Andrew Freedman writes:
The massive Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park in California is an example of how drought can amplify wildfires in a warming, drying West.
The fire, which now ranks as the 14th-largest wildfire in state history, has been racing through parched stands of oak and pine trees, and threatening some of the region’s iconic giant sequoia trees. The vegetation in the area, and indeed across much of central and southern California, is extremely dry, as the state has experienced its driest year-to-date…
The Parts of the West have been warming faster than the rest of the lower 48 states since the 1970s, a trend tied to climate change as well as natural climate variability.
Anthony Westerling, a climate scientist at the University of California at Merced who studies how climate change effects wildfires, said that increasing temperatures promotes evaporation, which leads to more frequent instances of “extreme fire conditions”…
This has been another ticking time bomb. Uncontrolled forest growth, deadfall, pine beetle kills, unlimited undergrowth, no logging to clean up the forest. All it took was a spark.
Fires occur both naturally and due to human events, of course. I have no doubt that many enormous fires occurred before humans began tracking fire events. It’s probable that huge stands of ancient trees were wiped out and reforested over centuries.
Nature’s timelines and methods are far rougher than timber harvesting would be.
it might be a good thing. many conifers do not release seeds unless there is a fire. I believe Giant Sequoia is one of them. if we want to save these trees we need fires
As noted, the West has actually been cooling rather than warming and its drought/rain patterns have always been wildly variable.
Marc Morano reports that this is actually a low-end fire season, with counts and areas involved well below normal.
Forest management is a tricky business and I’m going to withhold judgment on its affects here. It does seem like frequent, smaller fires might clear out the underbrush and reduce megafires but I’m agnostic on that. It also seems like logging smaller trees would reduce megafires while producing valuable forest products. How often does Weyerhauser have megafires on their private lumber land?
The odd part is that the warmists think this con still works.
the massive fire is the result of decades of man caused fire suppression.
instead of regular SMALL fires clearing out debris and weak/dead trees & plants, we get fire storms raging on decades or longer accumulations of fuel.
idiots.
what a dumbs**t. The west has been unusually cool in recent years. Rainfall variability, while large from year to year, has been quite within recent history.
Give it a few centuries, the climate will change again. For the 10,000,000th time.