[block_dagger]

Wildfires in California date back millions of years and are a natural part of the region's ecology. The difference in recent centuries has been dense human habitation. I think your statement about presumed prevention is inaccurate or misleading.

[aa-jv]

The previous inhabitants knew all about these firestorms and used controlled burning to minimize their impact. Its probably going to be wise for future governors to consider re-learning this knowledge....

[theultdev]

No need to look back that far.

They know to do use control burns, we've been doing it.

It's forest management 101.

But they get sued by environmentalists when they do.

[greentxt]

You make it sound unidimensional but there is probably not 1 type of wildfire in California. Coastal residentially dense fires in chaperal are not the same things as massive fires burning in remote areas of national forrests in the sierras. There is no single cause or solution because they are totally different things, with different drivers and requiring different solutions.

[7e]

Another difference is a steady increase in the world temperature due to climate change.

[the_third_wave]

That is nonsense, the climate has been changing all the time without the place burning down to the roots when it happened to be a bit warmer or not burning at all when it was cooler. These fires have nothing to do with 'climate change', they are caused by the lack of controlled burning which leads to an accumulation of combustible material on the forest floor. Once a fire starts - and fires start all the time, both from natural (lightning etc.) as well as man-made (PG&E cables, careless campers, smokers, fireworks, arson, etc.) causes - they quickly bloom into massive conflagrations due to the presence of all that combustible material. Increased habitation makes these massive fires more costly since fire consumes a McMansion just as readily as it does a Pacific pine.

[polotics]

You wrote "the climate has been changing all the time" It must have taken you so much effort and thinking to come up with such an illuminating, novel, and profound assertion.

Here is something of that ilk:

The statement "the climate has been changing all the time" is often used to downplay the significance of current climate change. While it's true that Earth's climate has undergone natural changes throughout its history, the current warming trend is different for several reasons:

Rate of Change: The current rate of warming is unprecedented in the past several thousand years. Natural climate fluctuations typically occur over much longer timescales, allowing ecosystems and species to adapt gradually. The rapid pace of current change is making it difficult for many species to keep up, leading to disruptions in ecosystems and biodiversity loss.

Cause of Change: While past climate change events were triggered by natural factors like volcanic eruptions or solar variations, the current warming trend is primarily driven by human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. This has led to a significant increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, trapping heat and warming the planet.

Magnitude of Change: The projected magnitude of future warming, if left unchecked, is likely to exceed the changes experienced during the past several million years. This could have severe consequences for human societies and natural ecosystems, including rising sea levels, more frequent and intense extreme weather events, and widespread species extinctions.

Evidence: The overwhelming scientific consensus supports the conclusion that human activities are the primary cause of current climate change. This is based on a vast body of evidence from multiple independent lines of research, including temperature records, ice core data, and climate models.

In summary, while the Earth's climate has naturally changed over long periods, the current warming trend is distinct in its rate, cause, magnitude, and supporting evidence. It is crucial to recognize the unique nature of human-induced climate change and take action to mitigate its impacts.

[vixen99]

Your comment comes across as markedly authoritative. Are you a climate scientist with first hand knowledge? You appear to be repeating what we all read in countless reports almost daily from innumerable organizations and have done over the past few years. I'm pretty sure like many here I could probably offer an impromptu talk like this at the drop of a hat, covering the same points.

I do wonder why we accept the reports from a number of rather distinguished climatologists and physicists who do not accept this 'scientific consensus'. Given the very significant swathe of the public who are convinced by the latter, why isn't this academic divide finally put to rest and the skeptics shown to be demonstrably wrong in their selection of data and their interpretations? It does not seem to happen. Why not? If this is an existential crisis I would have thought that such public debates at a very high level by extremely well-informed experts are well overdue. Yes, some occur but they are never definitive?

"Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8262789/

[polotics]

Hello vixen99

You wrote "You appear to be repeating what we all blah blah" and guess what, the poster I responded to started it :-)

A weak point of zero value like "weather has been changing all the time" deserves absolutely no more effort than the response I gave, what do you think? Anyone with an ouce of honesty and self-respect and care for the future would know by now that such a statement is completely worthless with 100% certainty.

And the so-called skeptics have been shown to be demonstrably wrong in their selection of data and their interpretations many many times, they just choose to ignore the evidence and to lie and lie and repeat. There are whole websites like realclimate that go through absolutely everything that's been ponied up by now.

And finally, full disclaimer but I thought my post was clear enough about that: except for the intro, all the points were pasted straight out of ChatGPT! No one has to accept the worn-out intellectual denial-of-service attack of climate trolls now, demanding exhausting pure sweet clear responses as response to half-baked brain farts. Like I said: low-effort on troll's part, low-effort on responder. Is fair.

[edmundsauto]

I do agree, the experts could do a better job of communicating to the parts of the public who may not understand the scientific consensus. But there is a broad swath of people who will reject any information, because it’s already been politicized to death. (Why this is political I can’t tell you)

But the public reception doesn’t really tell us much about the strength of the conclusions. For which there is overwhelming consensus, very clear mechanisms of action, and pretty straightforward directional signal.

Are you questioning the comms or the consensus? I’m not clear from your response.

[thangalin]

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...

'California has experienced increasingly severe autumn wildfires over the past several decades, which have exacted a rising human and environmental toll. Recent fire and climate science research has demonstrated a clear link between worsening California wildfires and climate change, mainly though the vegetation-drying effect of rising temperatures and shifting precipitation seasonality.'

https://weatherwest.com/

'Thus, the wildfire risk across much of SoCal will be even greater than the sum of its parts (i.e., the strong winds or dry fuels individually). This is an increasingly prominent concern, as has been previously discussed, with increasing overlap between “offshore wind season” and “critically dry vegetation season” in California---and is something that is expected to happen more often with climate change (especially in Southern California).'

[7e]

You win worst comment on HN for the day. https://www.drought.gov/news/study-finds-climate-change-blam...

"It was found that nearly all the observed increase in burned areas over the past half-century is due to human-caused climate change."

[lostlogin]

The climate has been changing a long time. I’m a big fan of the XKCD about it.

https://xkcd.com/1732/