For a rational take on California forest fires I highly recommend @ShellenbergerMD's new Forbes piece. forbes.com/sites/michaels…
Here's a thread with my high-level take, which incorporates some of the great facts in Mike's piece. THREAD
Here's a thread with my high-level take, which incorporates some of the great facts in Mike's piece. THREAD
1: Forest fires are a *natural* phenomenon that "artificial" modern forest management dramatically decreases. Before Europeans arrived in America an estimated 4.4 million acres in CA burned annually. That’s 16 times last year and over twice this year’s extremely high burn.
2: Visibility and air quality problems due to fires in CA used to be far worse. Here's an 1898 account: “Of the hundreds of persons who visit the Pacific slope of California every summer to see the mountains, few see more than the immediate foreground and a haze of smoke.”
3: The key to avoiding dangerous wildfires is *rational forest management*. This includes clearing the dead wood debris that accumulates on the forest floor, via mechanically removing it or via controlled burns--before there is enough to fuel a major fire.
4: A major cause of dangerous wildfires is the modern environmental movement’s opposition to rational debris-clearing. By opposing both mechanical debris removal and controlled burns as “unnatural,” they allow dangerous levels of debris “fuel load” to build up.
5: What effect do rising temperatures have on dangerous wildfires? It’s hard to determine any, as temperatures are rising very slowly and rising temperatures tend to cause more precipitation. But whatever the effect is it is tiny compared to irrational forest management.
6: Coverage of current wildfires is shameful because 1) it presents them as unprecedented when they are not, 2) it ignores the role of irrational, "environmentalist" forest management, and 3) it focuses us on distant, unrealistic CO2 reduction goals instead of real solutions.
