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"Joe_Limon" (Joe_Limon)
05/16/2014 at 21:48 • Filed to: None

I keep hearing people are calling the fires a sign of global warming. Have these areas ever seen any form of controlled burn? Or is this simply a biproduct of decades of heavy fire suppression and undergrowth buildup?

In other news, the last patches of snow around my city should finish melting some time this weekend.

DISCUSSION (21)

Zipppy, Mazdurp builder, Probeski owner and former ricerboy > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 21:49

Mine have melted away after 2 weeks, it's been really hot and rainy over the past 3 days too.

ttyymmnn > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 21:50

Yes.

Manuél Ferrari > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 21:53

I dunno.

But it is hell on earth in So Cal right now. Way hotter than it should be for May

PS9 > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 21:53

I keep hearing people are calling the fires a sign of global warming.

Like who?

Joe_Limon > ttyymmnn
05/16/2014 at 21:55

controlled burns and undergrowth buildup?

Joe_Limon > PS9
05/16/2014 at 21:56

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3…

Leadbull > Manuél Ferrari
05/16/2014 at 21:57

It's cooler than usual in the Midwest right now.

Our atmosphere and climate is a strange organism we don't know even close to everything about.

ttyymmnn > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 21:57

I think they've not been burning enough, and the undergrowth has built up. But I don't live there.

trynthink > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 22:00

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is a consequence of several factors: people in southern California moving ever further into hot and dry parts of the state that probably had fires long before they had subdivisions; people starting fires; and climate change (global warming) that changes weather patterns, making it hotter or drier or just different enough that an area can become far more fire-prone. There's apparently little evidence from past fires that controlled burns are effective in central and southern California ( source ).

Manuél Ferrari > Leadbull
05/16/2014 at 22:00

Send us your cold air!!

PS9 > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 22:12

Ok, that's one guy, who field of work is politics, not science. You know better than to listen to those people when they start pontificating about science, right?

BrianNutter > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 22:15

Good interview on npr today with Californias lead guy. Draught is earlier and more severe. He stated 95% of fires are started by careless people. home owners are probably a bit more knowledgeable about clearing out brush than in the past.

Leadbull > Manuél Ferrari
05/16/2014 at 22:15

I think we're sending it east, haha. It's supposed to get up to 90 next week.

Brian, The Life of > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 22:17

It was arson. Climate change does not cause things to self-combust. If it did, we'd already all be dead.

desertdog5051 > Joe_Limon
05/16/2014 at 22:32

That, and drought. Nature used to keep the amount of trees to around 25 or so an acre by burning the grasslands and killing the multiple newcomers. With fire suppression, we had an abundance of new trees grow.

In parts of my state, the crowding in the forest is so bad you can hardly walk through it.

Now, we have drought. It is a cause of massive fire potential as it does not allow the grasses and trees to have enough moisture to resist burning. Climate change? Don't know. Things are changing, though.

Manuél Ferrari > Leadbull
05/16/2014 at 22:35

90 and humid!!

Leadbull > Manuél Ferrari
05/16/2014 at 22:50

I'd rather be cold, honestly...

Manuél Ferrari > Leadbull
05/16/2014 at 22:53

Me too

I hate humidity

artiofab > Joe_Limon
05/18/2014 at 11:49

Anthropogenic climate change is helping California have a longer and deeper drought than it has had in perhaps centuries. Longer droughts make forests more susceptible to fires. That's ... a fairly simple conclusion to come to, and doesn't seem like it should be controversial.

Joe_Limon > artiofab
05/18/2014 at 15:48

drought is but one link in the chain causing these issues. You don't see fires flaring up in the desert now do you?

The reason why you don't is simply because there is far more fuel due to decades of fire supression. If undergrowth were to be reduced through controlled burns and the density of the forests were to thin out back to levels seen a century ago, there wouldn't be this issue in the first place.

My comment is objecting to the continual insistance on using every instance available to prove that climate change is as bad as people thinks it is and totally ignore the instances that are normal, or disprove the assumptions.

artiofab > Joe_Limon
05/18/2014 at 18:15

Deserts are rarely able to build up enough biomass in order to have the large fires that forests can. So while, in southwestern New Mexico right now there's a good size fire north of Silver City (in forested areas south of Gila National Forest), one that started up in White Sands Missile Range (mostly desert shrubland) damaged less of an area because there's less to burn.

There's a few reasons why fires in the American West are as common as they are, and fire suppression is one of them. Naturally, forests are kept in some form of control (ecologically it would be termed "mild disturbance") by wildlife usage, leading to smaller and less frequent fires because there are fewer trees to be burned. As humans are unlikely to introduce elephants to replace the mammoths and mastodons which used to tear down forests, humans have to act as the new disturbers. Up until a few decades ago, humans went a little overboard and practiced large disturbance (by drastically reducing forest area). When humans figured out that was a bad idea, they swung the other way towards no disturbance (by barely touching forests). Now humans have to figure out how to emulate mild disturbance, while also dealing with how climate change is affecting these forests.