The responsibility lies with those who for over 20 years have failed to respond to global warming, have fought to pass the buck, claimed it's a hoax, and just normal weather patterns. The above is not a hoax and is certainly not normal. You're going to find the reward for your hard work is going to be a bitter bill to swallow. .
No. It lies with the California state government that has been warned for years to maintain its forests. They didn't.
Your statement is a lie.
Many of the largest and worst fires in the state were on federal land.
www.redding.com
No, it's not. Support your contention.
The bureau of land management is responsible for federal forest land; not the State of California. The federal lands are some of the areas that are burning. So your blob is responsible for any fire on federal land.
PS: They don't "comb" the federal lands either. The NFS/NPS/BLM laughed off the suggestion as did every one else.
Cleaning up the forest, ie. removing deadwood, brush, and thinning the forest is mitigation just like building higher levees and dykes to prevent flooding due to sea rise. It does not solve the problem. Cleanup will have unintended ecological consequences on wildlife and our forest in general. Plus there is another issue. In America, there are over 800 million acres of forest and the cost of cleaning them and keeping them clean would be externally costly. Currently the plan is to cleanup selected areas where risk to lives and property seem high but this is just a guessing game and as droughts, temperatures, and winds continue to worsen, cleanup which only helps prevent the spread, will become less effective. Cleanup does have a place in managing forests areas around populated places, but we need real solutions to the underlying problem.
Logging is a free way to help that situation......While it doesn't end it....it most certainly helps................
You don't have to clear it all..........build fire breaks near population centers and concentrate there.........so the fire runs out of fuel and dies out before killing it.
ROADLESS ACT........prevents the forestry service from building roads............How can they build fire breaks when they can't even build a dirt road there...............
They are HOSED BY THE LAWS..........and the lawsuits of the green weenies who have allowed a tinder box situation over the last few decades.
Mother Nature is now educating them on why they are stupid.
Logging might have some use but the major effort would be removing dry fuel, underbrush, deadwood, shrub suffering from years of drought. Tree removal would be mostly dead and damaged trees, not exactly the kind of growth loggers are interested. in. Many of these areas being ravages by fires are hundreds of relatively small forests separated by hundreds of acres of dry fields, deadwood, shrub.
And who caused that..........hmm...........they put them under......dared them to log..........passed no roads acts...........sued them at every corner.
Thick trees die.........not enough nutrients to go around...........thinned forests .....grow stronger and taller and are hard to burn..................controlled burns get rid of fuel in better controlled conditions................
This isn't rocket science.........you protect population centers by doing this in these places.............Cali has neglected this for decades now..............that is why they burn like this.
Thinning the forest is only one step in forest fuel reduction...
Nobody claimed it was more than that.
Without mechanical removal of smaller trees
How else would you remove them? You can't talk them to leaving.
and reduction of canopy density
Removing trees does remove canopy.
prescribed burning to reduce ground fuels
Of course.
... it accomplishes nothing in reduction of wildfires.
Fake News. Removal of fire fuel load and improving of fire fighting access, as well as the cutting of fire breaks is the very essence of forest fire management.
... In fact, mechanical thinning alone INCREASES fire spread by putting more fine fuels on the ground...
Thinning means reduction of tree density, by tree removal. Nobody is suggesting you grind the trees up and spray them about, that's just stupid. Where did you come up with this nonsense?
... Since thinning by removing competition between trees and brush increases rapid regrowth of vegetation...
This is the old "thinning, thickens" nonsense. Think!
... there must be follow-ups...
Were you under the delusion that there is a "one and done" answer to managing a growing forest? Of course there is follow up, forests are growing, the growth has to be managed, if you don't want all just going up in smoke in an unmanaged destructive forest fire.
... millions of fields and pastures...
Fields and pastures? We aren't going to reduce tree density in "fields and pastures".
The cost of fuel reduction programs are huge.
You think fighting all these fires is free? How many homes and lives have been destroyed in CA in the last three years? How much do you think has been spent of fire fighting? That's the whole problem, we are spending billions on fire fighting rather than millions on forest management.
... Fuel reduction is just a meditating measure not a solution...
No, it's a solution. 3 ways to combat fire: remove fuel, oxygen, and/or heat.
As the temperatures keep rising, droughts and winds will continue to increase the killing of more vegetation thus increasing the fuel supply.
Which is why the fuel load needs to be reduced through tree removal, controlled burns, with fuels separated by fire breaks, and accessible by serviceable fire fighting access.
... Until we will bite bullet and deal with the real cause, climate change, there will be no solution just expensive stop gap measures...
What we are doing now is not only very expensive, but deadly and destructive as well. Do you know how much wild life is destroyed in a Forest Fire? We have from now until next fire season to either do something to improve the situation, or we can all beat our gums and do nothing until next fire season. What is your preference?
As for climate change, name two states that have taken the strides that CA and OR have. I'd match their record against any other two states in the nation, but, how much CO2 is released in these massive forest fires? I'll tell you how much. Just two forest fires in 2018 released as much CO2 as ALL of the fossil fuel generation in the State of CA for an entire year. Just 2 fires. CA has SEVENTEEN Wild Fires burning in just the North West corner of the state.
People are dying, we don't really have time for the luxury of smug self-righteous moral preening.
If you take a look at the last 1200 years of CA Climate history, 200 hundred year droughts are on the table. With sensible forest management and water policy these dry spells are perfectly manageable. Right now a full half of the surface water from annual rain/snow runs into the ocean, that is, we can double our water supply as our water needs grow.
Should that at some point prove to be insufficient, water projects can be brought down from the Columbia River to Lake Shasta, and Lake Shasta is already connected to the State wide water distribution system.
Along with that, another potential water project route is from the Snake River, down through Nevada to Hoover Dam, and from Hoover Dam, all of Southern California is supplied. Every water project is drought protection, flood protection and power generation, or a win/win/win!
So lots of good options for those willing to put their hands to the tasks, and lots of terrible outcomes if we keep doing what we are doing.
So what do you favor? Real world solutions, or worthless reactionary virtue signalling?
