Two Words Explain California’s Wildfire Woes: Spotted Owl

The owl became a cause célèbre for people who had never seen one and never would

By Kevin Nelson, October 13, 2022 10:41 am

Some things in life are hard to understand and explain. The theory of relativity, for example, or the origins of black holes. Other things are easy to grasp, however,  Such as: California’s wildfire woes. In the past five years summer and fall firestorms have killed dozens of people, wiped out homes, businesses and entire communities, torched millions of acres of forestlands, caused billions in property losses, and swept away untold numbers of animals and wildlife.

The cause of all this wreckage is easy to pinpoint. It’s simple as two words: spotted owl.........The fight was over protecting the owl’s habitat. After lawsuits, protests and even violence, the environmentalists won............. delivered a death blow to an entire way of life. Sawmills shut down, loggers lost their jobs, and those little backwoods lumber towns went from boom to 1930s Depression-era bust.............

At the risk of over-simplification, the prevailing forest management wisdom in the post-spotted owl era has been: Don’t touch those trees. Leave ‘em where they be, for people coming up from the city to enjoy on the weekends. And sue and regulate the hell out of anyone who dares try to make a profit by harvesting them.

You identify a “problem” and then destroy a way of life as a means of solving that perceived problem. But then your “solution” creates an even bigger mess, one that causes you to go back to the very people whose communities and livelihoods you trashed, asking them to help you with your latest bright idea. But these small town Americans have themselves become an endangered species.

Meanwhile, has anyone seen a spotted owl lately?

My Take - Was it logging that decimated the spotted owl population?  No, it was the barred owl.  Repeal the Endangered Species Act and remove enforcement authority from the Fish and Wildlife Service, or even better, eliminate the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Genesis of Our American Collective Meltdown

Our adversaries can’t quite believe their good fortune. Had they thought up ways to divide and impoverish America, they could not have improved on our own collective meltdown.

By Victor Davis Hanson  July 4, 2021

This Fourth of July holiday we might pause for a moment from our festivities to ask how we collectively lost our minds over the last 15 months—and are we yet regaining any semblance of our sanity? 

A pandemic caused by the leak of a Chinese-engineered virus and its coverup was cause enough for nationwide madness. But the spread of COVID-19 was followed by a nationalized and often politicized “flatten-the-curve” quarantine that soon ensured a stir-crazy nation. Tens of millions saw no people, and heard nothing human other than what was fed to them through television and computers. No wonder they grew paranoid, conspiratorial, and angry, and soon forgot the therapeutic nature of personal interaction and the shared humanity of being in the physical presence of others.

Our first self-induced recession came next and lasted over a year, destroying all the hard work of the prior three years. Next ensued the death of George Floyd and a subsequent 120 days of rioting, looting, and arson. The immediate costs were $2 billion in damage, over 25 deaths, 14,000 arrests, and a Lord of the Flies anarchy with no-go zones in our major cities. A McCarthyite frenzy followed, as remote-controlled America hunted down the supposed “racists” among us—while career agendas, personal grudges, and ideological hatred fueled the cancel culture. 

All this was antecedent to our first election in which Election Day voting was incidental, not essential, to the outcome. This was also our first presidential campaign in which the incumbent was stricken by a pandemic virus. And his opponent, due to his age and infirmity, simply reverted to the 19th-century style of staying home and outsourcing the electioneering to the Democratic-media complex. Biden’s basement became the equivalent of the “front-porch” of homebound candidates of a century and more ago. ..............To Read More....

Preventing future forest infernos

Getting past the climate scapegoat, and taking steps that could actually make a difference 

By Paul Driessen

 The 2020 fire season is nearing its end. But monstrous wildfires continue to rage across America’s western states, devastating towns and habitats, and killing hundreds of people and millions of animals. Politicians and environmentalists continue to rage that climate change is the primary factor, allowing few responsible, commonsense forest management actions that could actually reduce the risks.

Manmade climate change is a convenient scapegoat, but it cannot be separated from natural climate fluctuations and effects. Moreover, even assuming fossil fuel emissions play a dominant role in the human portion of this equation – and even if the Pacific Northwest or entire USA eliminated coal, oil and natural gas – China, India and scores of other nations will not do so anytime soon.

And they will certainly be using fossil fuels to manufacture the wind turbines, solar panels and batteries envisioned by Green New Dealers – and to mine and process the raw materials those technologies require.

The key ingredient in these monstrous, devastating forest fires is fuel. A century of Smokey the Bear fire suppression, coupled with half-century bans on timber harvesting, tree thinning and even insect control has filled western forests with dense concentrations of brush, fallen branches, needles and leaves, skinny young trees and huge older trees – many of them dead or dying – ready to be turned into conflagrations under hot, dry summer and autumn conditions that prevail most years in California and other western states.

It’s a recipe for disasters like the 1871 Peshtigo Fire, 20 miles north of where I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin, on the very same day as the Great Chicago Fire. Blistering flames a mile high moved south at 100 mph, creating “fire tornados” that threw houses and rail cars into the air. Over a million acres of forest were obliterated in two days; up to 2,500 people died, many of them cremated into little piles of ash.

I also recall how American and British bombers deliberately turned Hamburg, Germany into an inferno in July 1943. The first waves of planes dropped “blockbuster” bombs that leveled arms factories and parts of the city known to have mostly wooden structures. They were followed in subsequent days by attacks with incendiary bombs, which turned the wood debris into a firestorm, with tornado winds up to 150 mph, and temperatures of nearly 1500 F. Operation Gomorrah killed over 40,000 people.

A few days ago, I picked up my latest issue of Wired magazine. Daniel Duane’s 12-page article “The fires next time” made a couple now-obligatory references to climate change, but was one of the most detailed and insightful articles I’ve read on the causes and nature of these horrific wildfires. He vividly explains why we are witnessing a “trend toward fires dramatically more catastrophic” than in the past.

Above all, the reason is fuel buildup. CalFire, he notes, has some 75 aircraft and 700 fire engines, and is very good at extinguishing thousands of wild-land fires annually. But CalFire has virtually no fuel-management authority and must simply watch the trees and other fuel get “more and more dense,” creating prime conditions for ever-worsening crown fires that US Forest Service scientist Mark Finney says are big because landscapes are full of tinder and long-burning, heavy fuels. Ditto in other states.

More trees of course generate more roots competing for the same water, further drying everything out. In California alone, this and the 2011-2016 drought and pine bark beetles killed 150 million trees!

Another key ingredient, Duane writes, is the simultaneous burning of many small fires (caused by multiple lightning strikes, eg) that combine light and heavy fuels over a large area, amid mild ambient winds. “As that broad area continues to burn with glowing and smoldering embers over many hours, the separate convective columns of all those many little fires begin to join into a single, giant plume.”

As hot air in the plume rises, air at its base is replaced by air “sucked in from all directions. This can create a 360-degree field of wind howling directly into the blaze ... oxygenating the fire and pushing temperatures high enough to flip even ... giant construction timbers and mature trees into full-blown flaming combustion. Those heavy fuels then pump still more heat into the convective column.... [which] rises ever faster and sucks in more wind, as if the fire has found a way to stoke itself.” The timbers, branches and entire trees become “firebrands” that can be carried high into the air, a mile or more from the primary fire, then dropped into timber stands and homes, igniting still more firestorms.

Smaller blazes can be controlled, even extinguished. But massive firestorms can be impossible to suppress, saving homes equally hopeless. The primary order of business with mass fires is getting people out of harm’s way, before escape routes are clogged, cars run out of gas, and walls of flame close in.

That means building more escape roads from communities through forests to safety, even in the face of environmentalist opposition and lawsuits. Roads are far less intrusive or harmful than conflagrations. Yet radical greens battle these roads, while praising these unnatural conflagrations as “nature’s way.”

People lived in these areas long before pressure groups, politicians and courts made conflagration conditions this horrific. Actions need to be taken now to prevent more deadly fire cataclysms. That has to begin with removal of diseased, dead and excessive trees and brush. It will take years, decades even, and a lot of effort and money. But failure to halt and reverse the buildup of fuel in our forests is undeniably irresponsible – and deadly. Apache Indian forestry programs prove sound management saves forests.

Blaming climate change is useless and irresponsible. It means waiting 30-50 years or more, just to see if China and India finally replace fossil fuels, perhaps with nuclear power – in the hope that reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide actually reduces climate change, droughts, extreme weather and infernos.

Policymakers, land management agencies and regulators, Native tribes, community associations, industry groups and less obdurate environmental groups should seek collaboration and cooperation, especially on forest management and tree thinning. This is already happening but needs to be expanded greatly.

Educational programs should teach homeowners how to harden and fireproof houses and other buildings against small to midsized fires – and teach judges and politicians the hard realities of modern fires. Above all, those with ultimately life-or-death decision-making authority must understand that the price of bans on timber harvesting and responsible forest management is too often measured in homes and habitats obliterated, wildlife and humans killed, soil organisms incinerated, soils washed away by rainstorms and snowmelts, and millions of acres denuded and desolate for decades.

Tougher building codes for new construction in these areas would save homes, heirlooms and lives. Roofs especially should be made of fireproof or fire-resistant materials. Special financing and low-interest loans would make such new homes and hardened existing homes and buildings more affordable.

Local, state and federal budgets are already stretched to their limits. Funding will have to be redirected from other programs. Another approach could require forestry work for welfare checks. Besides saving habitats and lives, that would build skills, self-esteem and strong work ethics, improve physical fitness, replace a sense of entitlement with a sense of accomplishment, and create connections and opportunities

Another source of funds could be billionaires like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who recently gave $791 million to climate activist groups, as part of his commitment to his $10-billion Earth Fund. Certainly, helping to stop these deadly fires – and the incalculable air pollution, soil erosion, and habitat and wildlife destruction they cause – would be one of the boldest and most effective actions anyone could take to protect Earth’s future, including the majestic at-risk forests in his own backyard.

The bottom line is so simple we shouldn’t even have to state it.

If we don’t act, nature will. We have created this massive fuel-for-fires problem. We can and must fix it. Either we thin out trees, or nature will – with devastating consequences. For people who claim to care deeply about saving our forests for Bambi, spotted owls and other beloved creatures, guaranteeing horrific infernos is quite literally a hellish way to demonstrate our love for Mother Earth.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

Fight fires with facts – not fake science

Eliminate fuel, prevent ignition, stop arson, end irresponsible land management policies

Paul Driessen & Duggan Flanakin

“We are all born ignorant,” Benjamin Franklin once said, “but one must work very hard to remain stupid.”

Greens are incensed over suggestions that anything but fossil fuels and climate change might be turning green California and Australian ecosystems into black wastelands, incinerating wildlife, destroying homes and killing people. The notion that they and their policies might be a major factor in these fires gets them so hot under the collar that they could ignite another inferno. But the facts are there for all to see.

PG&E certainly failed to maintain, upgrade and repair its transmission lines and towers, leading to sparks that caused multiple fiery cataclysms. However, California now has over 129 million dead trees in its forests – and a long history of refusing to thin them out, clear brush or permit others to do so. Fuel levels in Aussie forest, brush and grasslands areas have likewise climbed to near-historic levels in recent years.

The total area burned in New South Wales and Victoria is now approaching the area burnt in Victoria back in 1851, Australian scientist Dr. Jennifer Marohasy notes. 2020 summer temperatures in Australia may get as hot as they did back in 1938-1939. US climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer agrees.

In both California and Australia, people bemoan the loss of eucalyptus trees in fires. But many don’t want them removed or even thinned out. They don’t know (or won’t accept the fact) that fallen eucalypt leaves and bark create vast expanses of flammable material, while their spicy-smelling oil is highly flammable. A spark can ignite an explosive firestorm in air laden with gasoline-like vapors, followed by horrific crown fires among the trees and ground fires in the dead leaves and bark.

Rainy winters in both places cause rapid, lush plant growth that is aided by rising levels of atmospheric plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide. Long, hot, dry summers – or prolonged droughts – can follow, drying out the trees, brush and grass, and setting the stage for catastrophic wildfires.

Environmentalists, politicians, regulators and judges say removing trees and brush will damage habitats. But when the inevitable conflagrations hit, habitats are cremated and obliterated, down to soil organisms and organic matter. Subsequent downpours and snowmelts wash the remaining soil away. What habitats?

Some recent fires could be called “historic” or “unprecedented” – especially if monster fires of a century or more ago are left out of the calculation; or if conflagrations elsewhere are not included. Few people know about the Great Peshtigo, Wisconsin Fire of October 8, 1871, even though it killed 1,200-2,500 people, many of them turned into little piles of ash. The Peshtigo debacle was overshadowed by another big fire that day: the Great Chicago Fire, which burned 98% less land and killed far fewer people.  

Yet another fact demolishes the all-too-typical claim that recent Australian fires are due to manmade climate change. Many (perhaps most) of those fires were caused by humans – some accidentally, but many deliberately. More than 180 alleged arsonists have been arrested since the start of the 2020 bushfire season, with 29 blazes deliberately lit in part of southeast New South Wales in just three months!

At least two dozen people have died in Australia’s fires, along with thousands of sheep and cattle, over 2,000 koala bears, and several hundred million other animals. US wildfires have likewise exacted horrific death tolls. A few years ago, Duggan hosted a benefit concert for the families of the Fallen Nineteen, the 19 City of Prescott firefighters who died battling the 2013 lightning-ignited Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona. 

Now, the Washington Free Beacon reports, “a media outlet affiliated with ISIS has been instructing the group's radical adherents to set forest fires in the United States and Europe to cause mass ecological disasters, according to posts on an internet forum dedicated to the terror group.” The Middle East Media Research Institute has flagged four posters published in the pro-ISIS Quraysh media outlet. The first said (English translation): “Oh monotheists [followers of ISIS], ignite fires in the forests and fields, and we are addressing especially those who live in Europe and America, for the fires are painful to them.” The fourth poster got more specific: “Ignite fires in the forests of America, France, Britain and Germany, for they are painful to them." Might some ISIS follower have viewed Australia as equally deserving of ecotage?

A recent report by Pulitzer Prize winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bettina Boxall may make greens even hotter under the collar: “Human-caused ignitions spark California’s worst wildfires but get little state focus,” the headline reads. Her key point is damning: “It doesn’t matter how dry the vegetation, how fierce the winds or how high the temperature; if there is no ignition, there is no wildfire.”

Noting that the 2019 California fire season was far less deadly than that in 2018, when the notorious “Camp Fire” destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 86 people, Ms. Boxall attributes the comparatively mind 2019 fire season to actions PG&E took to shut down power to many Californians, often for days. She quotes Stanford University researcher Michael Wara, who testified before a Congressional committee that Pacific Gas & Electric’s inspections of wind damage to its lines and equipment made it clear that, without preventive shutdowns, “we would have had a significant number of utility-caused fires” in 2019.

Boxall found that all of California’s 20 most destructive wildfires were human-related, with half due to power line or electrical problems. She also noted that a study of US records from 1992 to 2012 found that human activity (power lines, carelessness and arson) was responsible for 84% of wildfires and 44% of acreage burned nationwide. That’s the ignition factor. Two other factors are equally important.

Even if there is ignition, if there is insufficient fuel, there will still be no wildfire – at least not monstrous, deadly conflagrations. Thin the forests, remove dead trees, control brush and grass levels, especially in dry seasons and arid regions. It’s basic, intelligent land management; the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.

Preparation also means maintaining fire breaks and access roads into forest, brush and grass lands; building and maintaining sufficient escape routes and warning systems, and making people aware of them; ensuring that each family and community has an escape plan; and having enough trucks, airplanes, helicopters, other equipment and personnel to respond to average fires and worst-case scenarios. It means educating children and adults about how to prevent fires, put them out, and get out of their path.

(California public schools offer multiple courses on climate change. Cool California lists even more. But as long as politicians and even industry leaders keep spreading the false gospel of climate change as the principal cause of wildfires, the need for personal and political responsibility will be ignored.)  

Third, actual response to a fire means ensuring the political, social, financial and institutional support to get sufficient personnel, equipment and water to a fire before it turns into an uncontrollable inferno.

Do all that, and the recovery phase – rebuilding homes, businesses, habitats, wildlife numbers and shattered human lives – will be far less extensive, costly and traumatic. Difficult recoveries will also be minimized by not wasting scarce time and money on fashionable, politically correct, “woke” issues like how many fire fighters are of a specific ethnic or sexual identity group. People and animals in the path of a roaring inferno care only that first responders are prepared, equipped and on time. So should politicians.

Every one of these vital matters is within our power to control – if we can muster the political willpower to take appropriate action. None of them involves climate change.

It doesn’t matter if Earth’s or California’s or Australia’s average annual or summer temperature is 0.1 or even 1.0 degrees warmer. Or that a drought is a day, month or year longer than X. Or whether the climate and weather fluctuations are driven by human or natural forces. Or that America, Australia, Britain, China, India or Indonesia is “not doing enough” to curb fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions.

Climate change did not cause 129 million trees to die in California – or prevent the state and feds from removing the dead trees, thinning the forests, and clearing overgrown brush and grass. Ditto for Australia.

We must play the hand we have been dealt. That means acting responsibly and intelligently to prevent and respond to wildfires under whatever climate, drought, diseased and dead trees, or other conditions exist, wherever and whenever we live. Ben Franklin would be proud of us.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate, environmental and human rights issues. Duggan Flanakin is CFACT’s director of policy research.

The new green era dawns in California

October 10, 2019 By J.R. Dunn

A blueprint for the deindustrialization of the U.S. is being revealed even now in (you guessed it) California.

Beginning early yesterday morning, a series of total power shutoffs by Pacific Gas & Electric began in every county of the Bay Area, along with a number of others to the north (the number of counties involved total 34). The sole exception — as you might have guessed — is San Francisco.

The power cutoffs are complete, with no exceptions for hospitals, emergency services, phone networks, etc., the purpose being to eliminate all power flowing through overhead power lines in the affected areas in a clumsy, ill considered effort to prevent wildfires.

Vast areas of central California will be returned by fiat to the conditions of the 19th century.

Something like 800,000 PG&E customers will be affected. The duration of the shutoff is effectively arbitrary and may extend up to five days or more. (I would guess that it depends on particular conditions of humidity, dryness, and windiness, but it may not be even that logical. It seldom is with environmentalists.) .........  To Read More

Democrats turning California into a third-world hellhole: Going without electricity edition

Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.

By Tom Trinko October 10, 2019

Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days. Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning.

 Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California.

While they try to blame climate change and the infrastructure, the reality is that neither of those has caused any significant changes in the last ten years — but now, suddenly, due to Democrat policies, Californians have to start living in the 18th century.

The Democrats who run California also refuse to build more water storage capacity even though the state's population has dramatically increased, ensuring that water has to be rationed during droughts.

Democrats are turning California into a third-world country economically. The income inequality between the über-rich Silicon Valley workers and the rest of Californians is huge, just like in third-world countries, while the elites live in luxury and the rest live in squalor............... To Read More

My Take - Okay, isn't this what Obama wanted?  Change how America works in order to become Venezuela!  Right?  I certainly hope Californians appreciate what Obama and his socialist myrmidons are doing for them! 

 

Trump was right about “raking” Finnish forests

Heavy machinery “rakes” Finland’s forest floors after tree cutting, greatly reducing fire risks

 

Mikko Paunio

 

President Donald Trump was recently ridiculed for telling California Governor Jerry Brown that the Golden State should do as my country does. Trump critics laughed at what some called his “bizarre” claim that foresters in Finland “rake” areas that have been thinned or clear-cut, to remove leaves and other debris that could otherwise start conflagrations like the recent tragic fires in California.

 

The Washington Post spread similar misinformation. The Los Angeles Times carried an article by Finnish “green” journalist Anu Partanen. “Finland to President Trump: We don’t rake the forest floor, but we do other things you should emulate,” the headline read. Late night talk show hosts had more fun at the President’s expense.

 

Ironically, all this happened at just about the time that Finland’s own forest specialists declared that Mr. Trump was correct about what he told Governor Brown. The foresters disseminated that information widely to the Finnish media and public.

 

As a result, much of Finland’s mainstream news media began ridiculing Finns who posted photos of garden rakes with the hashtag #RakingAmericaGreatAgain. Now the media are saying the self-styled comic activists were wrong to laugh at the President.

 

Of course, that too is ironic, since many of that same, very green Finnish mainstream media had actively questioned and ridiculed Mr. Trump just days earlier.

 

Back in America, not surprisingly, the exoneration story has been largely ignored. The media, pundits and late-night comedians had already made up their minds, don’t want to be confused by the facts – and don’t want their audiences confused by facts, either. Here’s the rest of the story: the missing facts, anyway.

 

One of the most pressing ecological problems today is preservationist forestry principles. This ideological approach prevents harvesting mature (or even any) trees, thinning out dense stands of timber to remove excess biomass (and thus allowing remaining trees to grow better, faster, thicker and taller), or even removing dense underbrush. This leads to an over-accumulation of biomass in trees and on forest floors. It makes forests vulnerable to raging and fast moving forest fires, especially during dry seasons, even more so when winds are blowing.

 

If these policies are accompanied by active suppression of forest fires over long periods of time – or by policies of not dousing “natural” fires until they become really big and dangerous – any ignition can lead to catastrophic events that cause tragic loss of property and human lives. 

 

The “confusion” over what President Trump said unfortunately came initially from the Finnish side, as even our media thought “raking” meant only light removal of leaves, pine cones and other debris from forest floors. Even Finnish president Sauli Niinistö did not understand that the practice really involves “raking” with heavy machinery that removes extensive amounts of combustible material. Mr. Niinistö simply told Mr. Trump he could rely on advice from Finland to prevent catastrophic wildfires.

 

In Finland, after clear-cutting a forest area, crews use heavy machinery (similar to what is used in this video) to “rake” or gather tree harvesting residues, tree roots and other material into huge piles. The biomass is then chipped onsite after it has dried up sufficiently, and chips are hauled to local heat-producing plants to generate warmth for local residents.

 

In addition, throughout the clear-cut area, crews heavily till the soil so that a fire cannot move easily into or through the clear-cut area. This harvesting policy is motivated by the idea that clear-cutting mimics wildfires in pristine forests. Wildfires start a new succession: a new generation of trees in forests. Cutting does too, but without destroying soils and soil organisms the way raging fires do.
 

When the new succession has started in the previously clear-cut forest, Finnish law requires thinning operations around the best remaining trees, and accumulating biomass is again removed from time to time from these young forests. This again lessens the probability of uncontrolled wild fires, while allowing the strongest, healthiest trees to grow more fully in less confined spaces and with improved access to water, sunlight and nutrients.

 

There was some sense in Washington Post writer Rick Noack’s suggestion that forest roads can help prevent fires from spreading. They help fire brigades gain rapid access to fires before they get too big to control. They also provide open areas (“fire breaks”) that stop fires at their perimeters, if the fires aren’t too big.
 

Finland is about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined. It has an extensive forest road network (120 thousand kilometers, or 75,000 miles!) – and significantly more trees than 100 years ago, despite clear-cutting being at the center of our wood harvesting policy.

 

However, Mr. Noack also said, “The forest service in Finland does carry out controlled burns of the forest floor, mostly to clear away underbrush and also promote new saplings.” This is misleading, because it makes controlled burns seem more important than they actually are.

 

As a recent Finnish morning television program pointed out, the yearly acreage of controlled forest fires is only 200-300 hectares (500-750 acres), which is next to nothing. Moreover, these controlled burns are apparently performed on state lands only to symbolically please environmentalists.
 

Finland’s last “large” forest fire took place in 1997. It burned 250 hectares (625 acres) of forest in Southern Finland – a tiny fraction of what many U.S. fires burn every year.

 

The catastrophic fires seen in California and elsewhere are not due to climate change – natural or manmade – although warmer, drier, windier weather can certainly be a major contributing factor. The important point is that foresters must adapt to both weather and climate change, and revise past practices that are now known to cause serious problems. They must manage forests better, more scientifically and more responsibly, with special attention to areas where large populations of people reside.

 

Governments could also implement new standards for homes built in or near forests. Homes should have fire-resistant roofs and walls, and people should be required to keep brush and debris from accumulating.

 

Governor Brown and others seem to cite climate change as a way to absolve them of responsibility for ideological or incompetent decisions that help create or perpetuate conditions that spawn horrific, deadly infernos. This must not continue.

 

One final point regarding climate change. Finland’s official forest studies estimate that climate change (warmer temperatures and more atmospheric carbon dioxide) will help increase annual timber growth from the current 102 million cubic meters (m3) to 130 million m3 by 2050. The current wood harvesting rate is around 72 million m3, and the government announced recently that annual growth increased by five million m3 to a staggering 107 million in 2018.

 

Finland manages theses forests for timber, wildlife, controlled fires – and protection of nearby homes and people. Its lessons can and should be applied elsewhere. President Trump understands that. His incomplete grasp of Finnish “raking” and other practices led to confusion and ridicule, but should not result in these principles and practices being rejected out of hand.

 

Mikko Paunio of Helsinki, Finland is a science and policy adviser of the American Council on Science and Health. He has served with numerous national and international climate adaptation working groups.

Cartoon of the Day

Blaming climate – ignoring incompetence

California wildfires incinerate people, wildlife and habitats. Politicians blame climate change.

Paul Driessen

Two more raging infernos in California have burned an area nearly ten times the size of Washington, DC. Wildlife and habitats have been torched. Over 8,000 homes and businesses, and nearly the entire town of Paradise, are now ashes and rubble. Cars were partly charred and melted as they escaped the flames, others completely incinerated, sometimes with occupants still inside. Well over 60 people have perished. Over 50,000 are homeless. Hundreds remain missing.

President Trump expressed deep support for the thousands of courageous firefighters battling the conflagrations, urged residents to evacuate quickly and expedited disaster assistance to the ravaged communities. He also sent a poorly crafted tweet: “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

The tweet is “partisan,” “ill-informed” and “insensitive” to those who are suffering, state politicians and celebrities railed – before engaging in their own ill-informed, partisan insensitivity.

"This is not the ‘new normal.’ This is the ‘new abnormal,’ Governor Jerry Brown asserted. “And this new abnormal will continue. Dryness, warmth, drought, all those things, they’re going to intensify.” We have to “do more” on forest management, he continued. “But managing all the forests everywhere we can does not stop climate change. And those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we’re now witnessing and will continue to witness in the coming years.” This chart refutes his climate claims.

Resorting to “manmade climate change” has become the favorite, most politically expedient tactic for deflecting attention away from the abject, ideological, even criminally incompetent forest management practices demanded by politicians, regulators, judges and environmentalists in recent decades.

The hard, incontrovertible reality is that California is and always has been a largely arid state, afflicted on repeated occasions by prolonged droughts, interspersed with periods of intense rainfall, and buffeted almost every autumn by powerful winds that can whip forest fires into infernos.

43% of California timberlands are privately owned, 1% are state owned, and all of them are governed by state laws, regulations and regulators. The remaining 56% are federally owned and managed, largely by preservation-oriented, change-resistant bureaucrats, subject to constant litigation by environmentalists.

This past summer brought unusual rainfall that spurred plant growth. It was followed by hot weather that dried foliage out and set the stage for conflagrations in thick, poorly managed brush and trees.

In this context, it doesn’t much matter if the state is also now confronting climate change, whether natural or manmade – or that California’s or the world’s average temperatures may have risen 0.01, 0.1, 0.5 or even 1.0 degree in recent decades. It doesn’t matter if humans or nature caused the recent fires.

Instead of casting blame, responsible parties need to come together, and deal with the situation at hand. That means first extinguishing these fires and helping devastated families rebuild their lives. Thankfully, everyone is committed to doing that. But it also means better forest management, which is not happening.

In 2016, Governor Brown vetoed a bipartisan wildfire management bill that had unanimously passed the state Assembly and Senate. For decades, radical environmentalists have demanded – and legislators, regulators and judges have approved – “wildlands preservation” and “fires are natural” policies. Tree thinning has been banned, resulting in thousands of skinny, fire-susceptible trees growing where only a few hundred should be present. Even removing diseased, dead and burned trees has been prohibited.

All that timber could have gone to sawmills, to create jobs … and lumber for homes. Instead, the mills and jobs are gone. It could also have fueled biomass electricity generating plants; but most are also closed. State and federal forests in California now host over 129 million dead trees that cannot be touched!

In 2009, Clinton-appointed Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the Bush era US Forest Service had not fully analyzed the effects of potential timber harvesting on endangered plants and animals. In 2015, Obama-appointed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson rejected concerns that new, highly restrictive Obama-era forest plans would further harm local economies and increase the risk of forest fires.

Did those judges and pressure groups, or the politicians and regulators who support them, ever ponder how thoroughly the inevitable infernos exterminate habitats, immolate endangered plants and animals, leave surviving animals starving, and incinerate organic matter in the thin soils? Did they consider how subsequent downpours and snowmelts denude hillsides, wash soils into streambeds, and ensure that trees and biodiversity won’t recover for decades?

Did they gave a moment’s thought to the way horrific conflagrations obliterate communities and kill firefighters, parents and children who get trapped by sudden walls of fast-moving flames? Not likely.

But now many of them seem ready to blame Pacific Gas & Electric, whose power lines may have may have caused a spark that ignited the current deadly inferno on private lands in Northern California. Let no one forget that these pressure groups and government employees share the blame – by causing and perpetuating the conditions that set the stage for this horrendous destruction and loss of life.

Governor Brown recently said that, especially during this “new abnormal,” you have to “do prevention” and “have escape routes” and adapt to “a changed world that not so many people were aware of or were thinking about.” These actions are part of his job – the job of regulators, politicians and judges.

Not only have they been derelict in their duties. They have colluded to prevent tree thinning and dead tree removal. They’ve contested recent initiatives by the Interior Department and Forest Service to revise and reverse policies that invite deadly infernos in the 56% of California forests that are under direct federal control. They’ve perpetuated what Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) calls “ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a cadre of ideological zealots.”

In too many areas, tree and brush clearing, dead and diseased tree removal, and the construction of fire breaks and additional escape routes are prohibited – or must go through decades-long study, review, approval and litigation processes. Only a fool or ideologue would fail to foresee the inevitable results.

In many cases, companies are not even allowed to salvage blackened trees that might be left standing after a conflagration has passed through an area. In stark contrast to these areas, privately and tribally managed forests outside the once-Golden State are actively managed to prevent major fires like those that have devastated vast national forest areas in California and other Western states.

In California, if private landowners want to burn leaves and tree limbs to reduce fire hazards, they must first obtain air-quality permits from local air districts, burn permits from local fire agencies, and other permits depending on the location, size, type and timing of a proposed burn, air and ground moisture levels, and other factors. That’s all well and good, if the rules prevent fires that could turn into infernos.

But do the bureaucrats make any attempt to factor in the horrendous air pollution and utter destruction from the monstrous fires their decrees cause by delaying or blocking brush clearing or controlled burns?  

As to climate change, what actual evidence can alarmists provide to show that today’s climate and weather conditions are predominantly due to fossil fuel use – or would be significantly different if the state or USA went 100% renewable, especially when the developing world continues to increase its coal, oil and gas use to lift billions out of poverty? Can they prove energy and climate edicts would enable the state to control the timing, frequency and severity of future climate fluctuations, rains, droughts, winds, and other weather events? Will Governor-elect Gavin Newsom seek common ground on forest issues?

We clearly need less hidebound ideology, greater compassion and respect for human and animal life – and greater willingness to find bipartisan ways to deal with the perpetually arid conditions in California and throughout the West, via responsible and scientific management of our forest heritage.

Above all, we need to remember that people live in these areas and need to be protected. And right now, we should all lend a hand to those who have lost their homes, livelihoods and family members – perhaps by donating to the Red Cross or the WattsUpWithThat.com Camp fire relief fund.

Paul Driessen is policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of articles and books on energy, natural resource, climate change, health, environmental and human rights issues.

California’s fires not climate

By Craig Rucker | November 16th, 2018 | Climate | 13 Comments @ CFACT

California’s wildfires are a horrific tragedy.  At last report 63 people are dead, 631 missing and 11,862 structures have been destroyed. We hold those lost and suffering in our thoughts and prayers.
Not unexpectedly, Governor Jerry Brown would have us believe the harm caused by California’s wildfires is the result of climate change. But that is false.

As CFACT’s Marc Morano explains through extensive coverage at Climate Depot, California’s rain and drought are historically normal.  In fact, the total U.S. acreage burned by wildfires is actually down in recent years.

That said, there are anthropogenic roots to this catastrophe. But they are not the human causal links Governor Brown points to. Rapid population growth, extensive development, poor water management, and most critically, irresponsible forest management are principally to blame.

Green activists blocked forest clearing in the name of species protection, leaving California with 129 million dead trees, clogging 8.9 million acres.

If government actually wanted to promote the rapid and uncontrolled spread of deadly wildfires, it would be hard-pressed to find a better approach.  Once again the Greens find themselves on the wrong side of the implacable law of unintended consequences, as the very species they profess to care about, are incinerated before our eyes.

Governor Brown, if you are still searching for the anthropogenic link to California’s tragic fires, we expect somewhere in the governor’s mansion there’s probably a mirror.

Why Trump is Right on California Wildfires

How “green policies” are burning the Golden State to a crisp.

November 12, 2018 Matthew Vadum

 

As huge wildfires continued to devour forests, homes, and businesses across California over the weekend, President Trump lashed out at the destructive, deadly policies long pushed by environmentalists that set the stage for the Golden State’s now-routine fiery catastrophes.

 

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” President Trump tweeted Nov. 10 at 3:08 a.m. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

 

On Nov. 11 at 4:40 a.m. he followed up with: “With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!”

 

In-between the two tweets, Trump used Twitter to urge people in the affected areas to “evacuate quickly,” praised the “[m]ore than 4,000” who are fighting the Camp and Woolsey Fires in California, and to express sympathy for the fire victims.

 

Idiot celebrities and clueless politicians weighed in across the fruited plain, eager to attack Trump..........But as usual Trump is right –at least in a big-picture way— and his critics are wrong..............To Read More.....

 

 

California approves measure to pass on wildfire costs

By JONATHAN J. COOPER, Associated Press        

 

The California Legislature voted Friday to allow power companies to raise electric bills to cover the cost of lawsuits from last year's deadly wildfires amid fears that Pacific Gas & Electric Co., would otherwise face financial ruin.

The measure is part of a wide-ranging plan to reduce the threat of wildfires, which have killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes in recent years.

Consumer advocates and large energy users blasted legislation they say is a bailout for PG&E, which expects to pay billions of dollars due to fires started by the company's equipment in Northern California last year. The company would be allowed to charge their customers even if the fires are linked to mismanagement by the company............To Read More....

My Take - It is amazing how they totally ignore the real cause of these massive conflagrations - their greenie inspired mismanagement of the forests. 

Junk Science and Leftist Folklore Have Set California Ablaze

How left-wing "global warming" policies are torching the West Coast.

August 17, 2018 Bruce Thornton 106

The Left Coast is burning. Oregon is fighting 13 wildfires encompassing 185,000 acres. California is battling 19 fires, including tornados of fire called "fire whirls," which have gobbled up 577,000 acres and left eight dead. A good progressive who never lets a crisis go to waste, Governor Jerry Brown told Californians, “With climate change, some scientists are saying that Southern California is literally burning up.” He warned that man-made global warming created a “new normal,” and that “more serious predictions of warming and fires to occur later in the century, 2040 or 2050, [are] now occurring in real time.”

A few days later Brown had a tweet-duel with President Trump, who in contrast claimed, “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws,” like those against thinning and clearing forests: “Tree clear to stop fire spreading!” Seems like on this issue, the allegedly doltish Trump has the better argument than the Berkeley and Yale-trained Brown.....To Read More....
 

Thanks to Obama, California is Engulfed in Forest Fires

By Warner Todd Huston August 7, 2018

California is once again engulfed in wild fires, but it turns out they are all the worse because of the disastrous environmental policies of the Obama administration. According to The New York Times, California has been engulfed in flames since 2012!

“Since 2012, according to state emergency management officials, there has not been a month without a wildfire burning — a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to plan and regroup,” the paper wrote at the end of July. 

Naturally, the left imagines that the reason there have been so many wild fires since 2012 is because of its favorite, catch-all excuse, “climate change.”

But, as Daily Wire reported, there is a more truthful answer: it’s Obama.........To Read More....

My Take - Initially I decided not to publish anything about California's fires because I'm tired of their insanity.  For years I've published or posted articles that have clearly outlined the reason for these fires being out of control are due to policies pushed by lunatics.   We call them environmentalists. 

As far as I'm concerned, if this has to happen ,I'm glad it's happening in California because they've earned it. 

I have a question.  If global warming was the cause if these out of control fires why aren't he rest of the states having this problem at the same time as California?

It’s weather, not climate change, Governor Brown

Weather, not human-caused CO2-fueled global warming, is responsible for California wildfires

Robert W. Endlich

2017 featured incredibly intense, damaging wildfires in California: first the Wine Country fires of October, and later the massive Thomas Fire in December. Each destroyed hundreds of homes, the latter in many of the affluent suburbs and enclaves northwest of Los Angeles and Hollywood.

The Thomas Fire is the largest in modern California history, with over 1000 structures destroyed. The fires and subsequent mudslides killed over 60 people and left many others severely burned or injured.

California Governor Jerry Brown almost predictably blamed human-caused, carbon dioxide-fueled global warming and climate change, specifically droughts, as the cause of these conflagrations. During a December 9 visit to Ventura County, he again insisted that the drought conditions were the “new normal.” While acknowledging that California has experienced “very long droughts” throughout its history, he claimed that the returning dry spells of recent decades were “very bad” and would be “returning more often” because of manmade climate change.

It’s a nice attempt to deflect blame from his state’s ultra-green policies and poor forest management practices. Moreover, Governor Brown is just wrong about the alleged role of manmade climate change, as an examination of meteorological and climate data demonstrates. NOAA’s rainfall records for California show rainfall slightly increasing in California over the 125-year period since rainfall records began.

Meteorological conditions, as they develop over the course of a year, and during the multi-year El-Niño to La Niña cycles known as ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation), result in conditions that favor wildfires in California. Fire is a part of nature, much to the consternation of those who blame manmade climate change, and much to the dismay of those whose lives are disrupted by wildfire events such as these.

Of course, they can be – and are – worsened and even made catastrophic by failures to manage forests properly, especially when hundreds of homes are built near forests, and when weather and climate cycles intersect with those failures and incidents that start a wildfire.

In the United States, the “Sun Belt” from California to Florida receives that name because a feature of global circulation causes descending air about 30 degrees north and south of the equator. At the surface, this “Hadley cell” is evident in high pressure monthly and annual means (or averages); it’s also called the subtropical high and subtropical ridge.

In the northern hemisphere, the position and strength of the subtropical ridge changes over the course of the year, getting stronger and moving further north in the summertime.

In California that poleward migration of the subtropical ridge diverts rain-producing storm systems poleward to the north, resulting in an almost complete loss of rainfall in the summer. The annual Los Angeles climatology illustrated in Figure 1 helps tell the story of the California wildfire season.

With this information, if we think critically, the usual situation is for vegetation to sprout in wet winter months, grow – and then dry out because of the lack of summer rainfall, causing vegetation to be driest in late summer and early fall.

This is exactly the situation described in a recent article that mentions October as the worst month for wildfires and quotes University of California fire expert Max Moritz, who says “By the time you get to this season, right when you’re starting to anticipate some rain, it’s actually the most fire prone part of the year.” Power line and other management failures increase the likelihood of disaster.

Yet another factor is the failure or refusal of government agencies to permit the removal of dead, diseased and desiccated trees and brush from these woodlands – especially in the broad vicinity of these communities. In fact, California forests have 129 million dead trees, according to the US Forest Service. Together, these factors all but ensure recurrent conflagrations and tragic losses of property and lives.

As autumn sets in, the first cold frontal passages and cold air masses build into Nevada and adjacent states, and a northeasterly pressure gradient develops over California. Because of atmospheric physics, a process called adiabatic compression causes hot, dry winds to develop, often quickly and dramatically.

The Wine country fires of 2017 began suddenly during the evening of October 8, with development of the first fierce Diablo Winds of the season. Contemporary news accounts link the onset of ten fires within ninety minutes to PG&E power poles falling, many into dry trees. In one account, a Sonoma County resident said “trees were on fire like torches.”

The Mercury News carried a story saying that Governor Brown had vetoed a unanimously-passed 2016 bill to fund power line safety measures. But the governor wants to spend still more money combating manmade climate change and compelling a major and rapid shift from fossil fuels to expensive, unreliable, weather-dependent wind and solar power for electricity generation

There was a significant cooling of Pacific Ocean temperatures from the peak of the 2015-16 El Niño to December 2017, such that La Niña conditions have developed in recent months. This distinct pattern shift  brought distinctly drier conditions from southern California and Arizona to Florida and South Carolina.

This pattern shift is part of the evolution of temperature and precipitation change areas characteristic of the ENSO sequence of events. Contrary to Governor Brown’s politically inspired assertions, it clearly is not the result of human-caused, CO2-fueled global warming.

This brings us to the devastating Thomas Fire, which began on the evening of 4 December 2017, and was not completely contained by New Year’s Eve, 31 December. Behavior of this fire was controlled by a large-in-extent and long-in-duration Santa Ana Wind event, and like the previous Wine Country Fire, was dominated by high pressure over Nevada and persistent hot, dry, strong down-slope winds that commonly occur during such meteorological conditions.

In short, it is meteorological conditions which create the environment for the spread of such fires. This year’s changeover from wet El Niño to dry La Niña conditions played a significant part in the atmospheric set-up for the 2017 fires.

In Australia, it is widely accepted that fuel reduction actions are an accepted practice in fire management.

This is not the case in the USA, where considerable debate still rages over the issue, and where environmentalists, politicians, regulators and courts have united to block tree thinning, brush removal and harvesting of dead and dying trees. The resulting conditions are perfect for devastating wildfires, which denude hillsides and forest habitats, leaving barren soils that cannot absorb the heavy rains that frequently follow the fires – leading to equally devastating, equally deadly mudslides.

In fact, environmental regulations associated with ill-fated attempts to help the spotted owl have eliminated logging and clearing throughout California and most of the Mountain West – with catastrophic results. Special legislation has been drafted to begin to address this problem.

However, it is uncertain whether the legislation will be enacted and whether timber harvesting and/or fuel reduction strategies can be implemented in time to address the fuel excesses that exacerbate these dangerous conditions, setting the stage for yet another round of infernos and mudslides that wipe out wildlife habitats, destroy homes and communities, and leave hundreds of people dead, injured or burned horribly. When will the responsible parties be held accountable, and compelled to change their ways?

Robert W. Endlich has a bachelor’s degree in geology and a master’s in meteorology and served as US Air Force Weather Officer for 21 Years. He has provided toxic corridor and laser propagation support to the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range, published in the technical literature and worked as software test engineer at New Mexico State University.

 

Finally, some commonsense western fire policies

New DOI and DOA policy to cut overgrown, diseased, dead and burned trees is long overdue

 

Paul Driessen

 

President Trump promised to bring fresh ideas and policies to Washington. Now Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue are doing exactly that in a critically important area: forest management and conflagration prevention. Their actions are informed, courageous and long overdue.

 

Westerners are delighted, and I’ve advocated such reforms since my days on Capitol Hill in the 1980s.

 

As of September 12, amid this typically long, hot, dry summer out West, 62 major forest fires are burning in nine states, the National Interagency Fire Center reports. The Interior Department and Ag Department’s Forest Service have already spent over $2 billion fighting them. That’s about what they spent in all of 2015, previously the most costly wildfire season ever, and this season has another month or more to go. The states themselves have spent hundreds of millions more battling these conflagrations.

 

Millions of acres of forest have disappeared in smoke and flames – 1.1 million in Montana alone. All told, acreage larger than New Jersey has burned already. However, even this hides the real tragedies.

The infernos exterminate wildlife habitats, roast eagle and spotted owl fledglings alive in their nests, immolate wildlife that can’t run fast enough, leave surviving animals to starve for lack of food, and incinerate organic matter and nearly every living creature in the thin soils. They turn trout streams into fish boils, minus the veggies and seasonings. Future downpours and rapid snowmelts bring widespread soil erosion into streambeds. Many areas will not grow trees or recover their biodiversity for decades.

 

Most horrifically, the conflagrations threaten homes and entire communities. They kill fire fighters and families that cannot get away quickly enough, or get trapped by sudden walls of flames.

In 2012, two huge fires near Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, Colorado burned 610 homes, leaving little more than ashes, chimneys and memories. Tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated through smoke and ash that turned daytime into choking night skies. Four people died. A 1994 fire near Glenwood Springs, CO burned 14 young firefighters to death.

 

These are not “natural” fires of environmentalist lore, or “ordinary” fires like those that occur in state and privately owned and managed forests. Endless layers of laws, regulations, judicial decrees and guidelines for Interior and Forest Service lands have meant that most western forests have been managed like our 109 million acres of designated wilderness: they are hardly managed at all.

Environmentalists abhor timber cutting on federal lands, especially if trees might feed profit-making sawmills. They would rather see trees burn, than let someone cut them. They constantly file lawsuits to block any cutting, and too many judges are all too happy to support their radical ideas and policies. 

 

Thus, even selective cutting to thin dense stands of timber, or remove trees killed by beetles or fires, is rarely permitted. Even fire fighting and suppression are often allowed only if a fire was clearly caused by arson, careless campers or other human action – but not if lightning ignited it. Then it’s allowed to burn, until a raging inferno is roaring over a ridge toward a rural or suburban community.

The result is easy to predict. Thousands of thin trees grow on acreage that should support just a few hundred full-sized mature trees. Tens of billions of these scrawny trees mix with 6.3 billion dead trees that the Forest Service says still stand in eleven western states. Vast forests are little more than big trees amid closely bunched matchsticks and underbrush, drying out in hot, dry western summers and droughts – waiting for lightning bolts, sparks, untended campfires or arsonists to start super-heated conflagrations.

 

Flames in average fires along managed forest floors might reach several feet in height and temperatures of 1,472° F (800° C), says Wildfire Today. But under extreme conditions of high winds and western tinderboxes, temperatures can exceed 2,192° F (1200° C), flame heights can reach 165 feet (50 meters) or more, and fires can generate a critter-roasting 100,000 kilowatts per meter of fire front. Wood will burst into flame at 572° F. Aluminum melts at 1,220 degrees, silver at 1,762 and gold at 1,948° F!

 

Most of this heat goes upward, but super-high temperatures incinerate soil organisms and organic matter in thin western soils that afterward can support only stunted, spindly trees for decades.

These fires also emit prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide, fine particulates and other pollutants – including mercury, which is absorbed by tree roots from rocks and soils that contain this metal, and then lofted into the sky when the trees burn.

 

Rabid greens ignore these hard realities – and divert discussions back to their favorite ideological talking points. The problem isn’t too many trees, they insist. It’s global warming and climate change. That’s why western states are having droughts, long fire seasons, and high winds that send flames past fire breaks.

 

Global warming, global cooling and climate change have been part of the Earth and human experience from time immemorial. Natural climate fluctuations brought the multi-decade Anasazi drought, the Dust Bowl and other dry spells to our western states. To suggest that this summer’s heat and drought are somehow due to mankind’s fossil fuel use and related emissions is deliberately delusional nonsense.

 

Neither these activists nor anyone in Al Gore’s climate chaos consortium can demonstrate or calibrate a human connection to droughts or fires. Rants, rhetoric and CO2-driven computer models do not suffice. And even if manmade (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide does play a role amid the powerful natural forces that have always controlled climate and weather, reducing US fossil fuel use would have zero effect.

 

China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam alone are building 590 new coal-fired power plants right now, on top of the hundreds they have constructed over the past decade. Overall, more than 1,600 new coal generators are planned or under construction in 62 countries. People in developing countries are also driving far more vehicles and making great strides in improving their health and living standards.

 

They will not stop.

 

Western conflagrations jump fire breaks because these ferocious fires are fueled by the unprecedented increase in combustibles that radical green policies have created. These monstrous fires generate their own high winds and even mini tornados that carry burning branches high into the air, to be deposited hundreds of feet away, where they ignite new fires. It has nothing to do with climate change.

 

Remove some of that fuel – and fires won get so big, hot, powerful and destructive. We should also do what a few environmentalist groups have called for: manage more areas around buildings and homes – clearing away brush that federal agencies and these same groups have long demanded be left in place.

 

Finally, we should be using more of the readily available modern technologies like FireIce from GelTech Solutions. They can suppress and extinguish fires, and protect homes, much better than water alone.

 

The last bogus eco-activist claim is that “fire isn’t destruction; it’s renewal. It creates stronger, more diverse ecosystems.” That may be true in managed forests, timber stands in less tinder-dry states, and forests that have undergone repeated, non-devastating fires. For all the reason presented above, it is not true for government owned and mismanaged forests in our western states.

 

Over 50 million acres (equal to Minnesota) are at risk of catastrophic wildfires. Right now, we are spending billions of dollars we don’t have, should not have to spend fighting all these monstrous killer blazes, and should have available to improve forests and parks and fund other vital programs.

 

These forests could and should create jobs and generate revenues in states where far too many lands, timber, oil and minerals have been placed off limits – primarily by urban politicians, judges and radical activists who seem determined to drive people off these western lands, turn them into playgrounds for the wealthy, and roll back other Americans’ living standards and well-being. Cleaning out dead, diseased, burned, overgrown trees would bring countless benefits. It would make our forests healthy again.

Above all, the new Interior-Agriculture approach would demonstrate that Rural Lives Matter..

 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on the environment.