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Let Forest Fires Burn

nytimes.com

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Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#91

Post by coryrc »

falcolas wrote: post #66
coryrc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefighters are dying to protect the private property of people who live in the forests so they can save money not building a fire-safe house. We need regular burns to keep the brush down, but we can't because rich people's houses are in the path. The forest was there first; it's time to stop protecting people from financial loss because of their poor decisions.

Rich, poor, farmers, ranchers, middle class; all kinds have property in forests. And firefighters work to protect them all pretty much equally. As for your last sentence, that could apply evenly to any natural disaster. The [ocean|tectonic plates|flood plains|super cells] were there first. Let's stop protecting [hurricane|tornado|tsunami|earthquake] victims from loss due to their poor decisions.

Nobody tries to stop hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunami, or earthquakes because there's no way to stop them. Fire needs to happen and forests are being destroyed by the lack of it.

And, no, we shouldn't be bailing out people who build stick-built homes in flood plains. There are house designs built to withstand occasional flooding; you don't want to spend for that, then you shouldn't be bailed out.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#92

Post by coryrc »

jgh wrote: post #71
coryrc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefighters are dying to protect the private property of people who live in the forests so they can save money not building a fire-safe house. We need regular burns to keep the brush down, but we can't because rich people's houses are in the path. The forest was there first; it's time to stop protecting people from financial loss because of their poor decisions.

I believe, at least in California, households that have taken some effort to make their property more resilient to fire are given higher priority. I heard an interview with a firefighter on the radio talking about this a few weeks back.

It still prevents regular fires from being set in that area.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#93

Post by ktRolster »

eesmith wrote: post #41
ktRolster wrote: post #22

This quote from the article is important: Still, considerable disagreement remains among scientists about exactly how forests should be managed.

Really? I thought that was a wishy-washy statement. As you crank up the tightness of "exact", you'll always get more and more disagreement. Is there any large science-based policy decision where there is 100% agreement among scientists, or where there hasn't been considerable disagreement between some of them?

If scientists who have studied the field for years disagree, then we (who barely know anything about it) should be careful in choosing sides.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#94

Post by jonknee »

cakedoggie wrote: post #86
Gustomaximus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Have you spent time living outside a city?

Yes, but so? We shouldn't just be indiscriminately building anywhere we want, and risking lives.

Well then we should get rid of a lot of our cities because they are disasters waiting to happen. California has many millions of people living near fault lines. Talk about risking lives!

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#96

Post by koliber »

kibwen wrote: post #16
msla wrote: post #10

Letting fires burn is standard policy at this point. We learned it the hard way, particularly after the Big Burn, or the Great Fire of 1910. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910 It is uncontroversial to let isolated fires burn, but fires close to houses must be contained and fires close to towns must be contained.

I'd say later than 1910, see the 1988 Yellowstone fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988 "Before the late 1960s, fires were generally believed to be detrimental for parks and forests, and management policies were aimed at suppressing fires as quickly as possible. However, as the beneficial ecological role of fire became better understood in the decades before 1988, a policy was adopted of allo…

Ruined is such a loaded word. I'm guessing it did not meet the expectations of these people you've met.

National parks are places where nature is left to their own accords, and that happen to allow easy access for people to see such mostly-unspoiled nature. Nature does not care what you think about it. It is not constant, but rather changing and evolving. Sometimes, points in time in that evolution are glorious and pleasing. At others, they may seem mundane, or even repulsive. To force nature to remain in a certain state just reinforces the idea that things don't change. Let's leave that to zoos and botanical gardens, while letting national parks retain as much of their full cycle as feasible.

I wonder what this person's thought was about the no-longer-flowing Minerva Terrace in the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone. Is it ruined as well? As an analogy to putting out forest fires in national parks, perhaps the Yellowstone administration should put in some piping to at least wet these terraces down a bit to save some of their previous glory.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#97

Post by eesmith »

ktRolster wrote: post #93
eesmith wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I thought that was a wishy-washy statement. As you crank up the tightness of "exact", you'll always get more and more disagreement. Is there any large science-based policy decision where there is 100% agreement among scientists, or where there hasn't been considerable disagreement between some of them?

If scientists who have studied the field for years disagree, then we (who barely know anything about it) should be careful in choosing sides.

Exactly. There's is no field where that statement isn't true.

Take CFCs in the atmosphere, affecting the ozone layer.

DuPont scientists were against the Montreal Protocol, saying things like "We believe there is no imminent crisis that demands unilateral regulation" (quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol ).

So saying simply that there is disagreement is wishy-washy and unimportant.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#98

Post by eesmith »

strebler wrote: post #79
eesmith wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the arguments, which the NYT piece mentions, is that decades of fire suppression causes a fuel buildup so that if/when a fire does occur, it is much larger, more dangerous, and harder to manage. For example, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0504/Did-fi... points out: "In order to prevent fire like this week’s, Alberta has engaged in a robust fire suppression program, says MacDonald. But because…

If the theory were true, then why were the two largest fires in recorded North American history in 1919 and 1950 (which MacDonald, a wildfire expert, missed)? 5 and 4 million acres respectively, significantly larger than 2011 or 2016 Alberta fires. The data does not support the theory, the fires over the past 70 years have been smaller.

There are two scales: intensity and size. The argument is that suppression leads to more intense fires when there are fires, and these are more damaging. Not just to human structures, but also to the forest; eg, high-intensity crown fires instead of just having the scrub catch fire.

The NYT article gives more concrete numbers to the sizes over the last 70 years: "reams of evidence suggest the acreage that burned was more than is allowed to burn today — possibly 20 million or 30 million acres in a typical year. Today, closer to four million or five million acres burn every year."

They are smaller because of fire suppression.

If that fuel isn't being burned now, by regular wildfires, what will happen to it when there finally is a fire.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#99

Post by msla »

int_19h wrote: post #74
msla wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't hate capitalism, you hate badly-regulated capitalism. Besides, homes burn just as much in a socialist society.

Ah, but in a socialist society you then get a new home, because the entire population is in the mandatory risk insurance pool for that, effectively. (Quality of said homes is a different and orthogonal question.)

In a socialist society, you'd live where the state puts you, and any back-talk would be regarded as a mental disease (sluggishly-progressing schizophrenia, for one the USSR like to use) and treated as such.

Also, I doubt the socialist state would be able to supply a new home before I was ready for a state-supplied grave.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#100

Post by Someone »

xl wrote: post #82
nthcolumn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge problem in Australia as you probably know where we do get quite a few bush-fires is down to the huge build up in combustible materials. This'd be a fairly modern problem in that the indigenous peoples used to do a lot of the house-keeping by actually setting controlled fires and managing the bush in a sustainable way for themselves. Would that also have been the case for your own indigenous population? It's so…

I'very always wondered how you tease that apart from the native people simply not having the ability to combat naturally caused wildfires. When we suppress them, we employ a ton of technology (from chainsaws to C130s full of red dust) that weren't available back then.

If you aren't attached to stuff that is attached to the ground or too heavy to move, you don't really need to combat fires, do you?

You either walk around the fire carrying your belongings, or you light a fire downwind from where you are and move onto the burned down ground before the original fire reaches you.

Uncomfortable, but (unless you are really unlucky) survivable.

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