If it’s known to be at least partially political, then that would seem to be a pretty critical thing to know.
Edit: And needed to gauge relative prospects versus everything else on the agenda…
In 2021, nearly half of RMNP burned down due to the lack of effective prescribed burns. I know the NPS/USFS are criminally underfunded, but losing these wonders is also a crime.
Edited: us forest service
What is this?
>NPS/NFS
Is this National Forest Service? What does NPS stand for?
Edit: Im not American, sorry for not knowing your acronyms.
NPS - National Park Service.
NFS - National Forest System? There is no National Forest Service, but there is the US Forest Service as referenced in the title.
What are or what could they do? The latter is basically the same as what would be done to you and me running out and torching federal forest. Jail.
He'd be the greatest folk hero we've made in a long time.
At some point politicians need to have some chutzpah.
Probably not. But you would see Calfire agents being arrested.
> some point politicians need to have some chutzpah
I agree and also asked the question [1]. As a political stunt, it might work for the individual. But it would also set a precedent most Californian voters probably wouldn't appreciate when it comes to federal land in red states. To say nothing of basically every Californian wildfire funding battle in D.C. being ex ante conceded for a few years.
Liberalism: the fear that someone, somewhere is doing something you disagree with.
But thanks for saying the quiet part out loud. If we want to make progress as a nation we have to literally love ourselves (in this case, our lungs) more than we hate those we disagree with.
You clearly haven't seen the political scene in the past decade. Both democrats and republicans have gone 180 on several issues. Democrats, supposedly the stalwarts of bodily autonomy, fully embraced mask/vaccine mandates. Election security (eg. hackable voting machines) went from being the concern of left-leaning techies to a rallying cry of election denying republicans. It's impossible to predict where alliances will lie based on a few principles.
What are they possibly going to do? Send in the army? oh no...
Realistically though if california wanted to fund and manage this i'm sure the feds would be extatic.
They do. But torching federal land might be somewhere the federal courts wouldn't find it.
Putting the matter of settled law to one side, I think the discussion here is about criminal liability, not civil.
A state could apply for a license from the Department of the Interior, but no, a state can’t take federal lands via eminent domain. This is long-settled and even a plain English reading of the Constitution makes this pretty clear. There are mountains of cases on the Supremacy Clause that support this.
If California were to use a hypothetical eminent domain to seize U.S. land, they’d have already done it with Moffett Field if only to get the property tax revenue from the Google Gulfstreams parked there.
again, we need politicians with chutzpah. Oregon recently arrested federal officials for similar environmental issues. I'm not 100% read up on the entire case, but I appreciate people trying to do what's right instead of armchair governance.
> This is long-settled and even a plain English reading of the Constitution makes this pretty clear. There are mountains of cases on the Supremacy Clause that support this.
Luckily we have a new Supreme Court makeup that might make a more sensible decision when it comes to states literally doing what needs to be done so their citizens don't literally die in infernos.
2. Forest fires increase due to build up of flammable materials
3. Bureaucrats pat themselves on the back for their decision
4. Collect their paycheck as everything goes to shit
Maybe we should do like China and have multiple big state-owned enterprises in the same sectors competing against each other. The competitive forces stay without the intervening short-sighted interests of the ownership class.
I wonder why this Chinese model is not included in discussions about government vs. privatization. Almost half of the Chinese economy is made up of SOEs competing against other SOEs. In some sectors that means the Chinese have multiple competing state-owned options to pick from while we in the "capitalist west" only have one state provided option.
Where's the incentive for the various SOEs to actually compete? At least in capitalism there's money on the line. When all the executives/board members are political appointees of the same party, things can get really chummy between "competitors".
If running a Chinese SOE well means a promotion in the party apparatus, then that would give some real competition, but US capitalism is delivering only for the billionaire class.
But you linked to figures for the PPI, which as the name suggests, is the price charged by producers, not distributors or retailers. It might be evidence of collusion between whoever is making ketchup, but not between the supermarkets stocking them. It's hard to take the rest of your comment seriously given sloppy mistakes like this.
>If running a Chinese SOE well means a promotion in the party apparatus, then that would give some real competition
How's that working out with all the senior party members mysteriously disappearing?
>but US capitalism is delivering only for the billionaire class.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
In other words, working as intended.
And ketchup prices in the U.K. also increased. Are U.K. supermarkets colluding with American supermarkets?
Energy costs along with increased demand has a huge impact on prices. There are vast microeconomic factors but also macroeconomic factors as well. For instance, a declining economy (or more accurately, increased inflation ,) means that more people buy cheaper food. And most fast food features — ketchup. Higher demand + increased fuel costs + same sized harvests = higher ketchup prices.
I am highly simplifying the ketchup market but the Democrat talking point of “supermarket collusion” is absolute nonsense and not based on any evidence.
Supermarkets buy their products from distributors — do you know the price of ketchup from a distributor? If the distributor price remained exactly the same, and supermarkets operate on similar financial models, then the price at the shop will be very similar. That isn’t collusion, that’s how commodities get priced at the retail level.
As far as the “billionaire class” — who gets rich from Chinese SOEs? (Hint, it isn’t the workers who are paid effectively slave wages with no recourse to move to another employer because those SOEs are, by the very definition of SOE, in collusion. The wealth inequality gap in China is massive. You have the Audi class, and the bicycle class — and not much in the middle. The other interesting factor about Chinese economics is their currency manipulation. But that’s a topic for another day.
Those arguing for Chinese-style anything in the realm of economics ought to spend a few years living there prior to forming an opinion.
For those interested in ketchup, here’s a Guardian article describing the issue of grocery inflation: https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/15/heinz-tomat...
I wouldn’t say it looks like a great model personally
But to your point — the corruption of SOEs is unmatched. They make the South Korean Chaebols look like a libertarian farmers market.
Unless you think they should just let the fires burn, which would be catastrophic.
Prescribed burns are treated as a panacea whenever there's wildfires, but they are only a mitigation strategy - you're still always going to have wildfires, the degree of severity and in what areas is what matters (they're also not cheap: it is after all, just starting a forest fire you try to keep under control).
Why? I think it's probably the best thing to do. If the USG doesn't want to allocate enough money to properly manage forests, then why not just let it burn? If that results in some towns burned down, that's fine: voters in those towns can complain to their elected representatives and maybe vote for someone else.
It sounds like it's a resourcing issue, not a change in philosophy. It doesn't change the fact that it won't be happening though.
Yes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41920127 ("HN: The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers")
Relevant comment by S201: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41922195
"The overall Forest Service budget has indeed been increasing, but it's nearly all going to wildfire fighting. I recently wrote about the state of forest road funding and went in depth on this here: https://ephemeral.cx/2024/09/losing-access-to-the-cascades
> Overall, in 1995 16% of the Forest Service budget was dedicated to wildfires. By 2015 it was 52% and by 2025 it’s projected to be upwards of 67%. Without large amounts of additional funding it is virtually guaranteed that the Forest Service’s budget will continue to be siphoned away by firefighting needs."
Did prices for wood even go down post-COVID back to their previous level?
(But I'm certainly not seeing the glut of cheap lumber that others may appear to be alluding to here...)
Why? We played with the farfetched hypothetical of California unilaterally acting on federal land. But if the Forest Service says “come on in” and they do, I’m struggling to see who would face any real consequences given the Congress’s power of the purse isn’t being touched.
Sure. I don’t see how the Congress stops that if the USFS (not Parks) and Sacramento strike a deal.
Effective fire prevention will also make fire insurance cheaper and reducing development in fire-prone areas will reduce the cost of forest management.
Second, how do you know it is just one million homes? I'm interested to learn more there
California spends a roughly an order of magnitude more per acre they are responsible for, when compared with the USFS so I don't think underspending by California is the issue here. The problem seems to be the lack of authority for CalFire to manage fire risk on federal land.
I can assure you that no matter how high the risk of fire, insurers will be willing to provide insurance on that so long as they are legally allowed to charge the appropriate premiums.
Not true. Assume for the moment that you're the CEO of Golden Insurance Co., and you're still writing fire insurance policies in Burn County, CA. After Yet Another massive fire - and loads of "100% loss" payouts - from your balance sheet - the experts in your Risk Estimating Dept. say the premium to insure a $600K house in Burn Co. needs to be $200K/year - because they expect to pay out to replace that house ($600K) every 4 year ($150K/year), and they need the other $50K for overhead and temp. relocation benefits and rebuilding-cost inflation and a bit of hedge - just in case they're wrong, and things burn down even more often.
Now - if the fire insurance for a $600K house costs $200K/year, how many of the homeowners can and will actually pay that much for fire insurance? Perhaps a number that's falling like a rock? Meanwhile, Wall St. is howling about the horrible risk that your balance sheet is facing, if there's another big fire season. And the 99% of homeowners who can't afford those premiums are bitterly angry, and in a mood to string up the bearer of bad news (meaning you) from the highest tree still standing.
SO - why wouldn't you, as CEO, make the unfortunate decision to just stop writing fire insurance policies for properties in Burn Co., CA?
How do people afford to move and start new lives when you can't sell your property because it is uninsurable?
Nobody is suggesting jailing the irresponsible. But there is no reason they’re entitled to that capital. They took a risk and it was a bad one.
Since CA tends to be a rich state, I vote that those living in SF and LA pay 75% of the required fees, and the remainder of the state pay the rest.
https://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationPractices/Fi...
I'm not sure how it works in California, but wildfires don't really care about our jurisdictional boundaries...
A wholesale "do not prescribed burn" is not sensible. Determining which areas are high and low value and then concentrating what resources you have on the highest value areas is.
In the end though the only one we're truly hurting is ourselves and our desired life style when it burns out of control.
If insurers were allowed to and incentivized to price accurately, homes in dangerous areas (flood plains, fire hazards) would be too expensive to buy, and people... wouldn't.
Especially given that if you can't get insurance, you can't get a mortgage, which drastically limits your buyers.
Is this caused by regulations or the insurers approach?
Genuinely ignorant here.
Artificially forcing blended home insurance rates lessens the pricing signal that this particular area might be too risky to build in.
At the end of the day, it's developers and the city/county making money while offloading the risk to insurance companies and government mortgage buyers.
The same has happened with auto insurance rates (men and women have different accident rates, so used to have different rates), and, glaringly, medical insurance rates.
The problem is people come to the legislature screaming about being charged a rate that actually reflects the risk. The legislature eventually responds by making insurance spread the costs over it's policy base. This results in people to screaming to the legislature because their rates are skyrocketing to pay for the idiots in the danger zone. The legislature eventually responds by not allowing insurance companies to charge enough--and they walk.
By the time you reach the point of the insurance companies walking you've already had many chances to fix the problem. But we never learn, people are determined to have their cake and eat it also.
Our house is not fire engineered--but still it has very few spots that could ignite. That's simply because we have stucco walls and a concrete tile roof. There is some exposed wood but not much. Nor are the vents spark proof.
Unfortunately, concrete tile roofs aren't suitable in many places (they don't like hail) and can't be retrofit onto most houses due to the weight.
Even in the case of an emergency firebreak, if there aren't enough firefighters to cut one large one, there aren't enough firefighters to cut lots of small ones with a greater total length.
Though, 3 issues I see with complete disengagement: (1) there are whole towns that would burn down, avoidably so if some fires were not suppressed
(2) modern fires are rangers and turn the landscape into Savannah. This is not necessary. Healthy forests would be fire resistant and more fires could just run their course (in other words, not suppressing fires can lead to CA forests being removed)
(3) kinda related to (2), the wet/dry seasons creates a lot of burnabke grasses and bushes that pop up. Prescribed burns would tamp that down, giving forests more time to age and be fire resistant
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/us/prison-inmates-fight-calif...
Prescribed burns are expensive now because we haven't done them for so long. California banned the indigenous practice of cultural burns before it was even a state! But the more we work on restoring this practice the cheaper it'll be for everyone in the long term
CA Insurance Claims USFS Wildfire
Year and Settlements Management Budget
2018 $13.6 billion $2.5 billion
2019 $2.8 billion $2.4 billion
2020 $3.5 billion $2.35 billion
2021 $4.75 billion $2.4 billion
2022 (unknown) $2.65 billion
2023 (unknown) $2.97 billion
It is a little complicated, but it isn't that complicated. The simple question is, should the government pay a safe home's price for a burnt down home?
PS: I heard the thing California does, however, is putting a cap on insurance premiums, so insurers just avoid some regions, and owners cannot find insurance to buy. It's kinda the same thing -- owner's responsibility.
Note that a lot of the property insurance regulation stems from a 1988 voter proposition. I suppose it has worked fine from then until now but the CA drought and greatly increased fire risk was an unexpected shock.
FWIW I would guess that we won't see extreme fire events for some time going forward - probably not until a "big drought" comes back to CA 30-40 years from now. The reinsurance market will settle down and mutual insurance companies will end up issuing refunds eventually.
California FAIR is the insurance of last resort so what you’re saying isn’t totally accurate.
There has to be an insurance option because you can’t get a mortgage without insurance. And owner occupied real estate prices do not go up without mortgages.
California bends over backwards to make owner occupied real estate risk free.
More provocative questions: what is the difference between someone who lost a home in a place guaranteed for the home to eventually burn down, and someone who doesn’t own a home at all? In that moment: nothing, right? Why is sunk cost a fallacy all the time, except that time?
Is someone who pays less in taxes deserving of less, more or equal government assistance? No, right? Now replace taxes with “compulsory payments” like home insurance: does your answer change?
This should illuminate for you why CA wildfire bailout policy is so inequitable. These communities are not an escape valve from overpriced real estate in California cities, they ARE the overpriced real estate all the same.
If the fire had been caused by someone without the funds to pay for damages (e.g. a homeless encampment (Day Fire) or college students improperly extinguishing an illegal bonfire (Tea fire)), then there might be criminal charges, but insurance companies will be on the hook.
People will not start doing proper inspections until you punish the individual harshly, instead of the company.
1. torts often fail to make people whole, and even when they do, they aren't always a good deterrent.
2. The comment I was replying to implied that SCE was a scapegoat for the Camp Fire; all evidence strongly suggests that this is not the case.
We did just read the article about California spending money on fire mitigation while the federal government--the US part of the US Forest Service--skimps, right?
This is about the US Forest Service which manages Federal land. The Federal government owns and is responsible for rather large swaths of California forests.
Though I also have bad news if you happen to own property in rural CA...
It struck me last trip that an adversary so inclined could really sap lives, morale and resources from huge areas of the country by having rogue individuals secretly starting fires on top of regular lightning and firebug sources.
Then again, when a casual arsonist can set significant fractions of a state or even country on fire, and there's millions of people living in the area, and when "pyromania" is sufficiently common enough that it's got it's own entry in the DSM [1] (with estimated incidence at 1.13% (!)), it probably counts as an unnecessary complication to the explanation. There's no way 1.13% of "millions of people" can be stopped. The only solution is to not let the powder keg be created in the first place.
[1]: https://www.theravive.com/therapedia/pyromania-dsm--5-312.33...
Thanks to the wind, the fire managed to jump a distance of 130 meters (426 feet) across an ice rink and set fire to the watering truck.
[1]: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brannen_i_L%C3%A6rdal_2014
[2]: https://www.yr.no/nb/historikk/graf/1-139310/Norge/Vestland/...
See also:
* https://wildfirerisk.org/reduce-risk/ignition-resistant-home...
* https://www.nfpa.org/en/education-and-research/wildfire/prep...
You'd think that insurance companies would make this a condition of coverage: you have to send in photos and be open to random inspections for verification.
If I remember right about how these ecosystems work, you need the controlled burns so that the underbrush goes up but the trees don’t. Without the controlled burns, the trees also go up, and then “next year” all you have is the new underbrush… and the problem repeats.
Would California have standing for damages? What would honestly be the consequences if the Governor and Legislature ordered Calfire to conduct controlled burns on federal land? (Can the Forest Service give Calfire permission to conduct burns on its land?)
And work they did .. subsequent years included massive fires that broke records, mostly 2018 and 2020. All the new money and agreements and on-call resources did ameliorate but did not prevent or even lessen, the massive catastrophic fire destruction.
Now, in an election year, someone is definitely jockying for new agreements somehow, but who knows the details... maybe someone here?
This seems a bit disingenuous, didn't the number of acres burned dramatically decrease starting in 2021?
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S2-C1-...
If you own something you got to take care of it and if you don't want to take care of it you should get rid of it.
(The Biden administration increased the amount of logging in the last few years from a historic low. But the goal is still only to log up to 4 billion board feet next year.)
While not a complete replacement for each other, prescribed burns are specifically more necessary now because of the lack of logging. And more importantly, these agencies are only collecting a fraction of the fees they once did to sustain their mission while having more unharvested forests to maintain.
Trees also play a roll, but it doesn’t take much vegetation to destroy a subdivision etc.
It strikes me as implausible and unrelated: - fire fighting costs is now exponentially more AFAIK
- that revenue from the 90s might not have gone back to forests
- while billions of log feet sounds a lot, it might not be
- young forests burn, old forests are fire resistant. That logging creates young forests
- logging requires access. Places inaccessible will still burn and still be a problem
- fire breaks from logging only helps so much with santa anna style winds that blow embers very, very far
- logging does not remove undergrowth, per the article it creates a ladder situation where tree tops will combust
- old growth west coast forests are fire adapted and burns are necessary. Logging and suppression do not seem like the right solutions
- conditions have changed since the 90s. Different rainfall patterns, different cycle of draughts, 30 more years of fire suppression and combustible materials, and 30 more years of (hyper fast) climate change (significant changes have occurred in that minuscule amount of time)
I see these types all the time, they're the ones that produce various "studies" that are always get linked on HN. They usually have some generic name, some combination of various buzzwords, and their website is them displaying all the various "research" and "studies" they've produced.
Their stated goal is apparently to just "promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people’s lives".
How do they actually make money? They say they've got 33 staff members and 14 board members/advisors. Do they all work for free?
Do they actually sell some product somewhere? I see nothing on their site where something is for sale or where you can hire them for anything. Are they supported by ads somewhere?
All they seem to do is just spend year and year pumping out various "studies" and articles. Are there unknown backers paying them to produce this content?
It's a think tank. They generate good policy and good ways for politicians to explain that policy.
> How do they actually make money?
I've given them money. They've been around for a long time. I'm a big Dean Baker fan.
> All they seem to do is just spend year and year pumping out various "studies" and articles.
You say this as if it were a bad thing.
Propublica's nonprofit explorer[1], and specifically the Form 990 filings[2], may be useful.
[1]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/522... [2]: from 2022 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/522...
charitable foundations and donors. basically the same groups as "Sesame Street was brought to you by..."
> Are there unknown backers paying them
There should never be any unknown backers. If you ever see an article like this that doesn't have a big "Our Funders" link in the page footer or somewhere else, you should be suspicious.
Yeah but sometimes the big funders for "Americans For Prosperity" are "Americans Against Poverty" and "People For Prosperity" who are both in turn funded by "People Against Poverty" which is funded in part by "Americans For Prosperity" so figuring out where exactly the funding is ultimately coming from can be challenging.
I particularly recommend the superb audiobook.
Through a series of interviews, this book makes the case the practice of basketweaving by indigenous people living in present-day California - and the massive and well-organized trade of hundreds of different types of baskets - is/was not merely a mechanism of subsistence, but actually a brilliant wildfire control strategy.
Anderson and her many stunning interview subjects - indigenous people recalling the practices of grandparents and their siblings - make a compelling case that by encouraging the hundreds of different species which went into the creation of baskets to grow in certain places and not others, ancestors sculpted the landscape into one in which fires burned out in predictable patterns rather than scorching a significant portion of the continent.
Fire was used to promote plant growth to encourage game, keep meadows open and clear to aide hunting, select for fire tolerant plants which native preferred, and even harvesting of grasshoppers.
I'm sure the natives had some idea that frequent fires helped prevent more catastrophic burns, they would regularly schedule burns from every year to every few years depending on the landscape. But I doubt they could have predicted the kinds of catastrophic fires we've seen after decades and decades of severe fire suppression.
There's not much evidence that indigenous Californians were doing any kind of fire management in the California coniferous forests - which is largely what the US Forest Service manages and have been in the news for megafires.
Indigenous Californians lived, overwhelmingly, in chaparral and grasslands near coastal areas and foothills rather far away. There is evidence that burns happened there (mostly burn scars in nearby coastal redwood forests, but also various written accounts by the Spanish).
That said, an estimated 4.5-12% of California land burned annually prior to the Spanish getting here - so whatever wildfire management practices happened still resulted in far more land burning than today and months of smoke filled skies - which matches up with early written accounts.
Was the smoke less toxic?
With lower populations, the smoke impacted less population?
Is a large part of this the fact that fire supressiondid did not occur on industrial scale?
How comparable is the situation? I've heard that it is possible that california has been abnormally wet for the last 500 years. Could be a case of settling cities on a volcano. Ie: it erupts frequently on a geologic scale, but on a human time scale it is a complete surprise
What's the source for that? It sounds insanely high - enough to burn the entire land area of California every decade or two if the fires did not overlap (I assume they must have in this model)
It's common enough for indigenous people to burn off dry grass ranges every year or two, often in chequered patterns to lessen the chances of wind picking up and fanning a full front across unburnt grasslands.
That's likely the 10% referred to, repeated burning of grasslands along with the livable fringes and common paths of forrest areas.
Add onto that "natural" fires from lightening strikes, etc. Some of these would start in ares with little human management and years of built up leaf litter leading to big burns that reduce large areas to ash on the ground and a few scattered trunks .. many would start in areas that have had fires in past five years or so and would result in "cool burns" through leaf litter, some tree trunk climbing, but essentially leave big trees standing and alive with clear floors for new growth.
My impression from the book was that there was. They specifically mention burning in around Yosemite and for the harvesting and health of pines whose nuts were used for food.
Also "Eh" seems somewhat dismissive of a really thorough and well researched book. I'm curious if you've read it.
The huge old trees cut out the light reaching the forest floor, so there was less underbrush to burn. It absolutely did burn, regularly, but did little damage because the fire never got hot enough to burn the trees.
But with the secondary growth, it's vulnerable to fire. So we have to burn it often to clear the fuel load before it gets too much. But there's a lot of opposition to this kind of preventative burning, and then the fuel load builds up until we get a monster bush fire, everything burns down, and it all has to start again.
We need about 100 years with no major bush fires, and no logging, to regenerate the first-growth forest that evolved here. But that's a major economic asset and the chances of it not being logged are tiny.
I'm not opposed to prescribed burns, either, I think they are totally necessary. But do them in the fall, when you've got nothing but rain and cool temperatures for the next 6 months, instead of weeks before the hottest and driest stretch of the year.
As to why they burn in early summer, they said at a community meeting it's because it requires fewer people to manage the fire.
If the only goal is to prevent forest fires, then in theory you could just send a hoard of people in to gather up all the dead wood at the end of each season, pile it up and have some nice fall bonfires, which might be fun. The main issue is the terrain harsh and would be very time-consuming.
In CA, there is a lot of shrubbery that turns brown and grasses.
Second, (west coast) forests that have not burned in a while look like a big brick of plant matter. Mostly living, dense, from ground to 30 feet high of plant matter that will combust when it is dry, windy, and a fire that is plenty hot to even burn the roots several feet deep.
as an avid outdoorsman, please explain this. I’ve never seen a “brick of plant matter”.
I have seen overgrown shrubs and grass, but I’ve never seen the forest form a compressed brick of plant matter.
Also if plants are living they have water in them.
For example, on this site: http://willhiteweb.com/washington_fire_lookouts/miller_hill/...
This image: http://willhiteweb.com/washington_fire_lookouts/miller_hill/...
I've seen unburned forests where that undergrowth is more dense and taller. The more time, the more that underbrush thickens and grows. Eventually there is an old growth forest and that stuff is shaded out. AFAIK that process plays out o er centuries. We're typically in the first century of growth for west coast forests (few old growth forests remain)
Compare for example with these images of a post-burn forest: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/nyregion/nj-pine-barrens-...
There's a number of plants that have actually evolved to take advantage of the fires.
West coast trees evolved to drop their lower branches. They naturally won't have branches for 20 to 40 feet off the ground. They need to grow old enough to do that. Most forests have already been chopped down a few times over though in the last 150 years.
meanwhile forests keep burning in unplanned ways.
And even if it were true, lets pretend we give all of the forests to timber barons--then we get to 1) still fight the fires anyway, and 2) we'd end up having to bail the timber barons out after the fires. The end state is more burned forests that we now dont own, or get to use, or have any say over, yet, we still pay for it all and the billionaires walk away with everything.
At this point we know they wouldn't care for the forests any more than the forest service.
[0] https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/osu-research-suggests-fore...
> OSU research suggests Forest Service lands not the main source of wildfires affecting communities
---
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/despite-what-the-logging-...
> For decades, Oregon’s timber industry has promoted the idea that private, logged lands are less prone to wildfires. The problem? Science doesn’t support that.
---
[2] https://missoulacurrent.com/study-wildfires-land/
> Study: Most destructive wildfires have started on private land
---
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06002-3
> Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
Climate change is also to blame. The firestorms of 2017, 2018 and 2020 broke all records, and were insanely expensive to rebuild after. The typical trigger is a katabatic wind event [2] after a long dry spell. This massively reduces relative humidity (often to 5-10%,) making ignition much easier. Once a fire starts, the wind spreads it extremely quickly. Sustained wind speeds of 50-60mph are not uncommon near mountain peaks.
In 2017/2018/2020, the precipitating events were so intense that the initial responses focused exclusively on helping the residents out. By the time the actual firefighting began, the fires were already enormous.
It's surprising to me that we haven't seriously looked into large-scale sprinkler systems, such as this one deployed in Spain [3]. These could take a major bite out of the initial uncontrolled stage. They could either be deployed in the wild along naturally defensible lines, or at the perimeters of inhabited areas.
They're expensive upfront, but not as expensive as the alternative. They might also reduce the need for prescribed burns.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/10/home...
...But in general, I do agree that we shouldn't be selling out American resources for foreign countries at our loss.
An ounce of prevention is worth pound of cure. But now they're doing away with the prevention... to be able to afford the cure instead (which they are now likely guaranteed to need more of)?
I'm genuinely confused and trying to figure out the logic. Is this a california/usa political kind of thing?
This is a "US Federal Government" thing. The funding for this department is decided fairly short term, so it is a political thing dependent on the current government, especially how it feels about California, climate change, etc.
However idiotic it may be - people are far more willing to pay $$$$$ to have a broken leg treated than they are willing to pay $ for salt or sand to put on their icy sidewalk.
For example, Trump’s running on blaming the next guy for problems that he created as president.
Similarly, when Arnold was governor he bought a fleet of mobile hospitals that could have been used for covid.
They were scrapped by the democrats the second he was voted out, and that mistake has had zero political repercussions.
No politics on HN. Especially today. Also welcome to American politics…
Yes, because Newsom and Trump don’t get along.
If we are not doing prescribed burns or, say, schools need to hold bake sales, it is because Congress just isn't choosing to spend money on those priorities, not that the massive military budget is making this impossible.
You would think this would be high up on the list of hiring competent people to manage this part of CA life.
