This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1385065
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1385065
Cold comfort! Once the Western US becomes an uninhabitable desert then, yes, it stands to reason that there will be no more fires… 
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So we’re running out of forests to burn to the ground. Hooray!
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We seem to have missed the point that one of the effects of climate change is the change to wind patterns during the fire season which makes little fires into raging wildfires we can’t control.
The fire cycle is a normal thing that has been going on for millions of years (most trees in CA have adapted specifically to it), but us building so close to the things that catch on fire is new.
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I grew up in northern California, so the situation is close to my heart. One important remedy that somehow doesn’t seem to get discussed much is controlling development. As people continue to build and build in vulnerable areas we increase the risk of fires. This seems crucial to me and I would like to hear those who’ve studied this issue speak out more.
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Less forests to rake! Win Win!
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There is also the effect of a weakening and warped jet stream to consider.
Longer dry periods and stronger more persistent winds are the result. A Santa Ana wind event that used to last a day now lasts 3 days due to Omega waves in the jet stream and high pressure systems build up a greater isobar disparity which is what drives wind.
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As ecologists I do not expect the authors to go into this - but two very important way to reduce the impact of wildfires have to do with managing human infrastructure:
- Institute appropriate building codes and ground maintenance regulations.
- Reduce human ignition points.
On the first, one gets the very false impression from most reporting about wildfires that their destruction of lives and property are both implacable and random - humans are powerless to prevent destruction when the fire comes and that what the fire destroys is random (you hear a lot about luck and acts of god from reporters showing buildings surviving amid surrounding ruin).
It sounds like a tautology but before a building burns down, it first has to catch fire. If you prevent it from catching fire it will not burn. And there are only a limited number of ways this can happen, all of them having to do with combustible parts of the house getting too hot.
The measures that suffice to prevent a house from burning in a wildfire area are simple and not expensive:
- No exposed combustible material as part of the house structure,
This means no wooden roofs, attached wood fencing, or wood decks, and any other exposed wood is coated with stucco (or similar). - No entry points for firebrands into the structure.
This one of the major causes of houses burning, and simply putting screening on vents and other gaps is all that is required to prevent it. - A combination of not having combustible material close enough to create dangerous thermal radiation, and proper measures to prevent thermal radiation from setting stuff inside the house on fire.
Slightly more complex, this means keeping combustible plants or structures (wood fencing) far enough from the structure that when it burns thermal radiation cannot heat the walls or interior furnishing until they burn. Adequate clearance alone is enough to prevent this, but in the absence two measures prevent it - thermal insulation in the wall, or fitted outside the wall in existing structures - and metal blinds that are closed to reflect thermal radiation.
Instituting these rules on new structures literally costs nothing - it should not be expected to raise construction costs at all.
The cost of retrofitting is can be low to the structure itself, adding screening, blinds, stucco. Exterior insulation is the most costly if used, clearance is cheaper. If someone chose to have an attached wood deck to their house (for example), arguable removing it would be more expensive if it was then replaced with some similar non-fire hazard structure. If they have a wood roof (insane, but people do it because it is allowed) then that must be replaced.
Some homes well-off people would like to have (modernist glass houses closely surrounded by woods) cannot be built safely of course.
I read about a super-rich person in Malibu (not a forest area, but a brush area that burns frequently) who - because of fires - built a virtual bomb-shelter of a home, mostly underground, windowless, made of concrete. This is certainly absolutely fire-proof (except for house fires perhaps) but vast over-protection.
Proper zoning, building codes (ban wood roofs), and ground clearance inspections can make the losses from fires disappear at no additional cost for new construction.
The second point - reduce human ignition sources - means burying power lines in forests and brush land for the most part. Prescribed burns are needed, but unexpected burns are not. The cost of doing this is much less than the cost of the fires.
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And yet some will use this to vindicate their anti-Climate Change viewpoint because the data and modeling shows Climate Change would lead to “less” wildfires (as we would have less forests to burn). Never underestimate a climate deniers ability to twist the data to fit their position.
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I´ve read enough articles by ecologists to recognize a certain style. This is good and useful research to demonstrate the complexity across different ecosystems. It took them a while to mention why less wildfire with climate change might not be good news. You don`t need to be an ecologist to have thought of this as you read.
(Greek oikos, meaning “household,” “home,” or “place to live.”)
Burn your house down and the risk of fire the next year when there is no house will be drastically reduced. Yay! Controlled burns are kinda like keeping your attic clean and not leaving oil soaked rags around.
Because of the new condtions you will not be able to rebuild your house very fast and it may end up looking like a shack when you do. (ie slower growth of forest and possible replacement by shrublands.)
So just be patient and wait for ten years of intense fires and then 60 years to have much less fire in the low biomass forests that do survive. No mention in the models of PNW forests with oodles of biomass becoming more vulnerable.
I don`t doubt that Ureinwohner had some effect on the forest landscape but I remain skeptical that they had a large scale planned effect on fire frequency and intensity, relative to lightning strikes. On the other hand it seems certain that they had let it burn policy.
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“I’d like the Porterhouse, medium rare please.”
waiter…“Sorry, it only comes in Extra Very Well Done”
Very few wildfires in the Sahara. Yippee… 
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“Bit choppy” in pilot parlance.
It’s both sad and funny that people in LA keep rebuilding their burnt down homes in the exact same place and expecting a different result since those winds happen every year and a fire almost every year.
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“Persistently hotter and drier climate over decades will increase the number of dead and dying trees and decrease new growth. Eventually less fuel is available to burn as the dead trees decompose and fewer live ones replace them.”
We had some pretty awful fires where I live a few years back. The Poinsettia Fire was particularly destructive. That fire tore through canyons and made it’s way into residential areas and took a lot of homes. But we don’t worry too much now because all that overgrown brush in the canyons burned up, so I joke that there’s nothing left to burn. Most homeowners have replaced their yards with low combustion xeriscape options and all the canyons have new sparse growth. So, in retrospect that fire made people rethink how they landscape their surroundings.
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So like herd immunity for fires.
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Exactly. But not with permanent immunity.
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It’s almost as sad/funny as the inevitable interview with the fire chief who laments that the strong winds have kept the planes grounded and hampered their firefighting efforts. There are always strong Santa Ana winds when big fires start near LA, that’s just how the ecosystem works.
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They are right about the Sonoran Desert. The recipe for big fires here is a wet spring (lots of grassy growth), followed by a dry summer (turning that growth into tinder).
But we also have what we call “sky islands.” These are widely separated higher elevation areas with trees running from bushy Pinyon-Juniper, through Ponderosa pine, all the way up to fir and aspen. They suffer from the drought just like their larger cousins to the north.
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Looks like light jacket weather near Klamath Falls, Oregon. I see 36 and 38 degrees near there this morning. Most of the Western half of the US except Southern California looks pretty cool.
This cool front feels nice. Going to be in the low to mid 70s for a few days. First rain of the month last night. A whole half an inch.
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One huge aspect not mentioned is the introduction of non native plants, either from Asia, Europe or developed as cultivars. These plants have shallow roots, thus do not grab and hold moisture in the ground. Native plants burn at a lower temperature because of their deep roots and the resulting moisture in the ground.
In areas (Flint Hills, KS) where controlled burns occur regularly which burn off nonnative forbs and tree seedlings, an out of control hot fire could not happen because the ground is cooler.