[hodgesrm]

It seems clear that the Western US is going to burn until the fuel is gone in enough places that megafires can't develop easily. It's like ecological herd immunity.

Most affected states are still in the reactive firefighting mode rather than thinking how to get ahead of the curve by removing a century of fuel accumulated from determined fire suppression. There's no question rising temperatures make things worse, but really the bill is just coming due sooner.

CA gov Gavin Newsome's news conference is a good sample of what's currently wrong with our approach. It's what he doesn't say that's interesting.

[1] https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/09/08/...

[anonAndOn]

It's not just fire suppression. We've got a trifecta of drought, bark beetle infestation and fire suppression (aka, tree density).[0] It's the killer combo.

[0]https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/topics/tree_mortality/california/i...

[kemiller]

This needs more upvotes. I agree that our fire management hasn't been great, but there is more to it than that. Climate change is driving both more fuel and deeper droughts, and making better conditions for bark beetles. There isn't a single answer to this.

[hodgesrm]

I agree too, despite the strong comment above.

Still, fire suppression is the 800 pound gorilla. We're not just seeing fires in the conifer-dominated Sierra. It's also in the savannah and scrub zones as well. These all burned regular in prehistoric times.

[maerF0x0]

ideologues are able to turn any event into evidence for their perspective. I'm not a climate change denier, I just agree with you that the real issue is humankind's fire suppression.

There are a bunch of things that could be done, but no one is happy to support it. Selective logging, brush clearing, not putting multi-million dollar homes in the forest. etc.

[Thrymr]

"Selective logging" usually means removing the big, healthy, valuable trees and not the brush and dead wood that provide the fuel, but are not worth the effort to clear financially. It's expensive to do it well.

[maerF0x0]

Correct, but these kinds of forests will often have their deadwood trees removed as a form of spacing to allow either more quality trees or growth room for existing trees.

[eweise]

was the same in California 20 years ago. Didn't have fires like this. What's changed?

[albertop]

It was 20 years less of neglect. Not sure when we have stop doing controlled burns in the name of keeping air quality good. It was more than 20 years ago.

[nickff]

20 years of accumulating fuel on the ground.

[hodgesrm]

More fuel and warmer/drier. Snowpack for example has moved up 1000' or more since the 1990s in the middle Sierra Nevada, which means less moisture in the summer.

[tylerflick]

More people, more fire suppression.

[chrisseaton]

> rather than thinking how to get ahead of the curve by removing a century of fuel accumulated from determined fire suppression

The way to get rid of it is to... burn it. But people don't like it burning, so they won't.

[baddox]

> It's like ecological herd immunity.

I would think the closer analogy to a pandemic would be that it calms down when it kills nearly everyone. But, I suppose that is herd immunity in some sense.