Los Angeles burns: What you need to know
www.theclimatebrink.com
This is terrible. This is climate change.
    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Over a human lifespan, the modeled impacts of the suppression bias exceed those from fuel accumulation or climate change alone, suggesting that suppression may exert a significant and underappreciated influence on patterns of fire globally. Managing wildfires to safely burn under low and moderate conditions is thus a critical tool to address the growing wildfire crisis.

      The paper says that management techniques are a significant factor, alongside fuel accumulation and climate change. As the person you’re responding to says, there are several contributing factors, a significant one of which is climate change. The paper you point to doesn’t disagree with this.

      We can’t approach these events with a black-and-white question, “Is it due to climate change or not?” We know that climate change increases the likelihood and severity of some extreme weather events, floods and forest fires. We know that other factors also influence these things. Usually all you can conclude about a particular fire, storm or flood is that climate change made such events more likely and raised the chances of them being severe. Other factors are always at work too. It’s not realistic, for the most part, to look for particular incidents that are caused by climate change only.

      • troed@fedia.io
        11·
        2 days ago

        Yes, as you quoted, forest (mis-)management is a bigger factor than climate change.

        Now check the claims made in what we’re discussing.

        • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          Now check the claims made in what we’re discussing.

          OK. The article says:

          Climate change doesn’t cause any of these factors. But climate change can affect them. For example, we are confident that climate change is making rainfall more variable, with bigger swings from wet to dry extremes. This promotes vegetation growth and then drying it out. Additionally, humans are also causing a warming of the climate system, which accelerates the drying of vegetation by increasing evaporation rates and extending drought periods.

          In this way, climate change is turbocharging the wildfire just like it turbocharges heat waves and hurricanes.

          Of course, other factors also play a role, such as the amount and arrangement of available fuel. Forest management practices over the past century have led to accumulations of understory vegetation and dead organic material in many forests. The expansion of cities into wildland areas introduces more potential ignition sources, adds structures and infrastructure that can fuel fires, and creates zones where preventive measures like prescribed burning are challenging to implement.s claim of yours seems to be what we’re discussing:

          We all seem to agree about all of this. Climate change is a significant contributing factor, and so are the quantity of fuel available and forest management practices. But then you argued CORRECTION: I attributed this comment to the wrong person:

          yes it contributed to these fires, but to use these fires as a debate point in the realm of climate change is cheap and stupid

          This seems to be the point on which we disagree. So I have checked the article and checked your claims and I still don’t understand, when climate change is a significant cause of these fires, why you think it is “cheap and stupid” to discuss how climate change contributes to them. The article itself admits that there are other causes. Why do you think we should talk about those but not climate change? Why is one contributing factor “cheap and stupid” to discuss but not the others? CORRECTION: I was arguing with the wrong person.