in the Golden State, capturing almost one metric ton of CO2 per acre in the productive timberland areas. Trees grow until they die, burn, or get harvested. If harvesting declines, tree mortality and fires increase. It’s the tyranny of math.

In the early 1990s, a series of restrictions were placed on logging in the West to protect the Spotted Owl. As it turned out, nature was more complicated than expected, with owl numbers continuing to decline—even after the California timber harvest plummeted—due to predation from other raptors.

In the meantime, the harvest fell below the growth rate in the 1990s, to about 1.5 billion board feet per year over the past decade. The tree harvest on federal lands is now one-tenth of what it was in 1988, President Reagan’s last full year in office.

The California forest report draft concludes by observing that the “Current flux [of CO2] may not be sustainable without forest management!” while citing the challenge of “Aging of forests on federal lands.”

Unlike much of the American South and East, California has a distinct wet season, with Pacific storms rolling in by November or December and wrapping up by March. In even the wettest years (2016-17 was the wettest in 122 years) much of California is bone-dry by late fall. Thus, it isn’t climate change that sets the conditions for fires—it’s California’s natural weather pattern. Comparing acres burned in wildfires to weather and tree harvest data, there appears to be little link to climate—but a big connection to the growing forest fuel load, especially on government land.

Which brings us back to policy. If federal and state environmental policies continue to make it difficult and costly to harvest timber and manage the fuel load, then the wildfires will continue and they will be bigger and deadlier. This will, in due course, cause some politicians to blame the fires on climate change.

In the meantime, the timber harvest infrastructure is less than one-third of what it was 30 years ago, meaning that even if politicians were sincere in wanting to manage the public forests, there few people remaining to manage them."

Wildfires Caused By Bad Environmental Policy Are Causing California Forests To Be Net CO2 Emitters

If federal and state environmental policies continue to make it difficult and costly to harvest timber and manage the fuel load, then the wildfires will continue and they will be bigger and deadlier. This will, in due course, cause some politicians to blame the fires on climate change.

www.forbes.com

Yeah Global Warming AND Antifa arsonists.