One issue with being stricter about punishing people who unintentionally start fires is that it creates an incentive against promptly reporting a fire that's growing beyond your ability to put it out.
How much is the improvement in air quality in American cities due to a drop in industrial activity in the wake of NAFTA and trade relations with China?
So while yes, I agree that we should hold people who start wildfires to a higher standard and enforce rules, my (underinformed) impression is that if there's climate change, many regions will be drier on average, or at least have more dry periods because rainfall will be distributed differently throughout the year. Which, in turn, would mean there's more dry fuel lying around on average, and *eventually* that fuel will burn unless something else makes it go away. We've tried fire suppression, and it makes the eventual fires much worse. You're right about clearing around utility poles, and we can help control where and when fires start to keep them away from populated areas more. But for air pollution that travels many hundreds of miles, does this matter? What strategy can actually help?
(My inner naive idealist is imagining future robotic systems gathering up dry biomass in forests and either bringing it back to civilization to make biofuels and electricity, or to make biochar to sequester carbon and increase soil fertility, but I can't imagine that kind of thing will be practical on any currently relevant timescale).
... starting controlled burns on ~October 1st in every single forest in the country? Burn out as much as possible right before the rain shows up and you're good to go for another year.
Tons of trees in california straight up cannot reproduce without moderate levels of fire. Some trees in British columbia do that too, to a lesser extent.
The Inflation Reduction Act did dedicate $2.15 billion to improve forest management, to include expanding thinning operations and controlled burns. Semafor recently did a good video[1] talking about the history of forest management and the changes that are being made in the approach going forward.
For my money, I think we need to do more to discourage building permanent structures in forests. There's not going to be a lot of appetite for allowing both controlled burns (which do rarely become uncontrolled) and small accidental fires to progress naturally as long as people are afraid their homes are going to burn down. Maybe we just need to make people pay a huge fire insurance tax?
So, banal practical question: what personal choices can west coast people to protect themselves on bad days? What are cost effective home filters? Is a car with A/C on filtered enough , or do you all actually drive masked? What about supermarkets/shopping malls/offices? Any of those filtered enough ?
I had my HVAC system checked to see if the fan is strong enough to push air through a MERV-16 filter. It was, so I bought a bunch of them and change them regularly. I leave the HVAC fan on 24/7. I also have air purifiers, and spare filters for those. I have an indoor air-quality meter.
Don't do anything to create negative pressure in the house because that will cause air to get sucked in somewhere, so no bathroom exhaust fan use, no range/cooktop exhaust fan, no clothes dryer running. Don't burn gas inside, if you have a gas range don't use it -- use electric cooking appliances (rice cooker, electric kettle, toaster oven, Instant Pot, etc.). Don't do any cooking that creates smoke, of course. Don't use any chemical cleaning products or anything else that harms indoor air quality (paints, solvents, etc).
Open an outside door as infrequently and as narrowly and quickly as possible. I give my dog a gentle push as we go through the door because horizontal beings take longer to pass through a doorway than vertical ones. Wear a proper mask outdoors. Get the dog back inside fast because they can't wear masks.
Car-cabin air filters are not sufficient. Put the car A/C on recirculate so as not to bring in outside air. Open the door as narrowly and as quickly as possible to slip in and out. Wear a tightly fitted N95 or KN95 in the car if you can smell the smoke.
If the air is clean at bedtime, do not go to sleep with the windows open. The wind may shift overnight and blow in smoke. This can be difficult because in the West, leaving the windows open at night and closed during the day is a common way to keep the house cool for the many without air conditioning.
Your air conditioner filter helps a fair amount. Of course many NorCal homes don't have A/C because of the belief that the weather is always lovely. We have two large air purifiers (for people who are stalking me, and wonder why I comment on both CA and CO, I spend time in both places), and honestly I try not to drive around too much when it's smoky. I don't have any problems with N95 masks and am perfectly willing to wear them for an hour or more if I *have* to do stuff outside.
There are scores of indoor air filters on Amazon. Most of them have a filtered air particle sensor and use that to control fan speed. We bought one for our winter home in Mexico City. It usually manages to get the sensor reading to below 50, sometimes at night with the windows closed to below 20. The outdoor air bounced around between 50and 200 which apparently is much better than 20 years ago. I don’t think you can tell whether masking, air filters etc are enough. The effects are probabilistic and related to cumulative exposure. Most of us have no idea what our cumulative exposure to PM2.5 has been. We just know that more is worse, less is better.
We put Blue Air filters in every room (especially the bedrooms) and they work pretty well, the trick is to buy them before fire season because they become impossible to get when wildfires start. I feel like indoor air quality isn’t too bad with a filter running, it mostly gets annoying being stuck inside (with the kids) all the time.
So is the implication that the best way to fix wildfires in CA to manually clear out the brush without burning it? It's a cool idea but I'd want to see a calc that it's at all feasible. Like how many man hours are we talking?
It costs about $850/acre to conduct forest thinning. I'm not sure how much it costs do a controlled burn through the area afterwards (which is recommended) or how frequently thinning needs to take place but that's the starting price.
California has 33m acres of forests. If we cleared it all at $850 an acre it would be 28b. But I imagine theres ways to do it strategically so you only have to clear a third. Seems pretty reasonable.
I am dubious that efforts to prevent starting fires will help much in the west. If that 1M acres doesn’t burn this year it’s going to burn sometime in the next 10. If your strategy is ‘not remotely enough controlled burns and limit accidental burns’, you’re just going to get massive accidental burns in a similar volume eventually, regardless of how careful you are
owning the libs by engaging in nihilist epistemology assassination!” stunt that turns out to be really, really dumb when you spend two seconds thinking about what he said.
It seems like by far the most important point of this piece got kinda buried at the bottom, which is that as with so many issues the political right is just nihilist and the political left means well but is doing the wrong thing.
Specifically, as much as climate change is a big deal, this is more of a forest management problem than anything. But I don't see many people saying that or anyone doing anything about it.
It’s incredibly frustrating to see coverage of wildfires by east coast media where forest management is never mentioned.
I say this all too often but last summer Seattle had several days when it had the worst air quality in the world. The media portrayed it as primarily a result of climate change but that wasn’t true. It was a small fire in an inaccessible area during a mild wildfire season. The smoke made it to Seattle because of soem really weird atmospheric conditions. Our governor, who is all about climate change, did not insist it was mostly caused by climate change. Neither did the commissioner of public lands who is a former environmental lawyer. Her office said the area had to burn and now that it’s burned it won’t but again soon.
It was so strange to see that contrast. Who are east coast outlets hiring to cover wildfires?
The east coast outlets all have bylines. No need to ask rhetorical questions when you can just check yourself. In any case, the answer is probably a 20-something urbanite who is willing to work for low pay, since that's what most journalists are.
As an example, the George Mason University program on climate change communication (which works closely with a counterpart at Yale) is very good, actually. https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/
I live in NM, and last year we had the largest wildfire in state history. It started from embers left over in a burn pile started in January or February during routine forest management. Just crazy.
One related air pollution issue is the continued use of wood-burning stoves, particularly in cities and towns. All those particulates, carbon monoxide, and whatnot, but right on your doorstep all the way through winter.
A few jurisdictions have banned them, or at least banned new installations. Others should, because it’s one of the easiest remaining air pollution wins out there.
Yep. Our neighbor (within city of Seattle limits) has a fire pit that they use regularly during the summer. So most nights of the week when the weather is nice and we want to open the windows we get the experience, and health benefits, of breathing in a campfire. It sucks, and I really wish the city would ban them.
Can I ask where you live? I hear this more and more frequently and always wonder when the last time your power/heat when out when the temperature was below freezing outside.
I feel like these days it’s confined mostly to rural and off-grid areas, where it’s still considered a necessity. (For instance, where I live.) Outside of the US is a different story of course, but it always makes me nervous when people talk about banning fireplaces, wood stoves, and gas stoves as a matter of policy. A lot of urban- and suburbanites seem unaware of just how many Americans live in more rural communities.
I’m from Australia. Some of the worst air pollution in Australia is actually in small towns and small cities in the southern states during winter, particularly in some of the more mountainous areas where the towns are at the bottom of some pretty narrow valleys, sheltered from the wind.
Just one wood stove puts out as much pollution as literally hundreds of cars or trucks, so you don’t need many to end up with some pretty foul air.
Genuinely off-grid applications miles from the nearest house? Sure, go for it. But in town - even a small one? You’re just giving your own and your neighbours’ kids asthma.
I think there’s a difference between supplementing heat with a stove when it’s very cold/power goes out and relying solely on a stove or fireplace.
In the US, there’s a whole rural population I think gets forgotten about. The power here goes out all the time, and without a fireplace and a gas stove I’d be in trouble.
Do I use it all winter? No. Would I have had some dangerous nights without it? You bet.
Sure, but you could use propane for that too (to avoid getting into arguments about what temperatures heat pumps will work down to).
Again, if you’re living way out of town, I accept that wood may be the only viable way to keep a house warm in very cold conditions without a (very expensive) geothermal heat pump.
My sister lives on a farm in a pretty remote location, and while it doesn’t get cold by northern hemisphere standards, there are plenty of days below freezing during winter, and she has a wood stove. But the nearest house is literally half a mile away.
But in town, the health costs of the pollution caused far outweigh the money saved on wood compared to gas and it makes sense to a) ban new installations (as NYC, for instance, did back in 2015), and have buybacks for people who have existing systems.
Boston for sure (suburbs at least). My brother burns wood pellets. His neighborhood is built on some kind of ledge that's unsuitable for natural gas pipes. So most people in his vicinity have oil heat (still a common fuel in New England). He has an oil tank as well. The wood is a supplement.
Dumb question, but would allowing increased grazing and/or logging decrease wild-fire risk? Both would seem plausible as methods to decrease available fuel for wildfires. Since both can be done profitably under some circumstances, would this be a more cost-effective way than hiring large numbers of people to clear brush? I read the linked article that dismisses the idea of logging without addressing grazing, but it seems helpless to just say we can’t do anything aside from preventing ignition.
Logging could make it worse if it’s done via clearcutting. Generally forests that have been subject to clearcutting are more vulnerable to devastating fires. There may be other methods that reduce the fire risk
It's a fair question and I'm happy to answer. The areas that are most vulnerable to these kinds of massive fire events in the West are not really accessible to domestic livestock, if that's what you mean. The vast majority of grazing in intermountain Western forests is done by deer and elk, which by and large have healthier populations in the 21st century than they have in decades previous (in fact, their current populations may be too large, because in most areas their primary native predator species are still extirpated).
The more pressing issue isn't really the undergrowth, and it's not the impact of warming temperatures directly -- it's vastly increased fuel load in the form of mass tree death from (typically) invasive insects and fungi, e.g. the Mountain Pine Beetle, Asian Longhorn beetle, woolly hemlock adelgid, spotted lanternfly, emerald ash borer, white spruce beetle, the Phytopthora genus of pathogens, etc. These parasitic infestations are all becoming more frequent and more geographically widespread due to warming temperatures, and heat-stressed trees are more vulnerable to death from parasitic infestation so it's a double whammy.
Unfortunately, MattY entirely misses the crux of climate change impacts on increased wildfire risk here, which I don't really blame him for. 99% of journalists with national platforms have no real day-to-day exposure to the nuances of the most pressing nature conservation issues.
If you have any more questions on the topic though, let me know. ID resident, a lot of topic-specific experience and I've grown up in an extended family of Forest Service rangers and forest ecologists.
Surprised we didn’t get a plug for a One Billion Canadians-style fix that advocates place-based migration to Quebec and Manitoba for wildfire prevention purposes
Since you have commented favorably on my comments, I will mention that I now have a Substack. It is called Snowflakes. All content is currently free. If you choose to sample it, I hope you enjoy it.
One issue with being stricter about punishing people who unintentionally start fires is that it creates an incentive against promptly reporting a fire that's growing beyond your ability to put it out.
How much is the improvement in air quality in American cities due to a drop in industrial activity in the wake of NAFTA and trade relations with China?
So while yes, I agree that we should hold people who start wildfires to a higher standard and enforce rules, my (underinformed) impression is that if there's climate change, many regions will be drier on average, or at least have more dry periods because rainfall will be distributed differently throughout the year. Which, in turn, would mean there's more dry fuel lying around on average, and *eventually* that fuel will burn unless something else makes it go away. We've tried fire suppression, and it makes the eventual fires much worse. You're right about clearing around utility poles, and we can help control where and when fires start to keep them away from populated areas more. But for air pollution that travels many hundreds of miles, does this matter? What strategy can actually help?
(My inner naive idealist is imagining future robotic systems gathering up dry biomass in forests and either bringing it back to civilization to make biofuels and electricity, or to make biochar to sequester carbon and increase soil fertility, but I can't imagine that kind of thing will be practical on any currently relevant timescale).
More logging should be part of the solution
> What, if anything, can we do to fix it?
... starting controlled burns on ~October 1st in every single forest in the country? Burn out as much as possible right before the rain shows up and you're good to go for another year.
Tons of trees in california straight up cannot reproduce without moderate levels of fire. Some trees in British columbia do that too, to a lesser extent.
The Inflation Reduction Act did dedicate $2.15 billion to improve forest management, to include expanding thinning operations and controlled burns. Semafor recently did a good video[1] talking about the history of forest management and the changes that are being made in the approach going forward.
For my money, I think we need to do more to discourage building permanent structures in forests. There's not going to be a lot of appetite for allowing both controlled burns (which do rarely become uncontrolled) and small accidental fires to progress naturally as long as people are afraid their homes are going to burn down. Maybe we just need to make people pay a huge fire insurance tax?
[1] https://youtu.be/hyMSPJjULQY
Analogous to coastal management policy (one of my hobbyhorses). Disaster policy is a mess!
So, banal practical question: what personal choices can west coast people to protect themselves on bad days? What are cost effective home filters? Is a car with A/C on filtered enough , or do you all actually drive masked? What about supermarkets/shopping malls/offices? Any of those filtered enough ?
I had my HVAC system checked to see if the fan is strong enough to push air through a MERV-16 filter. It was, so I bought a bunch of them and change them regularly. I leave the HVAC fan on 24/7. I also have air purifiers, and spare filters for those. I have an indoor air-quality meter.
Don't do anything to create negative pressure in the house because that will cause air to get sucked in somewhere, so no bathroom exhaust fan use, no range/cooktop exhaust fan, no clothes dryer running. Don't burn gas inside, if you have a gas range don't use it -- use electric cooking appliances (rice cooker, electric kettle, toaster oven, Instant Pot, etc.). Don't do any cooking that creates smoke, of course. Don't use any chemical cleaning products or anything else that harms indoor air quality (paints, solvents, etc).
Open an outside door as infrequently and as narrowly and quickly as possible. I give my dog a gentle push as we go through the door because horizontal beings take longer to pass through a doorway than vertical ones. Wear a proper mask outdoors. Get the dog back inside fast because they can't wear masks.
Car-cabin air filters are not sufficient. Put the car A/C on recirculate so as not to bring in outside air. Open the door as narrowly and as quickly as possible to slip in and out. Wear a tightly fitted N95 or KN95 in the car if you can smell the smoke.
If the air is clean at bedtime, do not go to sleep with the windows open. The wind may shift overnight and blow in smoke. This can be difficult because in the West, leaving the windows open at night and closed during the day is a common way to keep the house cool for the many without air conditioning.
Thanks! Very impressive! Perhaps a bit much though?
Your air conditioner filter helps a fair amount. Of course many NorCal homes don't have A/C because of the belief that the weather is always lovely. We have two large air purifiers (for people who are stalking me, and wonder why I comment on both CA and CO, I spend time in both places), and honestly I try not to drive around too much when it's smoky. I don't have any problems with N95 masks and am perfectly willing to wear them for an hour or more if I *have* to do stuff outside.
There are scores of indoor air filters on Amazon. Most of them have a filtered air particle sensor and use that to control fan speed. We bought one for our winter home in Mexico City. It usually manages to get the sensor reading to below 50, sometimes at night with the windows closed to below 20. The outdoor air bounced around between 50and 200 which apparently is much better than 20 years ago. I don’t think you can tell whether masking, air filters etc are enough. The effects are probabilistic and related to cumulative exposure. Most of us have no idea what our cumulative exposure to PM2.5 has been. We just know that more is worse, less is better.
We put Blue Air filters in every room (especially the bedrooms) and they work pretty well, the trick is to buy them before fire season because they become impossible to get when wildfires start. I feel like indoor air quality isn’t too bad with a filter running, it mostly gets annoying being stuck inside (with the kids) all the time.
So is the implication that the best way to fix wildfires in CA to manually clear out the brush without burning it? It's a cool idea but I'd want to see a calc that it's at all feasible. Like how many man hours are we talking?
It costs about $850/acre to conduct forest thinning. I'm not sure how much it costs do a controlled burn through the area afterwards (which is recommended) or how frequently thinning needs to take place but that's the starting price.
https://doi.org/10.1093/jofore/fvac037
California has 33m acres of forests. If we cleared it all at $850 an acre it would be 28b. But I imagine theres ways to do it strategically so you only have to clear a third. Seems pretty reasonable.
It’s California, we should build some robots to do it!
I am dubious that efforts to prevent starting fires will help much in the west. If that 1M acres doesn’t burn this year it’s going to burn sometime in the next 10. If your strategy is ‘not remotely enough controlled burns and limit accidental burns’, you’re just going to get massive accidental burns in a similar volume eventually, regardless of how careful you are
You gotta love the Matt Walsh “I’m so cleverly
owning the libs by engaging in nihilist epistemology assassination!” stunt that turns out to be really, really dumb when you spend two seconds thinking about what he said.
Matt Walsh is sofaking stupid.
It seems like by far the most important point of this piece got kinda buried at the bottom, which is that as with so many issues the political right is just nihilist and the political left means well but is doing the wrong thing.
Specifically, as much as climate change is a big deal, this is more of a forest management problem than anything. But I don't see many people saying that or anyone doing anything about it.
It’s incredibly frustrating to see coverage of wildfires by east coast media where forest management is never mentioned.
I say this all too often but last summer Seattle had several days when it had the worst air quality in the world. The media portrayed it as primarily a result of climate change but that wasn’t true. It was a small fire in an inaccessible area during a mild wildfire season. The smoke made it to Seattle because of soem really weird atmospheric conditions. Our governor, who is all about climate change, did not insist it was mostly caused by climate change. Neither did the commissioner of public lands who is a former environmental lawyer. Her office said the area had to burn and now that it’s burned it won’t but again soon.
It was so strange to see that contrast. Who are east coast outlets hiring to cover wildfires?
The east coast outlets all have bylines. No need to ask rhetorical questions when you can just check yourself. In any case, the answer is probably a 20-something urbanite who is willing to work for low pay, since that's what most journalists are.
Plenty of people on the right are saying this, and trying to do something about it.
As an example, the George Mason University program on climate change communication (which works closely with a counterpart at Yale) is very good, actually. https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/
I live in NM, and last year we had the largest wildfire in state history. It started from embers left over in a burn pile started in January or February during routine forest management. Just crazy.
One related air pollution issue is the continued use of wood-burning stoves, particularly in cities and towns. All those particulates, carbon monoxide, and whatnot, but right on your doorstep all the way through winter.
A few jurisdictions have banned them, or at least banned new installations. Others should, because it’s one of the easiest remaining air pollution wins out there.
A couple years ago we had no power for 12 days.
12 days with a 40 degree house
We've now installed a wood burning stove as a backup
Yep. Our neighbor (within city of Seattle limits) has a fire pit that they use regularly during the summer. So most nights of the week when the weather is nice and we want to open the windows we get the experience, and health benefits, of breathing in a campfire. It sucks, and I really wish the city would ban them.
Can I ask where you live? I hear this more and more frequently and always wonder when the last time your power/heat when out when the temperature was below freezing outside.
I feel like these days it’s confined mostly to rural and off-grid areas, where it’s still considered a necessity. (For instance, where I live.) Outside of the US is a different story of course, but it always makes me nervous when people talk about banning fireplaces, wood stoves, and gas stoves as a matter of policy. A lot of urban- and suburbanites seem unaware of just how many Americans live in more rural communities.
I’m from Australia. Some of the worst air pollution in Australia is actually in small towns and small cities in the southern states during winter, particularly in some of the more mountainous areas where the towns are at the bottom of some pretty narrow valleys, sheltered from the wind.
Just one wood stove puts out as much pollution as literally hundreds of cars or trucks, so you don’t need many to end up with some pretty foul air.
Genuinely off-grid applications miles from the nearest house? Sure, go for it. But in town - even a small one? You’re just giving your own and your neighbours’ kids asthma.
I think there’s a difference between supplementing heat with a stove when it’s very cold/power goes out and relying solely on a stove or fireplace.
In the US, there’s a whole rural population I think gets forgotten about. The power here goes out all the time, and without a fireplace and a gas stove I’d be in trouble.
Do I use it all winter? No. Would I have had some dangerous nights without it? You bet.
Sure, but you could use propane for that too (to avoid getting into arguments about what temperatures heat pumps will work down to).
Again, if you’re living way out of town, I accept that wood may be the only viable way to keep a house warm in very cold conditions without a (very expensive) geothermal heat pump.
My sister lives on a farm in a pretty remote location, and while it doesn’t get cold by northern hemisphere standards, there are plenty of days below freezing during winter, and she has a wood stove. But the nearest house is literally half a mile away.
But in town, the health costs of the pollution caused far outweigh the money saved on wood compared to gas and it makes sense to a) ban new installations (as NYC, for instance, did back in 2015), and have buybacks for people who have existing systems.
Boston for sure (suburbs at least). My brother burns wood pellets. His neighborhood is built on some kind of ledge that's unsuitable for natural gas pipes. So most people in his vicinity have oil heat (still a common fuel in New England). He has an oil tank as well. The wood is a supplement.
Dumb question, but would allowing increased grazing and/or logging decrease wild-fire risk? Both would seem plausible as methods to decrease available fuel for wildfires. Since both can be done profitably under some circumstances, would this be a more cost-effective way than hiring large numbers of people to clear brush? I read the linked article that dismisses the idea of logging without addressing grazing, but it seems helpless to just say we can’t do anything aside from preventing ignition.
Logging could make it worse if it’s done via clearcutting. Generally forests that have been subject to clearcutting are more vulnerable to devastating fires. There may be other methods that reduce the fire risk
What about grazing? Cattle, sheep, goats? Doesn’t seem crazy that they would consume a lot of underbrush.
It's a fair question and I'm happy to answer. The areas that are most vulnerable to these kinds of massive fire events in the West are not really accessible to domestic livestock, if that's what you mean. The vast majority of grazing in intermountain Western forests is done by deer and elk, which by and large have healthier populations in the 21st century than they have in decades previous (in fact, their current populations may be too large, because in most areas their primary native predator species are still extirpated).
The more pressing issue isn't really the undergrowth, and it's not the impact of warming temperatures directly -- it's vastly increased fuel load in the form of mass tree death from (typically) invasive insects and fungi, e.g. the Mountain Pine Beetle, Asian Longhorn beetle, woolly hemlock adelgid, spotted lanternfly, emerald ash borer, white spruce beetle, the Phytopthora genus of pathogens, etc. These parasitic infestations are all becoming more frequent and more geographically widespread due to warming temperatures, and heat-stressed trees are more vulnerable to death from parasitic infestation so it's a double whammy.
Unfortunately, MattY entirely misses the crux of climate change impacts on increased wildfire risk here, which I don't really blame him for. 99% of journalists with national platforms have no real day-to-day exposure to the nuances of the most pressing nature conservation issues.
If you have any more questions on the topic though, let me know. ID resident, a lot of topic-specific experience and I've grown up in an extended family of Forest Service rangers and forest ecologists.
Surprised we didn’t get a plug for a One Billion Canadians-style fix that advocates place-based migration to Quebec and Manitoba for wildfire prevention purposes
Since you have commented favorably on my comments, I will mention that I now have a Substack. It is called Snowflakes. All content is currently free. If you choose to sample it, I hope you enjoy it.