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We Know How to Prevent Megafires

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Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#81

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

svrb wrote: post #39

Though it may not seem like it at first, the problem is ideological. Somewhere along the line CA's left/progressive ideology picked up a deeply ironic tenet that the world must remain absolutely unchanged by human habitation; that whatever the state of nature was on some arbitrary day in the past, we have a moral duty to keep it that way. The strongest example of overreach is that absolutely no species may go extinct…

We have a solid idea about about the pre-European history of fire in the US west, including some information about native american practices during parts of that history (they burned, at least in some areas and for some of the time).

We have hard evidence of what the last 100 years of forest management policy has done.

Nobody is proposing "nature can never (be) change(d)". The point is that that we tried to do something different (fire suppression) and it manifestly did not and has not worked.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#82

Post by kurthr »

umvi wrote: post #5
perl4ever wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how a private individual would deal with the liability.

When I lived in the suburbs of Naples people would burn their trash in big piles whenever the garbage collectors went on strike and "nobody" was liable, even though sometimes the fire would spread and burn/damage stuff on the neighbor's property. Then again, Europeans don't have the same litigious culture/attitude that Americans have.

How many of those fires burned 10km^2? 100m^2? 1000km^2? That's the size of each of the lightning complexes still burning.

I'd guess that in decades none of them have or it would have been in the news and nobody would have done it again... Lot's of rural places burn garbage in the US. They just don't do it where there's a high risk of burning down the neighborhood.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#83

Post by kurthr »

umvi wrote: post #52
luckylion wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Italians don't, but you get a lot of problems stemming from the "whatever, just burn it, not my problem, I just want my garbage gone"-culture. You'd get into serious trouble doing the same further north in Germany, Denmark or Sweden.

Indeed, and I admit, even within Italy this is likely uniquely a Naples problem.

Another reason is that there have been intermittent issues with garbage pickup for decades in Napoli, but I don't think there's been a full strike in the last few years... but it is of course probably still controlled by the Camorra.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#84

Post by gamblor956 »

njarboe wrote: post #78
landryraccoon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious, why wouldn’t a private owner just clear cut all of the land for maximum value? Private land owners choose short term windfall over long term sustainability all the time. I don’t see why private owners would preserve old growth forests if the lumber is more financially profitable when cut down and sold.

Yes, private ownership would lead to tree farms which might find that clear cutting is the best way to maximize output. With regulations on soil runoff, I don't see that as a problem. My proposal was one that might have a chance of being implemented, thus the reason for private sale of part of the public forest land. It would be impossible politically to get a 1/3 transfer of Forest Service land into wilderness desig…

Yes, private ownership would lead to tree farms which might find that clear cutting is the best way to maximize output. With regulations on soil runoff, I don't see that as a problem.

Private ownership could lead to tree farms. It could also just as easily lead to private owners clear-cutting the forest without replacement planting, if the ultimate value of the lumber isn't worth the cost of running a tree farm.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#85

Post by gamblor956 »

sojournerc wrote: post #38
opportune wrote: post #35

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.

In the 2018 Camp Fire, the towns burned worse than the "unmanaged" public forests.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#86

Post by bamboozled »

zdragnar wrote: post #77
NicolasGorden wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of the problem is the concept of sacrifice is falling by the wayside. I feel my grandparents had a much more realistic understanding of the world and it's trade offs. I get it, yes, it sucks to have controlled burns. No, it doesn't suck as bad as out of control wildfires. But people want to have their cake and eat it at the same time. It's always been that way, but I feel there are less forces cons…

I think there has been a general decrease in the value placed on self discipline. Part of it is the abundance of pretty much everything, and an overall rise in the basic standard of living for the average American. Part of it is the coincidental rise in the exaltation of self- social media reputation, self promotion, self fulfillment. This change, I think, is especially evident in the change over the past decades in…

This is called “anecdata”

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#87

Post by bamboozled »

softwaredoug wrote: post #14

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…

I recently read “Dark Emu” by Bruce Pascoe. It’s a great read on Australian indigenous culture.

He notes similar experiences documented by British colonists in Australia. They remarked on how the whole continent was kept like a large and beautiful garden.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#88

Post by murgindrag »

brudgers wrote: post #53
murgindrag wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more odd thing is how fast we forget. There were no articles after-the-fact even indicating the fire was over, or how things were going. I searched major web sites like NY Times. Things were burning like crazy, and then reporting stopped. Is it over? Is it contained? Are San Francisco, Mountain View, and Stanford just gone? Reading the newspapers, you just don't know. I'd like to have a retrospective. How much da…

CalFire updates its page regularly. And anyway Mountain View, San Francisco and Stanford weren’t at risk. Fires burn upward because heat rises. Silicon Valley is in a valley and built out. It’s not wilderness. There’s five minute fire response times throughout.

Five minute fire response times presume that there isn't a million acre fire saturating all fire departments. If CZU were rapidly spreading and hit the side of Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose all at once, I think we'd have multiday response times. Fortunately, it wasn't.

Was it possible for it to spread like that? I don't know. During COVID19, we had a constant series of claims, repeated by politicians and public health officials, which had no basis in fact. Post-COVID19, I just don't believe claims like these anymore without a citation. Most were wishful thinking.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#89

Post by gamblor956 »

trhway wrote: post #37

Control burns look to me just like blood letting - a thing from the past when we didn't know better. 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…

Many of the trees in CA evolved in environments with regular fires. Some, like the sequoias, require fire in order for their seeds to open.

A fleet of 100 tanker planes is just a few $B investment with couple hundred $M/year maintenance.

Each DC10 tanker costs about $120 million. The newer 747 tanker starts at $140 million and that's before customization. A fleet the size you are suggesting would cost more than $12 billion dollars and would take years for manufacturers to build.

And that's assuming you could find sufficient freshwater sources to fill all of those planes. If that amount of water was available, CA wouldn't be in a megadrought and the fires wouldn't be as bad.

None of what you suggested is rational.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#90

Post by gamblor956 »

svrb wrote: post #39

Though it may not seem like it at first, the problem is ideological. Somewhere along the line CA's left/progressive ideology picked up a deeply ironic tenet that the world must remain absolutely unchanged by human habitation; that whatever the state of nature was on some arbitrary day in the past, we have a moral duty to keep it that way. The strongest example of overreach is that absolutely no species may go extinct…

Somewhere along the line CA's left/progressive ideology picked up a deeply ironic tenet that the world must remain absolutely unchanged by human habitation;

You have it exactly backwards. The areas where the CA fires occur are overwhelmingly conservative.

whatever faceless NIMBY/political force stands in the way of preventative burns says you're not allowed to change the forest by burning it

Some of the areas that are currently burning, including Sonoma County, were burned just 2 years ago. That did literally nothing to stop the severity of the current fires.

Libertarians act like prescribed fires are some sort of cure-all for mega-fires, and they're simply not. The problem is that the plant life is too dry because of a years-long drought. Megafires aren't nearly as mega in years when there's plenty of rain.

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