31–40 of 110 posts
So a warming climate is not only making the risk of fires starting higher but it's also shrinking the mitigation window.
In addition to controlled burns, I think it’s also worth mentioning that many of the inhabited forested areas of California should probably not be under human habitation due to the systemic fire risk (which is like building a house in a flood plain). Maybe it’s possible to make those communities safer by thinning out the forests, I don’t know. I do know that it sucks to have many fires be an emergency (requiring lots…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the only correct response to the issue. Stop ripping up the redwoods for your driveways and power lines. Let the mountains be.
The problem is not only new construction but what to do, and what policies to have, about all the people and capital tied up in forested communities already. For example Paradise is actually a pretty decent-sized town basically in the forest; it should be obvious just looking at it on the satellite that it’s going to be affected by fires frequently. I doubt it’s politically tenable to have the policy become to just l…
In addition to controlled burns, I think it’s also worth mentioning that many of the inhabited forested areas of California should probably not be under human habitation due to the systemic fire risk (which is like building a house in a flood plain). Maybe it’s possible to make those communities safer by thinning out the forests, I don’t know. I do know that it sucks to have many fires be an emergency (requiring lots…
In addition to controlled burns, I think it’s also worth mentioning that many of the inhabited forested areas of California should probably not be under human habitation due to the systemic fire risk (which is like building a house in a flood plain). Maybe it’s possible to make those communities safer by thinning out the forests, I don’t know. I do know that it sucks to have many fires be an emergency (requiring lots…
After reading this article I take away the opposite conclusion: with controlled burning these communities could dramatically reduce their risk. What would be helpful is a law requiring controlled burning for human habitation.
What's interesting is when colonists came to North America, they often described forests of trees that felt like great rooms or halls, teaming with wildlife and human-edible plants. But this itself was not a primordial state, but a heavily managed environment, intended to create favorable environment for flora/fauna through slash & burn forest management. Basically, burning out the undergrowth and allowing human sele…
Yes that would be cool. Unfortunately almost all of the old growth forest in the US was cut down and new trees of the size of old will take hundreds of years to grow. Many of the wilderness areas set aside in the 1970 had old growth forests and some are being managed in this way. The rest of the west forest service land is managed in an inconsistant way that changes somewhat with each administration. I think it would…
how to prevent megafires? How about extinguishing them while they are just fires? A fleet of 100 tanker planes is just a few $B investment with couple hundred $M/year maintenance. Several round trips of those 100 tanker planes in the first day when these fires have just started would have solved the issue. They would have solved the similar issues back in 2018 and 2019 too as well as the coming issues in 2021 and so on. Thus they would be paying for themselves each year over and over again.
Not surprisingly, the situation is similar to covid - an initial investment (orders of magnitude lower than the losses otherwise) and a bit of rational thinking would have prevented the covid "megafire", yet here we're... The current human race inability for even minimally rational system scale action is astounding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After reading this article I take away the opposite conclusion: with controlled burning these communities could dramatically reduce their risk. What would be helpful is a law requiring controlled burning for human habitation.
Controlled burning would prevent neighboring fires from encroaching but they don’t stop the community itself from becoming a tinderbox, which it will since it’s basically a forest with houses in it. I don’t even know if it’s possible to do a controlled burn in a reasonably densely populated area.
It's unmanaged public land that tends to be most dense and fuel rich.
But, more relevantly, we also see this belief at work on both sides of the fire [non-]debate! On the one hand, whatever faceless NIMBY/political force stands in the way of preventative burns says you're not allowed to change the forest by burning it: that would be destroying nature and thus it would be morally bad. But TFA justifies its position according to this tenet too! It says that in "prehistory" (I guess it means pre-1700 or so) so many acres burned, and therefore it is obviously right that so many acres burn again today.
The problem is that this belief, even when it reaches correct conclusions, is deeply anti-scientific and even anti-rational. There's no rational reason to connect morality and stasis. As long as this is a tool for making choices, it doesn't matter how often it's used for making good choices (preventative burns); all those who use it will still be just as culpable for the damage done on the side of bad choices (no burns).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Controlled burning would prevent neighboring fires from encroaching but they don’t stop the community itself from becoming a tinderbox, which it will since it’s basically a forest with houses in it. I don’t even know if it’s possible to do a controlled burn in a reasonably densely populated area.
I live in the mountains of Colorado and most homeowners do their part to remove fuels around their home. One major reason is insurers will require it. It's unmanaged public land that tends to be most dense and fuel rich.