[Attention Surplus Disorder]

You’re exactly right. This elementary school level argument has been going on for a decade. The late Bill Wattenberg screamed about this for many years.

What the eco-freaks do not tell you is that CA has suffered for many years from serial infestations of bark beetles. They kill trees, on an alarming and widespread basis. In the time it takes for the trees to die, they of course shed branches and all manner of tree detritus. This piles up on the forest floor and creates a think carpet of pure fuel. Sometimes 2-3 feet thick. Experienced forest management folks have been begging for years to get these forests cleared out and incidentally, to harvest the lumber. But the eco-freaks have successfully blocked all efforts to clear out the dead wood and slash from the forest floor because they have claimed that cutting of the roads that would be required would promote logging, which of course is excess logging, an offense against Gaia. Never mind that the large lumber companies are acutely aware of forest management techniques and there are now more acres of forest standing in the US than there were before the eeeeeeevil white man showed up.

So because these dead, overgrown and overfueled forests are not maintained nor cleared, when fires break out they are intensely hot, in fact cauterizing the ground. Trees that normally drop seeds that would sprout and grow, those seeds are killed by the intense heat. So these areas that have these super intense fires stay barren for many years, then they become very prone to erosion and flooding, which washes away topsoil.

The failure to clear out the dead forests is the cause of this phenomenon.

[vette6387]

You have described the problem to a tee! Then in the suburban areas, the residents have planted boku trees in areas that were grassland with a few Valley Oaks, so now virtually every neighborhood that has been in place for ten years or more, it an urban forest waiting to be torched. And sad to say, we’re guilty of this nonsense. That said, we have removed a number of mature trees from our acre and a half because they made our home less defensible if a fire occurs. We’re not there yet, but we’ve made some big strides. Our spending last year on the subject was about $6,000, but by comparison to the value of our home ( to say nothing of our lives), it’s a pittance.

[Cloverfarm]

Excellent root cause analysis. [Pardon the pun]

[semimojo]

So because these dead, overgrown and overfueled forests are not maintained nor cleared, when fires break out they are intensely hot, in fact cauterizing the ground.

Why weren’t there these cauterizing fires before man started managing the forest?