Minor correction: This is the New York Post, not the Washington Post.

Whew! Thanks @hmmmmmm!

The fires the past few weeks have not been in “dense forests’ but in areas with natural scrub brush and wild grasses. There is no timber to harvest in Sonoma County, nor is there any in the Los Angeles foothills.

And blaming the State of California for Federal forestry programs is a bit misplaced.

Good point @zenvelo.

Just more armchair bullshit from California-hating right-wingers who know nothing about this state other than stereotypes and memes. @zenvelo is correct. Trump has no clue what a “forest” even is or where these fires are happening.

Normally I don’t get this riled up about Trump or political blustering, but this is the state I’ve spent most of my life in, I know people who’ve lost their homes, and the sheer amount of absolute lies circulating about these fires is staggering. To the people who’ve lost their homes and loved ones in these fires it’s not a fucking political game like it is to Trump.

Trump’s recent declaration was nothing more than attempt to spite a state and governor he doesn’t like.

That is not to say that there’s nothing California can do to mitigate these fires, especially in regard to the power infrastructure. There should not be fires sparking every time the wind blows—it’s absurd. But most of the suggestions given so far largely ignore the factors that have contributed to them and where they are occurring.

Coloma says to watch “Paradise on Fire” on Netflix.

@Dutchess_III

Through what media do you communicate with Coloma? Facebook? Tidepool?

@zenvelo

I think I heard that CA only administers about 3% of the forests within its borders. Does that seem accurate to you?

Yes @Brian1946. We also text sometimes.

@Brian1946 that sounds about right. From this source “Of the state’s 33 million acres of forest, federal agencies, including the Forest Service and the Interior Department, own and manage 57 percent. Forty percent are owned by families, Native American tribes or companies, including industrial timber companies; just 3 percent are owned and managed by state and local agencies.”

When I was in CA back in the 80’s, fire was just the thing you had to worry about. Some idiot would toss a cigarette out his window on the freeway and you’d end up with 10 miles of scorched median strip. However, there is some truth to the idea that some of the fires have been made worse through poor land management. Leaving underbrush and fallen trees adds fuel to the fire triangle. It doesn’t mean that starts the fires, but it is fuel to help it burn. This isn’t a new idea. This editorial opinion was written back in 2003 and pretty much says the same thing

http://www.maninnature.com/Forestry/Forest1d.html

Environmentalists and CA legislators have fought to prevent maintenance of the forests for years.

https://www.libertyheadlines.com/environmentalists-lawsuits-to-stop-forest-thinning-the-main-cause-of-killer-wildfires/

Again, all the fires are not in the forests…I get that. But the ones that have impacted forested areas? Yeah, the state owns a piece of the blame for the extent and severity of these fires.

Yes. The state owns 3% of the blame. The Federal government owns 57%.
Fires have always been a problem….but it’s much different now.

There have always been wildfires in California, but part of the reason it is different now is the changing climate and I know that’s something a lot of people don’t want to address, but it’s a reality. Take the Camp Fire for example. Paradise normally receives 5 inches of rain between May and October, but in 2018 it received just 1/7th of an inch during that same period. The rains that followed were above average, but it’s happening now that the rainy season is shorter; it starts later and it ends earlier, so the state is more dried out in the fall than it normally would be. Additionally, hotter temperatures state-wide help contribute to the drying and the exacerbation of fires when they do happen. One climate model suggests more extremes in rainfall: drought years followed by flood years, which will only worsen the fire problem as the vegetation will dry during the drought years and grow inordinately during the flood years, providing more fuel for fires.

Given that reality, we do need to take more steps toward thinning the forests, maintaining the power infrastructure, and yes, potentially not building homes in areas that are prone to fire (as I mentioned in the other thread, the Tubbs Fire burned an area that had previously burned 50 years ago in nearly the exact same pattern). You are seeing fires in states like Oregon, Arizona, and Idaho too, the difference is those states are less populated, so there is a smaller chance of power-lines starting fires since there are simply fewer of them and when fires do happen in those states, they tend to happen in remote areas where no one lives.

Forests and brushy areas are supposed to burn. We just build our cities and houses in the line of fire.

@ARE_you_kidding_me read @Demosthenes answer, just above yours. Where we put houses is a problem. However, it is still different. Read his post.

I read it. It is still perfectly natural for a forest to burn. Climate change or not drought years would happen anyway. Remember the dust bowl?

Actually, I watch Kevin Burns documentary of that just last night. Much of the dust bowl was due to human farming practices at the time.

No one is saying it isn’t natural for forests to burn. Surely you’re not a climate change denier?

As an affirmed climate change denier, I can suggest that while weather may play a part, we don’t have enough data to say “climate change” is the cause of the fires in CA. Weather patterns change from year to year. Running around blaming “climate change” for every oddity of the weather is just silly. Because it gets to be the scapegoat…the catch-all. A hurricane forms up and it’s climate change causing it. If we get more than average hurricanes, it’s climate change. If we get less than normal, it’s climate change. An area of CA gets less rainfall than normal and it’s climate change. Missouri gets more rain than normal and it’s climate change. Temperatures go up and it’s climate change, but when they go back down, that too is climate change.
Many areas of CA are borderline desert I think. I know up by SF, we had three months of rain followed by nine months of dry. Pretty standard year after year. We have known for more than a century that many areas of this state are very dry and they burn. Fires in the 1800’s and before were far more violent and vast than anything we see today…and mankind wasn’t doing much towards climate change at that point..the industrial revolution hadn’t hit yet.

https://www.hcn.org/issues/251/13986

Well, the very fact that you proudly claim to be a climate change denier just means there is no point in providing scientific evidence,because you can smugly say “I don’t accept those facts,” not realizing what an idiot that makes you look like, so I have nothing more to say to you.

I know climate change is a matter of fact. I know humans cause a portion of it. I don’t think that we can say with certainty that the weather in Cali this year is really a result of our contribution to it. Perhaps it is, fires in Cali would happen in those areas regardless though.
Farming practices were part of the dust bowl but the drought was the primary cause.

Yes. A drought that lasted 10 years. Climate change has been happening since the industrial age began over 100 years ago.
”Since the 1970s, California wildfires have increased in size by eight times and the annual burned area has grown by nearly 500%, CNN meteorologist Rob Shackelford said. ” Source

@Dutchess_III You know what CO2 concentrations were during the dust bowl?

I imagine they were higher than normal in the prairie states because there was no vegetation to absorb it! It was plowed under or dead. But I don’t think it would affect the rest of the country.

They were still essentially at pre-industrial levels ~300ppm. Human contributions to climate change did not cause the drought during the dust bowl.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I will agree that the climate is probably changing, but don’t buy the idea that it is due solely or even mostly to mankind. And that is why I am a denier. Everyone that spouts the climate change idea means man-made climate change. And there is just no solid evidence of that. If you look back through history, the climate changed many, many times…and mankind didn’t even exist. And if you look at the trends, we are right in line with them…certainly not out of any sort of norm for the long term historical trends.
I have stated a number of times that mankind certainly has an impact on our environment. Any time you change something in a bio-system, it has an impact. But what that effect is and the magnitude of that change in this case is not known. And when you hear all the bureaucrats trying to convince the world the sky is falling, the only solution they ever really push is to give control of carbon emission to them. That won’t do a thing, except give them unlimited power over us.

Droughts come and go. That we can agree on. But this upward trend is undeniably linked to our emissions out put. And can you sit there and say, with a straight face, that this has no effect on our atmosphere?

@seawulf575 I would not call yourself a “denier” There really are not many actual deniers. They mostly don’t exist. It’s a smear label for those who don’t go along with the political agenda being pushed behind it. The science is real, we know CO2 has an impact on climate. People bicker about how much the human contribution is but I don’t know many people who say humans are not causing any of it. I think it’s probably a lot but I don’t believe all of it is. It’s hard to tell how bad because you can’t just subtract out the human component to find the natural baseline, it’s all muddled together. I do think we need to do something about it right now but… I’m not in the doom and gloom camp. Honestly a few degrees of warming is probably not all bad to be honest. More than that and I think we are in trouble. Anyway, people talk loud about this but more often than not they have at best a grade school understanding and are susceptible to believing that anything weather related that is bad is cause by human caused warming. I don’t blame them for this, it’s just annoying. The few things I really know a lot about (and this is not so much one of them) when I read about on the internet I’m shocked at just how bad, wrong and misleading/represented the information is. The internet is mostly full of bullshit and lots of it.

I have been called a denier before because I don’t “tow the line” and speak all the doom and gloom, probably still will but this is something though I’m prepared to side more with the left on. Adding 35% more CO2 to the atmosphere in less than a century is not a good risk to take with the planet.

@seawulf575 I think @ARE_you_kidding_me meant “toe the line” not “tow the line.”

We just had a question about this in the past few days.

It sounds like some people don’t realize how fast weeds grow and die off, like cheat grass. And when that stuff catches fire, look out! Trees and forests burn fast enough and often enough, but those darn weeds come back just as fire intensive EVERY YEAR!
If some bozo thinks California can control wildfires somehow, they obviously don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

That bozo would be trump.

@Dutchess_III The first link you provided showing the upward trend isn’t linked to our emissions, it IS our emissions. And the other is a picture of something coming out of what appears to be a manufacturing plant. It is not explained what the plant is, nor what the emissions are. For example, look at this picture:
https://imgur.com/gallery/yp4D1Lq
What is all THAT emission doing to our atmosphere? The answer? Not much. It’s mainly water vapor that probably has some solids attached to it…calcium, magnesium, dirt, etc. Whatever can attach to the water vapor.
Showing that our carbon emissions have gone up over the past 100 years isn’t news. What the impact is to our environment is the point that brings contention. Now, as I have said, I’m quite certain we humans have impacted the bio-sphere that is our planet. We pollute, we waste, we clear cut, we do all sorts of ugly things. And I am against most of them. But I refuse to jump onto “Climate Change Crisis” bandwagon. I don’t see it as being real for a number of reasons. Do I want to pump car exhaust into the atmosphere? Nope. But not because I am afraid we might change the climate, but because we are definitely putting things I don’t want to breathe into the air.
I am a huge proponent that we need to have the bureaucrats out of the loop and let the scientists do the research without any influence from the politicians. Let them come up with the answer that they already came up with…that the climate is likely changing, but it cannot be certain as to the cause. And as we have seen, the climate has changed many, many times in the history of this planet. And in all those cases, mankind was not even in existence. So the climate of our planet changes on its own. We know this…it is a proven fact. To discount this as a contributor so you can push an agenda is not science…it’s politics.

I said, ”But this upward trend is undeniably linked to our emissions out put.”
Only a trump supporter could read that and say ”The first link you provided showing the upward trend isn’t linked to our emissions, it IS our emissions. ”

Yeah, the author doesn’t have a clue. The dangerous fires aren’t in the forest. And many are caused by PG&E. Now, is it PG&E’s fault? That’s harder to tell.

@Dutchess_III Yes, you said the upward trend is undeniably linked to our emissions out put. But the graph you posted was showing carbon emissions from various forms over the past couple hundred years. It wasn’t showing anything to do with the atmosphere or climate change or anything else….just the emissions. Only a liberal could read anything more into that.

Lord are you deliberately dense?

Dense? Because I don’t blindly follow the herd? Nope. What you presented didn’t show anything except increased emissions. Congrats…you identified that as we industrialized we created more emissions. I think most 3rd graders could have gotten that one. What you posted doesn’t prove anything else.

You’re blathering again.

To get this back on topic, I hope the NY Post accepts that it is NY’s fault when sea levels flood lower Manhattan and much of Brooklyn.

Yep.