ot smoke

snipped-for-privacy@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Good time to wear a mask. N95 preferrably in this case.

That's the new normal, until every last bit of everything that can burn, has burned.

In past millenia, each patch of central California burned about every

10 years. Some was controlled burns by the natives. The small fires cleaned up the trash and left the mature trees. Now we put them out with trucks and airplanes, until the fuel loads build up to 10x the natural levels. The giant firestorms kill everything.

Thanks a lot, Smokey.

Basically everything that grows in forests here has the same exit strategy: it gets made in to plywood or it burns.

Cute story.

Well, yeah; the life cycle of pines, redwoods, and the like is about surviving multiple small fires.

Nonsense. First problem: we have trucks and airplanes, that technology is used largely to contain or limit 'giant firestorms' not small burns.

Second problem: 'the fuel loads' were always building up, and when they got above average, that's when the 'natural levels' were reestablished by fire. It wouldn't always have been small burns, of course. Why would you assume otherwise? Why would the natives have done controlled burns, if they weren't seeing devastating wildfires?

Third problem: the giant firestorms might not kill an old-growth tree, IF WE STILL HAD THOSE. Harvesting the last big 'uns is part of why the ground-level fuel is so abundant, unlike a century ago.

Controlled burning is always a judgment call, and (like all city-dwellers) you're in no position to criticize those judgments.

and some trees like giant sequoia needs fire to reproduce

Small fires are extinguished immediately on the absurd premise that putting them out prevents big fires.

And the equally silly idea that putting them out saves houses.

Because small fires prevent big fires.

Because controlled burns made the fires smaller. But there were some biggish fires; the natives warned the Spanish explorers about them. But we have hundred square mile firestorms now.

How do a few big trees prevent small stuff from growing?

They don't. The small stuff has to be cleared, or it burns.

We have a cabin in the mountains, near where there are big fires burning right now. Our cabin won't burn because we keep the area properly managed, which is expensive to do. Small fires used to do the cleanup naturally.

Shade. Big trees DO slow the growth under a big canopy.