Year after year, environmentalists litigated and lobbied to stop efforts to clear the forests through timber harvesting, underbrush removal, and controlled burns. Meanwhile, natural fires were suppressed and the forests became more and more overgrown. The excessive biomass competed for the same water, soil, and light a healthier forest would have used, rendering all of the trees and underbrush unhealthy. It wasn’t just excess biomass that accumulated, but dried out and dead biomass.
What happened among California’s tall stands of Redwood and Ponderosa Pine also happened in its extensive chaparral. Fire suppression along with too many environmentalist-inspired bureaucratic barriers to controlled burns and undergrowth removal turned the hillsides and canyons of Southern California into tinderboxes.
In 2009, after huge blazes wiped out homes and forced thousands to evacuate, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich observed: “The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today.”
And we can throw this in:
Together, these results suggest that, contrary to current perceptions, forest fires do not appear to be a serious threat to owl populations, and may impart more benefits than costs for Spotted Owls. Therefore, fuel-reduction logging treatments intended to mitigate fire severity in Spotted Owl habitat may in fact do more harm than good.
“Spotted Owls were once a symbol of the biodiversity found in old-growth forests,” said Lee. “We need to reevaluate our management strategies to better protect these birds and the extraordinary biodiversity found in severely burned forests.”
Interesting. Even back in the 80s when I was a bit more engaged in environmental concerns, it seemed like people knew about controlled burns. So it is a bit surprising this is still going on. Another problem is lots of dead trees caused by draught and infestations, which makes for lots of good kindling. Not sure how realistic stated level efforts at reMovung dead trees would be, as the state does not own a large proportion of forestland to my understanding. And of course it’s not all about trees. My sister used to live near Medford OR. Hardly a tree around her neighborhood, but lots of grass and brush. None of the homes survived. Similar down here: A lot of the wildfires are mostly brush fires. Even when we get a rainy winter, the rain can mean rapid growth of invasive grass/brush species that tend to burn easily after months of baking in the hot, dry summer and fall.
It’s actually quite simple.
What happens is the needles on the trees (big and small) dry up every year and fall to the forest floor.
During the summer, when it is very dry, those needles dry up, just like grass does in California every summer, creating the easiest and quickest form of kindling to start a fire.
Doesn’t take much. Lightning, fireworks, 2 pieces of metals scraping together and producing a few sparks, dirt bikes or ATVs running around (accidentally throwing off a random spark), a powerline falling in high winds (like what happened last week in Oregon) and you got a fire.
Sitting at Troy Greek restaurant in Martinez with the air now hitting 201
Very unhealthy !!! And we can’t sit inside because indoor dining is still not allowed
If an honest history of California in the early 21st century is ever written, the verdict will be unequivocal. Forests that thrived in California for over 20 million years were allowed to become overgrown tinderboxes. And then, with stupefying ferocity, within the span of a few decades, they burned to the ground. Many of them never recovered.
How do they know this? Besides the obvious that there’s more of them happening at one time, what makes these fires different from the fires they are advocating for?
These fires burn so hot and far longer because there’s too much food fuel in the underbrush. If you burn say when the underbrush is 50% of this, you get less than 50% of the fire. That’s my reading.
Yes, and that’s why the LEO said right up front (roughly quoting), that he doesn’t care about being videotaped by Copwatch, as he has 20 days left (til retirement). So, perhaps a bit more truth.
He has to be put on leave just by protocol.
I see the junior senator for North Dakota must have some unique insights into the California energy system that he just has to share. Such as burning more coal. Burn more fossil fuel dammit
Well they have a lot of coal there and it’s just scraped off not mined like in WV.
However, I think he’s referring to the whole “renewable need FF backups so ya better start building those backups plants” thing. And nuclear…I mean…my god.
Human contributions are likely the main driver of the drought at present, as the graph above suggests. That does not mean they don’t contribute at all. I am not a climate scientist, just pulled a couple relevant links from a Google search for human contributions to CA drought, or something like that:
Although it would a stretch to blame the current fire situation on anthropogenic global warming, it would also be a stretch to say that it is not exacerbating conditions, or will not going forward. We don’t know enough.
One of the most interesting things researchers have discovered since MODIS began collecting measurements, noted Randerson, is a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent
