> In terms of loss of life and damage to property, the data shows the worst fires have all been in the past 10 years or so - except for one fire in 1991 in Alameda County.
> And this year, there have also been unusually strong winds combined with periods of drought across parts of the western US. Six of the largest fires recorded in California have all happened this year.
> Prof Doerr says a combination of drier, hotter and windy conditions is the key factor in these recent fires.
> He adds that even in areas where there have been attempts to reduce flammable material in forests, it's not clear how much difference this would have made.
> "The bottom line remains that the extreme meteorological conditions are the main drivers for these extreme fires."
But climate change is not the main driver of recent wildfires, and it at most one contributing factor among many. If old growth trees remained, if forests were cleared of dead trees, if stands were thinned, if logging companies were allowed to harvest in a timely/economical fashion, or if controlled burns were used with the frequency they used to be, most of these fires would not happen. If there are fewer fires, the smaller number of bad fires that do still happen are much easier to put out quickly, because we would not have to spread fire fighting resources too thinly.
Here's a survey of articles covering the West coast fires (CA, OR, WA) that make this clear:
- https://www.npr.org/2020/08/24/899422710/to-manage-wildfire-... mentions that before 1800, several million acres were burned every year through indigenous burning and also lightning-caused fires. In 2019, California committed to burning just half a million acres a year, but is far from reaching even that modest goal.
- https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911592361/are-recent-wildfire... mentions that California needs to address 20M acres every year (through thinning or burning). In 2019, $160M was spent putting out wildfires in CA, but the economic damage was $80B - and yet preventative measures are not being taken.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/us/california-today-100-m... notes that California's focus on fire suppression has led to mass quantities of dead trees resulting from a lack of smaller fires and increased infestation (due to increased forest density enabling transmission of pests/disease)
- Both the WA state Department of Natural Resources (https://www.dnr.wa.gov/StrategicFireProtection) and WA timber industry (http://www.wfpa.org/sustainable-forestry/reduce-wildfire-ris...) have been increased investment/assistance/regulatory support in thinning forests and conducting prescribed burns. Despite these calls being made for over a decade, despite ever increasing state budgets, and despite a consistent single-party rule, the governor and legislature have done little to respond to those calls for help.
The reality is that all three West Coast governors - Newsom (CA), Brown (OR), and Inslee (WA) - are operating in states that have left-leaning legislatures, judiciaries, and executive leadership. The failure to prevent wildfires or manage them effectively is entirely their fault. It's much more convenient however, to blame an externality like climate change, than to be honest about their own failures. And at the same time, the political theater of blaming wildfires on climate change allows them to forward their political/ideological agendas through far-reaching proposals like Green New Deal, which are much broader than just environmental issues.
It does seem to me that blaming the whole situation on climate change is an exaggeration. However, it is a politically savvy move from Newsom et al. as west coast states are solid blue. They are pandering to their audience. It also happens on the right with different issues.
I agree, this is something politicians on all sides try to do, and I am not trying to single out the left for it more generally. I am just especially frustrated in this instance, because this issue directly affects me, my friends, and family. Our governor in Washington state, Jay Inslee, blamed climate change for wildfires in a round of press conferences back in the 2018 season as well, and he's doing the same thing now. His own Department of Natural Resources has been consistently asking for more investment in prevention before 2018, between 2018 and 2020, and still today in 2020. And yet there has been little to no movement from Inslee on the matter, so I feel he is lying to us. However, due to how polarized politics are these days, most constituents are giving Inslee a pass and blindly accepting his claims without examining the facts or surveying a diverse set of expert opinions.
Forest management is helpful, but the task is unsurmountingly vast and yet compared to climate change, it’s dwarfed. But we have to tackle the big one because it has so many other effects that are catastrophic. Forest management is basically lost in the noise with climate change.
I think that environmentalists want prescribed burns, right-wingers want to just cut all the forests down, and the compromise position is to do neither and then call the fires an act of God.
