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Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

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Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#231

Post by anonymouskimmer »

jdminhbg wrote: post #149
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it was possible, but like all collective action problems it involves people organizing for the general good at a cost to themselves. Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months , and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious…

> Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months, and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses, not just have stopped this single one from spreading. This is delusional. China did far more than this and still…

And I didn't mention the problem of people who can't afford to take precautions, which is why this is a collective action problem.

And sure, SARS-CoV-2 did end up in animal reservoirs, but nipped early enough in the bud this either wouldn't have happened, or would have been controllable (with respect to animal-to-human transmission).

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#232

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

squidsoup wrote: post #160
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little annoyed we're 40 years behind on fusion, because a vocal group spent 40 years crying about fission. Chernobyl was a disaster, that was made possible by the Soviet gov, it was far more a knock on communism than it was nuclear energy. And yet... Here we are with Harvard grads arguing for the former and against the latter.

The Fukushima disaster has the same rating as Chernobyl on the Internation Nuclear Event Scale, and occurred in a highly regulated developed capitalist nation.

Yea, can you imagine if someone said those were the same thing? Good point though, that is what we’re up against.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#233

Post by ncallaway »

Analemma_ wrote: post #71
ncallaway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a good diagnosis of some of our issues, but it’s a really hard problem. When we go the other way, and allow actions that harm people, we have an unfortunate tendency to allow those harms to fall… extremely disproportionately on those with the least burden to bear the harms and the least power to be compensated for those harms. I think, as the other poster noted it really comes down to the individualis…

> When we go the other way, and allow actions that harm people, we have an unfortunate tendency to allow those harms to fall… extremely disproportionately on those with the least burden to bear the harms and the least power to be compensated for those harms. I don't think this is true, or at least it is nonobvious. Are prescribed-burns-gone-wrong more likely to harm the most vulnerable, as compared to unprescribed bu…

> Are prescribed-burns-gone-wrong more likely to harm the most vulnerable, as compared to unprescribed burns?

Yes. Because those planning the controlled burns will take more care in ensuring the politically powerful are not as likely to be harmed by the burns. If a controlled burn goes wrong it's more likely to fall on those who have less power.

Also, if the politically powerful are negatively impacted by the burns, their losses are more likely to be adequately socialized, while those that lack political power are more likely to bear the costs directly and individually.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#234

Post by goda90 »

undersuit wrote: post #99
goda90 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they need fire to kill off trees that shade them out.

Ahh but replacing old growth forest with burnt out scrub land is not what we necessarily want. Old trees dying and falling naturally creates openings in the canopy to permit new growth without resetting the forest to a grassland like a forest fire would do. A prescribed burn should burn out annual plant growth and leaf litter not perennial plant trunks.

I'm talking about established prairie ecosystems. The plants there depend on saplings to be killed by fires before they become full grown trees, while they can recover from the fires quicker.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#235

Post by undersuit »

goda90 wrote: post #234
undersuit wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh but replacing old growth forest with burnt out scrub land is not what we necessarily want. Old trees dying and falling naturally creates openings in the canopy to permit new growth without resetting the forest to a grassland like a forest fire would do. A prescribed burn should burn out annual plant growth and leaf litter not perennial plant trunks.

I'm talking about established prairie ecosystems. The plants there depend on saplings to be killed by fires before they become full grown trees, while they can recover from the fires quicker.

Prairies are formed by the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains in the United States. They don't need help to beat back water hungry trees.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#236

Post by exabrial »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #93
exabrial wrote: post #24

They also destroy invasive species: plants, animals, bugs. Native species evolved long ago to deal with fire. Research has also shown its net carbon negative.

Why wouldn't non-native species also be adapted for fire?

They’re not from there and there’s no evolutionary pressure to maintain traits that they don’t experience in their home habit.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#239

Post by jonnycomputer »

exabrial wrote: post #236
jonnycomputer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't non-native species also be adapted for fire?

They’re not from there and there’s no evolutionary pressure to maintain traits that they don’t experience in their home habit.

If they are occupying the same environment then the same argument applies to native species no longer regularly exposed to fire. But unless its being actively selected against, then it disappearing through random drift alone would, I'd think, be a pretty slow process, even by evolutionary timescales.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#240

Post by Slava_Propanei »

joe_the_user wrote: post #145

The fundamental problem that controlled burns face today is that there has been a huge and irresponsible increase in development on "Urban-wildland border". Here in the California Sierras, you have a uniform peppering of (often luxury) houses outside of the various small urban areas. Those forests naturally burn on a regular basis but with this situation, any controlled burn is going to threaten some number of houses…

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