California Wildfires Signal the
Arrival of a Planetary Fire Age
Live Science,
by
Stephen Pyne
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
11/1/2019 3:42:24 PM
Another autumn, more fires, more refugees and incinerated homes. For California, flames have become the colors of fall.
Free-burning fire is the proximate provocation for the havoc, since its ember storms are engulfing landscapes. But in the hands of humans, combustion is also the deeper cause. Modern societies are burning lithic landscapes - once-living biomass now fossilized into coal, gas and oil - which is aggravating the burning of living landscapes.
The influence doesn't come only through climate change, although that is clearly a factor. The transition to a fossil fuel civilization also affects how people in industrial societies live on the land and what kind of fire practices they adopt.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/1/2019 3:44:02 PM (No. 224320)
Right after the volcanoes blow.
7 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
rockeysroomie 11/1/2019 3:50:38 PM (No. 224325)
We always have had fires in California. The reason we are having more now is because of the lack of Forest Management under Jerry Brown and now Gavin Brylcreem Newsome.
27 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 11/1/2019 3:54:23 PM (No. 224331)
California has been burning like this for thousands of years. The only 'climate' that's changed is the encroachment of people, homes, businesses, powerlines, etc. into harm's way. My brother lived in CA forty years ago and they had these fires almost every year. Nobody had invented climate change back then.
22 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
TexaTucky 11/1/2019 4:27:57 PM (No. 224357)
Kindova nerdy-weird theory, but interesting.
I think we'll be fine, though.
4 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
skacmar 11/1/2019 4:29:36 PM (No. 224358)
Yeah, like we have never had wild fires in California before..... Only they are worse now due to environmental wacko rules and regulations that prevent the clearing of brush and dead trees to "keep things natural" so as not to disturb natural habitats and animals. Of course, the natural trees, brush, and animal habitats are all dead and burned up now thanks to this policy.
13 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
cor-vet 11/1/2019 4:32:08 PM (No. 224363)
As soon as I read 'climate change', I stop reading. It's about as relevant as the charge of 'racism!'
12 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
F15 Gork 11/1/2019 4:33:15 PM (No. 224364)
I don’t know anybody who talks or writes like this. I contend that a college “education” is probably still the greatest threat America faces today.
9 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
JL80863 11/1/2019 4:35:52 PM (No. 224367)
Stick to facts Pine.
3 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Gruene Hall 11/1/2019 4:47:55 PM (No. 224384)
The absolute shear stupidity of the individual is mind numbing.
I couldn't even read this diatribe.
Ignorance on a massive scale
9 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
pinger 11/1/2019 5:05:35 PM (No. 224401)
He must be assuming that the high tension lines around the world are in the same poor shape that the underfunded Electrical infrastructure throughout California is.
4 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
kono 11/1/2019 5:27:19 PM (No. 224427)
Live Science -- a four-letter modifier, like Junk Science, or Fake Science.
The publication is total crap. Like HuffPo, it has no business being on this site.
6 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
BarryNo 11/1/2019 5:28:08 PM (No. 224431)
(YAWN...) Another snake oil chicken little trying to sound important about the differences between nature in it's natural state, and nature as managed by humans.
And he gets it wrong...
5 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
DVC 11/1/2019 5:50:00 PM (No. 224460)
Oil came from primordial methane, part of the cometary mass which impacted to create our planet, NOT from biomass. Coal, may have come from biomass, perhaps, but not oil. CH4 pushed together really hard and really hot, really deep, makes CxHy and we call it petroleum.
These people are crazier than all get out. Fantasy is now sold as "science".
9 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
LC Chihuahua 11/1/2019 6:02:58 PM (No. 224475)
A planetary fire age? Will it be caused by climate change?
4 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
WhamDBambam 11/1/2019 6:38:11 PM (No. 224502)
No, it's the Stupid Forest Management Age.
7 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
DVC 11/1/2019 6:39:25 PM (No. 224505)
Don't get your pyne all burned up, Steve.
4 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
Venturer 11/1/2019 8:27:24 PM (No. 224625)
My Great Uncle was in the Klondike Gold Rush.
He found some Gold came back to California and bought himself a farm.
He moved back to Maryland after he was burned out there.
4 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/1/2019 8:45:17 PM (No. 224638)
Most who post on California’s fires know nearly nothing. It shows. As #3 says, they have happened over the years, a confluence of events that have nothing to do with manmade climate change, which does not exist. They are rarely forest fires. Rains cause the seasonal grasses to grow like crazy; then the hot dry Indian summer comes. The grasses dry. The winds come from the NE and the desert and the humidity falls to single digits. The winds that caused so much grief lately were indeed “historical” in that they were very strong and persisted over several days rather than just hours.
Most of the areas burning have chaparral. I have explained it before. No one pays any attention. It is found only in a fair amount of California and the Mediterranean. Another thing most don’t know - especially those used to living in flat states - is that the western and southern parts of California are largely hills. The terrain - some of it nearly vertical, makes it virtually impossible to clear the chaparral.
For those seriously interested, here is a wealth of information on California’s chaparral and wildfires…
First off, an excerpt:
#3: Large, infrequent chaparral wildfires are natural and inevitable in California.
Large chaparral fires have occurred prior to recent times and will continue to occur. Southern California has one of the worst fire-prone climates on earth. For example, more than 300,000 acres burned in the Santiago Canyon Fire during the last week of September, 1889 in Orange and San Diego Counties (the 2003 Cedar fire burned 273,246 acres). As with modern fire storms, there were numerous other wildfires across Southern California that week. However, the fires didn't inflict much damage on the human community because few people lived in the backcountry back then. Now, with so many homes up against the wilderness, fires can become catastrophic. The newspaper quote below from 1889 offers a perspective similar to how the 2003 and 2007 fires were viewed:
"During the past three or four days destructive fires have been raging in San Bernardino, Orange, and San Diego...It is a year of disaster, wide-spread destruction of life and property - and well, a year of horrors."
- The Daily Courier, San Bernardino
There is that and a great deal more here. For the truly interested, those desiring to be informed. You too can become a California fire expert…a real one!!! (And no, we are not at all like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan!)
http://www.californiachaparral.com/chaparralmyths.html
1 person likes this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 11/1/2019 8:57:09 PM (No. 224645)
I enjoyed the article because it made me look up the term lithic landscape. And, I got a giggle or two out of the scientificy nerdy language in this FTA: Even without climate change, a serious fire problem would exist. U.S. land agencies reformed policies to reinstate good fire 40 to 50 years ago, but outside a few locales, it has not been achievable at scale. This guy swerved into my pet theory of clear cutting.
1 person likes this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Nevadadad46 11/1/2019 9:16:04 PM (No. 224658)
Oh, Brother! What a load of clap trap!
0 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
GW_Rider 11/1/2019 9:56:51 PM (No. 224691)
Our future WILL be fire, but not because of any "climate change".
0 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
Strike3 11/1/2019 10:34:46 PM (No. 224714)
Don't you just love people who write with a dictionary in one hand and a thesaurus in the other? It comes out sounding like a college professor on crack. He almost succeeds in giving fire a heart and a soul. All you really have to do is listen to Smokey Bear and be careful with fire when it's dry.
0 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
paral04 11/2/2019 4:43:00 AM (No. 224795)
Well, maybe these fires a Biblical and caused by the negative energy emanating from the depraved residents.
0 people like this.
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