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We won’t stop California’s wildfires if we don’t talk about climate change
The Washington Post ^ | August 9, 2018 | The Editorial Board

Posted on 08/09/2018 10:31:04 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer

CALIFORNIA, THE nation’s most populous state and the world’s fifth-largest economy, is on fire. In a state already known for monster conflagrations, the past month has been unusually destructive. The Mendocino Complex fire north of San Francisco is now officially the largest in California’s history, having burned an area about the size of Los Angeles, and it is just one of the major blazes the state has had to face since last October.

As much as the president might prefer to point fingers elsewhere, it is impossible to talk about California’s blazes without considering the role of climate change. Four of the five largest conflagrations the state has had to battle have come since 2012, and that is probably no mere coincidence. Droughts, storms and heat waves have occurred throughout history, of course, and it is hard to attribute any single event to climate change. But scientists have concluded that climate change has increased the frequency of extreme weather and will continue to do so.

A 2016 study concluded that human-caused climate change is responsible for about half the additional drying that researchers have found since the 1970s, resulting in a doubling of the area forest fires have consumed since 1984. Climate change may also increase lightning strikes, which are a major source of wildfires, and generate the high winds that can drive big blazes. Meanwhile, earlier springtime melting means that the land has more time to dry out over the warmer months. Global warming will increasingly prime the environment for spectacular disasters.

So much of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget has gone to firefighting that too little has been left for care and restoration. Lawmakers should examine the many ways they can help prevent another summer like this one - or worse.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: climatechange; climatechangefraud; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; hoax; propaganda; socialism; wildfires
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Hell hath no fury like a solar flare.


41 posted on 08/09/2018 11:28:27 AM PDT by Don Corleone (Nothing makes the delusional more furious than truth.)
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To: Red Badger

Last year was an illegal


42 posted on 08/09/2018 11:30:06 AM PDT by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)
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To: JudgemAll

Yep...................


43 posted on 08/09/2018 11:30:43 AM PDT by Red Badger (July 2018 - the month the world learns the TRUTH......Q Anon)
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To: jetson
Expecially illegals!

From Coulter's Adios America (chapt. 12 "Keep America Beautiful/Multicultural"):

Of the seventy-seven human-caused fires on federal or tribal land in Arizona between 2006 and 2010 investigated by the GAO, a cause could be determined in sixty cases. Fully half of those were caused by illegal aliens. Only five were caused by campers neglecting to fully extinguish a campfire, and the rest were freak accidents.7 One of the reasons the GAO was able to review only seventy-seven fires was that the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service couldn’t spare any agents for investigations. They were too busy protecting "firefighters and their equipment from illegal aliens."

44 posted on 08/09/2018 11:31:57 AM PDT by HarborSentry
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Correction: “We won’t stop California wildfires if we don’t talk about California’s underbrush policies, etc.”


45 posted on 08/09/2018 11:33:45 AM PDT by cranked
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Bullsh*t.

Execute proper logging policies and huge fires the like of which we’re seeing in California will be averted.


46 posted on 08/09/2018 11:34:14 AM PDT by Jack Hammer
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Maybe stop building in areas that are prone to fire with the CREOSOTE Scrub Grass. California is beautiful but not all of it is meant to be inhabited.


47 posted on 08/09/2018 11:41:11 AM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: P-Marlowe
They used to cut fire breaks and do controlled burns but they stopped doing that because it was harmful to the environment.

That's really essential but even that wouldn't work unless controlled burns are done at a much larger scale. California's normal fires before settlement averaged about 4 million acres a season. Now we are at 600k for this year and only 1.4 for last year. We are way below what should be burning, normally, never mind a dry year right after a wet and average year. It is a setup for bad consequences when the fires get out of control.

48 posted on 08/09/2018 11:41:16 AM PDT by palmer (...if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive)
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To: kaktuskid

who owns the land the homes are built on? Better to have building codes that supersede environmental regulations so your property is more resistant to spread of fire.


49 posted on 08/09/2018 11:58:08 AM PDT by the_daug
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To: mbarker12474

The same scammers who stopped logging and caused this mess are now trying to blame climate change for what they, themselves, caused to happen.

Climate change did not cause these fires, environmentalists caused these fires.

They used the spotted owl scam to kill most of the logging and forest management programs because they did not like what scientific forest management looked like.

First, the spotted owl is exactly, genetically, the same bird as a very common and plentiful barn owl. The same bird who migrated to live in trees, or the same bird who migrated into barns, take your pick. It was and is a made up scam, a bundle of liberal lies, and never should have been a valid issue. It was a scam, it was a lie.

So, the liars who ran the anti logging scam got their way via the spotted owl scam and stopped most logging on public land in California.

They stopped the logging which caused a massive fuel build up on the forest floor. This additional fuel is causing the fires to burn much hotter, sterilizing the soil which will inhibit regrowth, and making these fires nearly impossible to put out.

It was predicted then, more than 30 years ago, exactly what was going to happen. Several books were written predicting this exact outcome, and hundreds of papers were authored finding this same prognosis.

What is happening right now is EXACTLY WHAT WAS PREDICTED BY MANY SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONAL FOREST MANAGERS 30 YEARS AGO.

Right now Mother nature is clear cutting over a half million acres and there is not a damn thing that the environmentalists can do about it.

Instead of science based and proper forest management with millions of additional acres of thriving healthy forests, where millions of high paying logging jobs were continued and maintained,we have total devastation.

There is now, this summer, over a half million acres of forests burned. We now also have over a thousand homes lost and thousands of lives devistated further destroying the culture and economy of the mountain communities.

HEY ENVIRONMENTALISTS, ARE YOU PROUD OF YOURSELVES YET?

Bluntly, this is the morons from the cities passing laws that destroy the culture, income, homes and lives of those of us who live in the mountains. None of this was science based, it was all based in and on ignorance and flat out lies.

What did the environmentalists get out of it?

THEY DID NOT GET A DAMN THING OUT OF IT BECAUSE MOTHER NATURE JUST CORRECTED THEIR MASSIVE DECADES LONG F-UP!

MOTHER NATURE JUST STRIP LOGGED OVER A HALF MILLION ACRES AND THERE IS NOT A DAMN THING YOU COULD DO TO STOP IT.

THESE PEOPLE DID NOT PROTECT THE FORESTS FROM DESTRUCTION, THEY CAUSED THE FORESTS TO BE DESTROYED.

Yes, this was caused by environmentalists and their egotistical narcissistic know it all attitudes of superiority.

No matter what lies the passionate Tree Huggers claimed, logging is a part of scientific forest management. Properly managed logging and scientific forest management would have prevented most of the damage that is currently being done to forests, to the wildlife, and to our citizens, by these massive fires.

If there is irony to this it is that now loggers will be pursued to salvage log all of this land. The timber that is still standing, burned by standing will becomes unusable for anything about a year from now. Less than 10% of the remaining timber will be salvaged before it become worthless, useless, and abandoned as dead fuel for the next big fire.

Do you have to wonder why the red counties of rural California, the vast overwhelming land majority of the state, want to detach themselves from the cities and become their own state?

AND NO WE DO NOT WANT THE BIG CITIES AS ANY PART OF THAT NEW STATE!


50 posted on 08/09/2018 12:05:39 PM PDT by oldenuff35
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To: mbarker12474

so you think talking will stop fires. Then start talking dumba—


51 posted on 08/09/2018 12:21:21 PM PDT by merkava
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Such nonsense

Maybe they out to be cutting dead brush


52 posted on 08/09/2018 12:33:40 PM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

No, we cannot stop California wildfires until we talk about the death of the logging industry......which strangely enough CA legislators killed. Funny how that works...


53 posted on 08/09/2018 12:48:23 PM PDT by walkingdead (It's easy, you just don't lead 'em as much....)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Yeah, because we never had massive wildfires in California before mankind ruined everything with SUVs and air conditioning and plastic straws and stuff.

What? Oh. Wait. Nevermind.


54 posted on 08/09/2018 12:50:54 PM PDT by Pelham (California, Mexico's socialist colony)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
it is impossible to talk about California’s blazes without considering the role of climate change.

Connecting California's wildfires with "climate change" is a red herring that makes it is impossible to talk constructively about forest management, or lack of, that results in California's blazes.

We currently have 14,000 firefighters (let that sink in) putting their lives at risk fighting California fires that 14,000 loggers could have thinned. We have herds of cows traipsing through the national forest flatlands, but no herds of goats eating their way through steep canyons. We lament clearcutting, and invent project after project of tree-planting, while refusing to acknowledge the absolute necessity of firebreaks in a region that has denser forests than any other time in history. (remember the dinosaurs?) We limit where firefighters can get their water to fight fires and we're decades behind the times in firefighting equipment. It's time we got realistic and put our firefighters' lives first and foremost and started managing our forests like grown-ups.

55 posted on 08/09/2018 1:39:56 PM PDT by blueplum ( "...this moment is your moment: it belongs to you... " President Donald J. Trump, Jan 20, 2017)
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To: Red Badger

“This latest fire is a result of a kook arsonist.

It has nothing to do with AGW....................”

I thought the Carr fire was started
when a trailer tire went flat and the
rim sparked on the pavement?


56 posted on 08/09/2018 2:02:54 PM PDT by Lean-Right (Eat More Moose)
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To: Lean-Right

Not the Carr Fire, the Holy Fire.....................


57 posted on 08/09/2018 2:11:25 PM PDT by Red Badger (July 2018 - the month the world learns the TRUTH......Q Anon)
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To: mbarker12474

Ummm, perhaps they should build a society someplace besides a desert, then come talk.


58 posted on 08/09/2018 4:21:06 PM PDT by GingisK
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To: Kozy

You won’t stop California’s wildfires until you stop illegals from cooking beans on campfires in a dry area!


59 posted on 08/09/2018 8:03:42 PM PDT by nobamanomore
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To: G Larry
... a record 129 million dead trees in California...

Dang pine bark beetles!!


60 posted on 08/10/2018 5:41:21 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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