Primo Numero Uno wrote:
My Grandfather was a forester in Northern California and was a founder of a timber company there after WW2. My Dad's side of the family grew up in that world in remote Northern California and he still has ties to friends still in the area and industry. The people who worked in that industry have some choice thoughts about Californian politician's mismanagement of that industry. California has made mistakes in several industries that contribute to our current fire risks. The mismanagement of the timber industry and maintenance of our forests is a huge contributing factor. My cousin who works heli attack for Cal Fire take on Trump's tweets about the situation a couple of years back were, "He's a dick for sending out tweets like that when we have a crisis going on, but he's not wrong." It's amazing how whenever there's an issue like this now we have to politicize. Who is in the White House should have nothing to do with doing a better job of managing the situation. Although a lot of the land is National Forest.
The state of our electric grid has also become a major issue although not the cause of these fires. The electric utility which is a government-regulated monopoly has been the cause of several large fires in the past. Now the solution is for PG&E to shut off the power to many of its Northern California customers at times of high fire danger, which has reduced fire risk but is more a symptom treatment rather than treating the cause.
While there is truth to what's written above, logging continues to this day. I took this screenshot of the the area north east of where GWT does his bike rides. Lots of clear cuts visible from space.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R_vS_BiC7bc9iOJ5K-5YnWauXZP_MD_t/view?usp=sharingLogging CAN be part of the solution, but contrary to what the State of Jefferson guys want to tell you, it'f far from the ONLY thing that will help. AND to back up what was already written, most of the current fires are burning in areas where logging will NEVER happen because the vegetation is Chaparral and oak woodland and you're never going to build a house out of any of that stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_oak_woodland#:~:text=The%20oak%20woodlands%20of%20Southern,)%2C%20and%20other%20California%20oaks.
It's clear the OP was trolling, but there has actually been some decent discussion. The truth about fire in CA isn't a 2 sided coin, it's a 20 sided D and D die, with each facet telling a part of the story.
1. Fire supression across the U.S. has left the forests overgrown. The added fuels make fires burn hotter and more destructively, killing forests where previous fires would have only burned slowly along the understory.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_rN5eVYBh6gcmc4SjBoTEVFNjQ/view?usp=sharing2. Drought and probably a changing climate. The Camp Fire, that destroyed Paradise, burned in November. A few years before, fires ripped through So-Cal in December. Previously, fires after mid October were practially unheard of. The drought that ended in 2017, was part of a larger dry period in the west, but even in that 5 year stretch, over 38,000,000 trees died in the Sierra Nevada range alone due to dry conditions and warmer winters which led to Western Bark Beetle Infestations.
3. Decrease in Logging. Environmental regulations have made it tougher to turn a profit in the timber industry in CA. For instance, the Northwest Forest Plan allows for up to 2 billion board feet of timber to be cut per year, however, harvests are nowhere near that. A surprising culprit here is Canada. Canadian timber, clear cut from the boreal forests is way cheaper than timber harvested from American lands in a more sustainable manner. For this reason, I was actually in favor of Trump's tarrif on Canadian softwood imports, as was former president, Jimmy Carter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jimmy-carter-trump-is-right-canadas-lumber-trade-practices-are-unfair/2017/05/09/249c7bb4-31b8-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.htmlSo, when loggers here say that the state has shut them down, what they should be saying is that it's not cost competitive for them to harvest timber.
Furthermore, it's not clear to me that clear cutting is the answer. As GWT rightly pointed out, the slash from clear cut is left on the ground as an erosion control measure and because of the fact that it's too damn expensive to haul out. It has years of decomposition before it is not a fire threat.
4. People moving into fire prone areas. They are both more likely to start fires and to be a victim of them.
5. Lack of funding for fuels mitigation. While sustainable forestry can play a role in fuel reduction, it is not very profitable. You can go to home depot and buy FSC certified lumber, or you can buy other stuff for less than half the price. This means that fuels reduction needs to be subsidiesed in some way or another. With the current state of fire in CA, the majority of CA dept of Forestry budget is going to fire fighting with almost none left for mitigation efforts (Yeah, I'm talking about Trump's rake army). Thinning and prescribed burns have to be done carefully so that they don't get out of control and become wildfires in their own right. Currently, CDF treats about 125,000 acres per year for fuel reduction. CA has 33 million acres of wildland. Even if we increased thinning and prescribed burns 16 fold, we'd only be getting to about 6 percent of CA's forest land per year.