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2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

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Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#101

Post by d33lio »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #5

Redwoods not only survive the fires, they tend to proliferate afterwards. After lesser trees have been cleared out by the fires, redwood seedlings take root. Redwoods also thrive in low rain areas that are prone to fog because they benefit from the fog in a way that other trees do not. I once suggested redwoods as an alternate or additional metaphor for giftedness re Stephanie Tolan's "Is it a cheetah?" https://www.s…

One of the coolest communities of people I met in the Bay Area / old school Silicon Valley (think Los Altos / Palo Alto) were the long-time residents who grew redwood sapplings in their garages / back-yards and planned regular excursions to maintain forests and to plant these saplings.

For those who don't know, redwood / sequoia saplings take years to grow in captivity and are actually quite complex to collect and sow.

To be frank, the Bay Area wasn't a great fit for me - but communities like this keep itching at me to move back from the east coast.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#102

Post by JackFr »

henearkr wrote: post #79
DoreenMichele wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. I know there is a pine that does that, but I'm in rough shape and trying to stay out of trouble, which is challenging for me under the best of circumstances. I remember the pine cone of I think a yellow pine species opens up at 170 degrees, so it typically opens in response to fire. A quick google suggests it is called a Jack Pine. Hurricanes are also thought to be responsible for bringing fly species t…

Why shut up? Your post was very informative and thanks to you I learned a lot of things! However, I bet that the scale of the wildfires in our apocalyptic late-Anthropocene is something hardly seen before in healthy forests... all these species would be better off with less of it.

> late-Anthropocene

Is it always the late-Anthropocene, or do you know something?

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#103

Post by biophysboy »

gdubs wrote: post #97
DoreenMichele wrote: post #5

Redwoods not only survive the fires, they tend to proliferate afterwards. After lesser trees have been cleared out by the fires, redwood seedlings take root. Redwoods also thrive in low rain areas that are prone to fog because they benefit from the fog in a way that other trees do not. I once suggested redwoods as an alternate or additional metaphor for giftedness re Stephanie Tolan's "Is it a cheetah?" https://www.s…

Not all fires are created equal. While fires are a natural part of many ecosystems, many of today’s fires are more powerful and become “ladder fires” where a build-up of fuel on the ground causes the fire to reach the crowns and cause severe damage to even fire-resistant species.

Am I being overly optimistic if I think "hey maybe the buildup of fuel on the ground goes away in a fire"?

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#104

Post by komali2 »

biophysboy wrote: post #103
gdubs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all fires are created equal. While fires are a natural part of many ecosystems, many of today’s fires are more powerful and become “ladder fires” where a build-up of fuel on the ground causes the fire to reach the crowns and cause severe damage to even fire-resistant species.

Am I being overly optimistic if I think "hey maybe the buildup of fuel on the ground goes away in a fire"?

No, but the point is if the buildup goes for too long, what the controlled fires were trying to prevent becomes reality: a firestorm strong enough to burn to the tops of the trees.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#105

Post by blhack »

Climate change is real, but climate change includes both changing temperatures and rain patterns AND change to the local climate of the forest.

When we prevent small fires from happening that burn out all of the small bushes and trees on the forest floor, we dramatically change the climate of the forest. When we build houses in the middle of the forest and then fight the fires that threaten them, we just build up more fuel that will eventually result in giant fires like the ones we are seeing now.

Of course temperature changes and changes in rain make this all worse as well.

But if we're going to be honest about climate change, then we need to be honest about climate change. We have entire government agencies whose sole purpose is to fight against the natural ecology of the forest.

Something big that we can do to both allow for houses and towns to exist in the forest, and live harmoniously with the environment: allow logging companies to come in and tend to the forest. Just regulate them.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#106

Post by [deleted] »

gdubs wrote: post #99

I was elated to read this, and then disappointed at the comments here. It seems to be feeding an argument of “see, fires are natural and these trees are old - Climate Change is a fear-mongering hoax!” Firestorms are not the meandering fires that have long been a natural part of ecosystems. Ladder fires — where fire leaves the forest floor, up to the crowns, creating a wall of fire that can change weather patterns — a…

[deleted]

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#107

Post by greentimer »

Many commentators have blamed climate change for the fires because it is fashionable, especially on the left, to do so. The reality is that the very small change in temperatures produced by climate change isn't sufficient to produce a change in the rate of fires. We'll have to wait a long time for climate change to produce such effects, if it ever does. I would lay the blame more on our society's technological stagnation in terms of its inability to come up with better technologies than those that have existed since the 1950s to fit fires. We haven't buried our power lines, we don't have strategically positioned water storage systems, we don't have huge drones specifically for firefighting that could dump more water on the fires than an ordinary helicopter could.

I'd say this article barely meets HN's standards of something that garners intellectual interest and is more the type of thing I'd expect to see on Reddit alongside cat videos. And then of course there is the environmentalist bent that the redwoods of at most sentimental value were the important thing that burned down, rather than things of material value to people. I wonder if anyone ended up homeless as a result of the fires.

According to the theory of radical skepticism it is very tough to put a probability bound on supposedly low probability disasters like fires, and so we must be prepared for them.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#108

Post by eloff »

gdubs wrote: post #99

I was elated to read this, and then disappointed at the comments here. It seems to be feeding an argument of “see, fires are natural and these trees are old - Climate Change is a fear-mongering hoax!” Firestorms are not the meandering fires that have long been a natural part of ecosystems. Ladder fires — where fire leaves the forest floor, up to the crowns, creating a wall of fire that can change weather patterns — a…

The world is getting hotter, but only parts of it are getting drier. Parts of it are getting wetter. Overall it will get wetter. For each 1C rise in temperature, the air can hold about 7% [1] more water vapor. Warmer air above warmer oceans will pick up more water and dump it over much the same places as it does now, although the prevailing winds and ocean currents changing will also change that up.

I think the effect will mostly be that dry places will get drier and wet places will get wetter. Which is a disagreeable change, to be sure.

[1] http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr_oa/c047p123.pdf

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#109

Post by umvi »

woofie11 wrote: post #95
umvi wrote: post #86

Let's take a moment and recognize the fear-mongering going on a few days ago where there were articles saying "this time is different because of climate change, this time climate change super fires have caused a national treasure to be destroyed"

I'm not quite sure that was fearmongering, so much as people operating from limited information. It's reasonable that people will make mistakes.

Well it seems like the prevailing emotion in times of limited information is fear. You see dire forecasts that embody people's worst fears prefixed with probability qualifiers. The same has happened many times in the past (and is still happening now) with Covid, climate change, upcoming election, etc.

It is reasonable people will make mistakes, lots of them, so let's stop prefixing predictions with probability qualifiers "it's very likely X will happen" as if our limited information is enough to quantify a probability % of liklihood. I've seen dozens of "very likely" predictions on HN fall flat once more information came out within the past few years alone.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#110

Post by maerF0x0 »

eloff wrote: post #108
gdubs wrote: post #99

I was elated to read this, and then disappointed at the comments here. It seems to be feeding an argument of “see, fires are natural and these trees are old - Climate Change is a fear-mongering hoax!” Firestorms are not the meandering fires that have long been a natural part of ecosystems. Ladder fires — where fire leaves the forest floor, up to the crowns, creating a wall of fire that can change weather patterns — a…

The world is getting hotter, but only parts of it are getting drier. Parts of it are getting wetter. Overall it will get wetter. For each 1C rise in temperature, the air can hold about 7% [1] more water vapor. Warmer air above warmer oceans will pick up more water and dump it over much the same places as it does now, although the prevailing winds and ocean currents changing will also change that up. I think the effec…

Luckily we dont have to just sit idly and watch it, we can redistribute water intelligently rather than just letting it flood rapidly back to the ocean.

I'm all for avoiding climate change, but also want us to be real that we dont have to play an entirely passive role in adapting to what might be a new normal

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