Did environmentalists cause the Rim Fire near Yosemite?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Bush's proposals were pretty much a scam to bypass environmental safeguards to allow more logging, under the guise of reducing fire danger. The truth is that fire suppression always was to a large degree about trying to save the trees for the loggers. Also. Logging operations often leave a lot of debris around that increases fire danger.

From my link above on the OR Biscuit fire:

Key Findings
• Areas that burned with high severity (measured as Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio [dNBR]), a satellite remote sensing index of overall change) in a previous wildfire (in 1987, 15 years prior) were more likely to burn with high severity again in the 2002 Biscuit Fire.
• Areas that were salvage-logged and planted following the 1987 fi re burned with somewhat higher fi re severity than equivalent areas that had not been logged and planted.
• Vegetation structure and weather explained most of the variability in crown damage from the Biscuit Fire.
• Stands of large conifers were least likely to burn with high severity.

Logged areas had more intense burning.

 

[Travis]

Also, where did this idea come from that environmentalists hate electricity and want to revert to the stone age? That came up in the comments again and again.

 

[gumboot]

You guys should just be glad you don't have trees that have evolved specifically to start bush fires, like those poor buggers in Australia.

 

[Travis]

Although we do have a lot of eucalyptus trees here in California. Someone had the bright idea to import them last century and now they are an invasive nuisance.

And we do have the native manzanita bush which is known to burn incredibly hot.

 

[angrysoba]

Although we do have a lot of eucalyptus trees here in California. Someone had the bright idea to import them last century and now they are an invasive nuisance.

I blame the Darwinists. Chairman Darwin himself made specific reference to this type of thing happening in his godless leftie manifesto called the Oranges of the Species.

 

[crescent]

You guys should just be glad you don't have trees that have evolved specifically to start bush fires, like those poor buggers in Australia.

Although we do have a lot of eucalyptus trees here in California. Someone had the bright idea to import them last century and now they are an invasive nuisance.

And we do have the native manzanita bush which is known to burn incredibly hot.

Indeed, the whole chaparral ecosystem can burn very, very hot on cycles as short as 30 years. It might be one of the hottest and most frequently burned woody vegetation types.

A good many confifers are fire adapted as well - lodgepole pine being one of the better documented examples. It experiences crown fires on 100-500 year cycles.

A good many conifers are adapted to survive fire (Sequoias, for example), but lodgepole is adapted to burn to a crisp on a pretty regular basis, and can do so in a pretty spectacular way.

 

[Travis]

I just found out that some of the areas that burned the hottest on National Forest land was actually supposed to thinned out this last April-May. But wasn't because of the budget battle in DC.

Thank you Congress for pushing us into a Ayn Rand dystopia.

 

[fuelair]

Wow. People can be real idiots, huh?

Goes without saying!! So I won't!!!

 

[gumboot]

Although we do have a lot of eucalyptus trees here in California. Someone had the bright idea to import them last century and now they are an invasive nuisance.

Ah, in that case you should soon be inundated with them. Although geography might save you.

Eucalyptus was originally limited in Australia but because they enable the spread of wildfires, and recover from them so well (some types of eucalpytus can only seed through being burned!), they rapidly replaced the rainforests of Gondwana Land, extending their range well beyond the lightning-prone areas they'd evolved in. The absence of hills, mountains, or large rivers enabled them to spread everywhere.

That's why Australia routinely has bushfires that burn over areas in excess of half a million acres (The Black Thursday bushfires burned a whopping 12.5 million acres).

Literally everything in Australia has carefully evolved to kill people.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Marijuana farm may have triggered massive bushfire at Yosemite National Park, fire chief suggests

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Marijuana farm may have triggered massive bushfire at Yosemite National Park, fire chief suggests

Oh dear, Liberals after all? Wait, could be Libertarians.

 

[LSSBB]

Ah, in that case you should soon be inundated with them. Although geography might save you.

Eucalyptus was originally limited in Australia but because they enable the spread of wildfires, and recover from them so well (some types of eucalpytus can only seed through being burned!), they rapidly replaced the rainforests of Gondwana Land, extending their range well beyond the lightning-prone areas they'd evolved in. The absence of hills, mountains, or large rivers enabled them to spread everywhere.

That's why Australia routinely has bushfires that burn over areas in excess of half a million acres (The Black Thursday bushfires burned a whopping 12.5 million acres).

Literally everything in Australia has carefully evolved to kill people.

Ninja koalas.

 

[Graham2001]

Also, where did this idea come from that environmentalists hate electricity and want to revert to the stone age? That came up in the comments again and again.

I have no idea, but the concept crops up from time to time in science fiction. I know of one Andre Norton story where some of the characters are from a colony where the founders tried to create a permanent a pre-industrial society but had failed in this and the characters were the societies first interstellar explorers. And of course there is "Fallen Angels" by Niven, Pournelle and Flynn (Weblink) Doubtless there are other examples.

In addition you look at media stories about self proclaimed 'electro' and 'chemo' sensatives and of course the proliforation of 'organic' foods, it would be very easy to twist that into a belief that the 'Greenies' want the whole of humanity to revert to 'pastoral squalor'.

 

[crescent]

One thing to think of is that there is virtually no commercial logging within the National Parks, yet there is logging on the adjacent National Forests. By that mesure, the National Park management strategy is much more in line with what a stereotypical Environmentalist might want.

Yet, the Park Service has been much more assertive about dealing with fuels buildup, including the use of wildland fire (both planned human ignition and unplanned but anticipated natural ignition) to remove fuels. The Forest Service has done that as well, but has been slower to get going with it.

So in the case of the current fire, it seems as if the burn severity is lower within the park boundaries than without.

A nice video here, going over fire management in the sequoia groves.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I'm not sure the Yellowstone and Biscuit fires were that different. They still had the main problem of burning the larger older trees. Forests still recover, but if the old growth Redwoods or the Sequoias were ever lost, they'd be gone forever.

Naa. Just for a couple thousand years.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Naa. Just for a couple thousand years.

OK, perhaps, 'forever', was a bit of hyperbole.

But you have to admit with climate change you can't guarantee which tree species might be extinct in 1,000 years.

 

[Dymanic]

"The Rim fire, which has burned into Yosemite National Park and threatened a vital water supply to San Francisco, was started by a hunter who let an illegal fire “escape,” the U.S. Forest Service said Thursday."

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rim-fire-cause-conclusion-20130905,0,4661208.story

 

[Travis]

Investigators from the U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement & Investigations and Tuolumne County District Attorney's Office have determined the Rim Fire began when a hunter allowed an illegal fire to escape. There is no indication the hunter was involved with illegal marijuana cultivation on public lands and no marijuana cultivation sites were located near the origin of the fire. No arrests have been made at this time and the hunter's name is being withheld pending further investigation.
The Rim Fire began Saturday, Aug. 17, 2013, on the Stanislaus National Forest near the area known as Jawbone Ridge. The fire has burned 237,341 acres and is 80 percent contained.

One rumor put to rest. Now if I could just convince people the hunter wasn't a Muslim terrorist.

 

[Dymanic]

One rumor put to rest. Now if I could just convince people the hunter wasn't a Muslim terrorist.

It's like playing whack-a-mole.

 

[wobs]

Also, where did this idea come from that environmentalists hate electricity and want to revert to the stone age? That came up in the comments again and again.

As a veteran of a large environmental forum (now gone), I can report there were many who effectively had this attitude. Some of the less extreme were against just about anything that involved producing energy apart from wind and solar.

Now imagine living off just wind and solar, and you'll soon see that the standard of living would soon drop.

An extreme example also came here (sushil_yadav), who is against anything made by "industry", and he wasn't the only one there with that attitude.

If you identify as an environmentalist (or any "ist" label), you are effectively alligning yourself with the extreme end of that spectrum, as people focus on the extreme. Saying you are not one of those will make little or no difference.