As California’s Mismanaged Forests Burn, Gov. Newsom Declares ‘No More Patience for Climate Deniers’
In search of perfection, California engineered a cataclysm
By Edward Ring, September 14, 2020 11:40 am
What we quaintly refer to as “super fires” have incinerated nearly 5,000 square miles of California’s forests so far this year. In response, Governor Newsom has declared he has “no more patience for climate deniers.” But it isn’t climate change that caused these super fires. It was negligent forestry.
When it comes to facts that matter on the issue of our burning forests, perhaps Newsom is the one who is in denial. Because when Newsom denounces “climate deniers,” he denies the following far more pertinent facts about wildfires and climate:
- The timber industry in California has been cut to a small fraction of what it was in 1990 in terms of employment and board feet of timber harvested. In 1990, 6.0 billion board feet were harvested from California’s forests, today the harvest rarely exceeds 1.5 billion board feet.
- Dense, overgrown forests result in unhealthy trees, because the increased number of trees are competing for the same amount of sunlight, water and soil nutrients. This is the reason so many of them cannot resist disease and infestations, not climate change.
- Year after year, millions of acre feet of snow and rain fall on these dense tree canopies and either evaporate immediately, or are sucked up by the overgrown, water stressed biomass as soon as they hit the ground. Far less water makes it into the aquifers and rivers as a result.
- The overgrown forests are not only packing up to ten times more fuel than what is historically normal, but because these trees aren’t adapted to being packed so close together, half of them are dead or dying, which means they are tinder dry.
Any honest mainstream journalist, if there are any left, needs to ask Governor Newsom one simple question:
“Under which conditions would a lightning strike be more likely to cause a catastrophic fire: on a grove of stressed and dying trees, dried out and packed 200 per acre, on a 75 degree day, or on a grove of healthy trees, moist and dispersed 20 per acre on an 85 degree day?”
A child can answer this question, but perhaps Gavin Newsom isn’t interested in the truth.
How California’s Forests Turned Into Tinderboxes
For over 20 million years, forests existed in California at a much lower density than they are today. These forests were healthy and abundant with wildlife, and they stayed healthy through climate cycles that included droughts and so-called mega-droughts that lasted a century or more.
That all changed starting around 1850 when American settlers began logging operations that left vast clear cut areas. The second growth forests that filled these clear cut areas had a higher tree density, and this unnatural response to the original clear cuts is where the problems began.
Natural fires, usually caused by lightning strikes, probably would have burned through 2nd and 3rd growth forests, with the hardier trees surviving to restore the original ecosystems, but over the past several decades fire suppression tactics had become highly effective and were aggressively practiced. Fire ceased to be a significant source of natural thinning. Forestry officials and private landowners tried to do controlled burns, but ran into too much bureaucracy to ever do it at anywhere near the necessary scale.
The problems of overstocked forests magnified in the 1990s when logging operations throughout the Western United States came under attack from environmentalists. While logging practices needed to evolve, cutting logging activity to a fraction of what it had been for over a century caused additional density. For decades now, annual growth has far exceeded harvests.
Unhealthy, unnaturally dense forests. Far fewer smaller, natural forest fires. Almost no logging activity. It doesn’t take a genius to know what comes next.
Forestry experts including some environmentalists have been warning politicians about the fire hazards in the forests, urgently, for well over 20 years. But effective forest thinning has been prevented by environmentalist backed over-regulation.
If Gov. Newsom is in “denial” about any of this, he might explain: Why is it, if we knew this was an urgent problem, that California’s forests are still twice as dense, or more, than they were for the last 20 million years?
“Climate Change” Policies Are Misanthropic and Futile
Whenever there’s a wildfire, Newsom and all the others in denial over their epic policy failures, come shouting “climate change.” They have the audacity to tell us to turn our thermostats up to 78 degrees and refrain from using electric appliances, and they claim these fires are evidence of why this is necessary. They embark on a “renewables mandate” that jacks utility prices up to the highest in the nation in exchange for unreliable power.
More than anything else, what Newsom and all the rest of these politicians who want California to set a “climate example” to the world are in denial of is their own misanthropy. They know perfectly well that California only emits one percent of the world’s CO2. They know as well that China and India are not about to stop using fossil fuel to grow their economies. They know that fossil fuel accounts for 85 percent of global energy production, with hydroelectric and nuclear power accounting for another 11 percent. All renewables account for only four percent of global energy production. Four percent.
Although one often wonders, Newsom is smart enough to figure out, based on readily available and indisputable data, that if everyone in the world, per capita, used half as much energy as Americans do, global energy production would have to double. And it will. And for the next 20-30 years, fossil fuel is going to account for a large portion of that.
Someday, probably within the lifetime of most people alive today, there will be a series of breakthroughs in energy technology. Fusion power. Satellite solar power stations. Direct synthesis of atmospheric CO2 into liquid fuel. Who knows? But until that time, the only reason to impoverish the lives of ordinary Californians in the name of the “climate crisis” is so rich and powerful people like Gavin Newsom can get even richer and even more powerful.
Once this horrific fire season comes to an end, there is just one thing Gavin Newsom should be doing as follow up. He needs to figure out how California’s forests are going to be rapidly thinned from, using the Sierra Nevada as an example, 200 or more trees per acre, down to the historical norm of 40 trees or less per acre. No forest management solutions are perfect. But in search of perfection, we engineered a cataclysm. Have we learned? Or will we just watch the rest of our forests burn up, and blame it on climate change?
We’ve Lost Patience With YOU, Gavin Newsom.
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The “environmentalists” shutdown almost all the lumber mills and now there are few places to take logs and prices are low because there is a glut of logs, low quality logs, little competition and you have to haul the logs long distances. This was never about the environment, it was simply anti-logging. I dare the Sierra Club to say that their policies have had good results.
Thank you Mr. Ring!
Your well researched article is the anthesis to the rantings of the Governor and the environmentalists blaming climate change 24/7. Climate Change has become another get rich industrial complex. Al Gore is the god father. How are those carbon credits doing for you all?
We must address the lack of forest management or face more loss of life and devastation of our beautiful state. It is to listen to true science and learn from the mistakes that have been made in the name of ecological science or is it eco-lunacy!
Hair gel is a reality denier.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the fires will end when California gets plenty of rain, and not a day before.
I find it sweet justice that this was posted 1 year to the date PRIOR to his RECALL Election
Whilst California precious California and historical towns, our businesses, homes, livestock all suffer through the BURNS – this did not need to happen GAVIN NEWSOM He said he would clear the forests, and what has he done? Cleared a very small fraction. He is bad for California. YES ON RECALL SEPT 14 2021
If you’re paying attention, it isn’t only wildfires that are a consequence of climate change – flooding, hurricanes, drought, etc. are all increasing in frequency and intensity. You can manage the hell out of our forests, but at this point you’ll be hard to keep up with the more serious contributor to wildfires, which is climate change. Putting the blame on Needome for mismanagement of our forests is like blaming a finger amputation on an infected hang nail that wasn’t treated. In other words, mismanagement of the forest ecosystem started back in the ’20s, and getting a handle on management takes much longer than the administration of Newsome. Regardless of his other faults, he’s absolutely correct in pouting the finger at climate change.
Your comment is a perfect example of what a brainwashed, opinionated ignoramus would think. Even if everything you’re saying is true, wouldn’t that mean that sensible forest management is more urgent? What part of this don’t you understand: instead of letting them burn like they did throughout history, we’ve been putting out forest fires now for over a century, we’ve been making it harder and harder to do controlled burns for several decades, and we’ve decimated our logging industry? Why do you think these superfires stop as soon as they hit an area where there’s been responsible forest thinning? Get off your soapbox about climate change and start supporting a return to sanity. You’re not helping. Wake up.