Forest fires and the environment

Reference Story/backrounder

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/48087842/#48087842

The hue and cry is going up that climate change (a pseudonym for human-caused global warming) is to blame for the wildfires that have been scorching western states this year and for the loss of very expensive homes in the fire zones around certain cities.

With all due respect, what a bunch of hokum.

First, I grew up in California and I have a long legend with wildfires … even had to fight one … so I think I know enough to make relatively intelligent comment.

Second, I will never, ever deny that the climate might be changing … or that it might be getting hotter. So, what? The climate changes every year. Climate is not some static thing that never changes, but is always changing. Sometimes hotter, sometimes colder.

Now, you have to realize that we only have semi-accurate records for much of the world that go back, maybe, 125 years. Oh, yeah, we can estimate what temperatures and the climate was before then, through tree rings and ice cores, but that is all they are … estimates … educated guesses. We really don’t have accurate data from everywhere to make the claim that we “know” exactly what the weather was like on the planet more than about 50 years ago … when we started putting satellites up to orbit the earth and take measurements. Before that, the records are spotty and in some places, totally absent.

So, to blame humans for all the climate changes is yet another example of human hubris that thinks that the world is us, rather than something bigger than we humans are. Do the things we do contribute to climate change … undoubtedly, but it is not the cause. On a planet that is 4 BILLION years old, scientists will tell you that the surface of the earth has warmed to much hotter than it is now, as well as cooled to much colder than it is now.

How does this apply to the wild fires? Well, by implication, if we humans weren’t screwing the environment up with our cars and power plants and housing developments, all those pretty forests (and all those expensive houses with the great mountain views) wouldn’t be burning. What a bunch of fecal material.

For more than 20 years various forest/wild fire experts have been arguing over the “let it burn” strategy. The strategy basically says that wild fires are a natural event and it is better to just let them burn out than to run yourself crazy trying to stomp out all the embers. The other school of thought, that started about 40 years earlier, was to stomp out forest fires wherever they were found. Thank you Smokey The Bear for all those years that you put that message out that “only YOU can prevent forest fires”.

Then in the great Yellowstone fire of 1988, foresters thought they learned a lot … that maybe fire wasn’t a bad thing after all, but actually was part of the natural cycle of the forest. Hello, even I knew that as a kid. There are some things that happen in the wild that absolutely require high temperatures (and we are not talking about 100 degrees or so) for the forest to regenerate naturally. Forests, like people, are born, mature, die and are reborn again, just like the rest of the life cycle that we humans are familiar with.

So, the elements … nature … Gaia … whatever … have conspired for the western US to undergo a very dry and fiery season; not that it hasn’t happened before. The 1930s were like that, only most of us were not around to experience that. Some are noticing that conditions are much like they were during the days of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. I hate to say it, but our environmental footprint, with less than half the population and far less of the technology than we have today, was much smaller than it is now. Was man at fault then?

Well, some will tell you that man was, but I think history would show that the earth and its ecology hiccups now and again, at long and short intervals and nothing man has done, can do or will do, really will have all that much an impact. We just don’t have enough data to say that we can - or can't - do anything. We basically are trying to extrapolate what will happen from an snapshot and a bunch of guesses, old stories and assumptions. That is not a good way to make very accurate prognoses. But in our hubris, we think we can tell the world how much it is caused by X, Y or Z.

So, my take is: Wildfires happen. They will continue to happen. Some years they will be worse than others, some years better. But like volcanoes and earthquakes, rain and snow, wind and running water, it all is part of the natural cycle of Planet Earth. Now, you can go with the flow and try to adapt to the changes, or you can futilely try to make changes that will stop or slow the pace of change. IF you choose the latter, you will either drive yourself crazy or you could cause the death of a large portion of the human species.

Of course, a large portion of the human species will die off anyway, because that too is part of the natural cycle of things. Humans have no real predator (we ARE the top of the food chain on Earth) and so there are none of those to put any checks on our population. So, instead, we have famine and wars to do that job, along with natural disasters like storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanos and an occasional asteroid impact. But it is not time to run out screaming that the sky is falling or the end of the earth is near if we don’t stop changing the environment, because that is not the problem.

Also, if you are really concerned about fire burning down your pretty house in the forest with the great mountain view … then accept the fact that Mother Nature has a vote on where you live and if you don’t like that, move somewhere else … but remember, no matter where you move … Mother Nature still has a voice.