It's sad and frightening watching the fires in California. With the likelihood that some fires were triggered by power lines in high winds there are massive precautionary power blackouts. The result is an enormous amount of blame aimed at the already troubled power utility. That's only part of the problem.
Globally fire seasons have grown in length along with fire size and frequency. Australia, Siberia, Alaska, and the Western US and Canada have been hard hit in recent years. Much of this is from changing climate patterns driven by global warming, but some is the result of mismanagement and a failure to adapt.. Summaries found in the scientific literature are very clear: we need to recognize fire is natural - forests and grasslands need to burn periodically. We have to adapt to fire rather than completely subdue it. We need to reduce fuel near our infrastructure and homes in the wildlife-urban boundary regions. Easy to state, but very political and difficult in practice.
Better practices will probably emerge for property owners and hopefully new construction won't take place in the wildlife-urban boundary regions. Getting political acceptance for prescribed burns and letting nature shift the types of forest to what would naturally occur is going to be difficult. One worries the focus will be on bandages like shifting management and ownership of electric utilities, building microgrids, undergrounding transmission lines, and so on. Some of these might have merit on their own, but they divert attention and resources from real solutions. In the meantime blackouts are about the only short term lever to pull.
I suspect this is a good example of the need for a regional adaptation to deal with global warming fueled climate change. Most parts of the world have some local dangers that bring death and damage to some and inconvenience to many more. This will be a growing trend, but mitigation and adaptation can make a difference. Dealing with fire has known solutions. Too bad they’re not socially popular.
And a final comment.. why has this become bad so suddenly. It seems likely there's no single case, but some of the inputs have a good deal of natural variability and perhaps we're seeing just that - a resonance. That would suggest the likelihood of near term repeats is probably low. On the other hand maybe this is one of those sudden accelerations similar to what is occurring in the Arctic. Either way the long term prognosis is not great so it makes sense to become more clever and take clueful action.
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I first sent this as an email and received a few angry replies. Mostly along lines like: this isn't global warming, or it's an evil power company that needs to be taken over, or why do Easterners complain about little snowstorms when we have this... In fact local climates are changing and that we have to adapt. It will be messy, expensive and in some cases lives will be lost and there will be issues we haven't thought through. Mitigation efforts can reduce these adaptation expenses and are generally seen as cost effective although they're a bet on the future many aren't willing to take. Adaptation will be expensive, but if we're smart we can find clueful paths. We need to be planning and building now.
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