That article was discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24323379

What a great read. Thank you.

> We live in a Mediterranean climate that’s designed to burn, and we’ve prevented it from burning anywhere close to enough for well over a hundred years. Now climate change has made it hotter and drier than ever before, and the fire we’ve been forestalling is going to happen, fast, whether we plan for it or not.

> Megafires, like the ones that have ripped this week through 1 million acres (so far), will continue to erupt until we’ve flared off our stockpiled fuels. No way around that.

Would controlled burns still be useful at this stage, or is flaring off in megafires the only way forward now?

I'm from South Australia, so raging fatal bushfires were a part of my childhood.

Controlled burns are harder to do as climate change gets worse, but that just means creating larger firebreaks around burn zones and dedicating more resources in a shorter timespan (due to the shrinking season for safe burns).

Many insurance companies in fire prone areas already require homeowners to clear their yards of fuel so with well funded, proactive fire departments, the vast majority of populated areas can be protected with a once a decade (or less frequent) burns.

Yes, controlled burns are useful at any stage. It's not like current climate is the hottest ever for this planet. In fact, it's one of the more cold ones: glaciation still exists!

by the point we leave the ice age, there's no guarantee that there'll be anything left to burn - the whole place could undergo desertification well before the ice caps melt.

It is extremely unlikely. Go to google maps, somewhere near perm and zoom to a level where you can see individual buildings. Then try scrolling east to Vladivostok, and notice how long it will take and how many trees are there.

It happens slowly, then all at once...

Worst case predictions for complete loss of the ice sheets is 500 years [1] while the desertification of Mesopotamia only took a few hundred years of pre-Common era agriculture. Russia's forests are vast but we're on an industrial speed run and I've seen how fast the populations can collapse here in California thanks to some beetles and a single extended drought. Every time I visit my hometown I see the same thing happening in Russia in an ecosystem and society that are, like California and its chaparrals, completely unprepared for increasingly hostile weather.

[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/will-antarctica...

The example I had in mind was the Sahara, or even just the evidence that the U.S. modwest has gone through significant periods of time as a desert. In ye olden days there might have been rainforest at the poles, but near the equator things were less lush.

> We live in a Mediterranean climate that’s designed to burn,

False. Humid Mediterranean forest is designed to be fireproof. Mediterranean has aquatic ecosystems also.

the statement isn't that Mediterranean climates burn. The statement is that a Mediterranean climate, California's climate, is a climate that is designed to burn. If you are going to be pedantic, do it right.

Lets do it right, then. Climates are not designed to burn. Is impossible in fact. Temperatures can't burn itselves. Are an abstract concept. Frost can't burn, neither can humidity, hours of sun or rain. So lets start by the most basic thing that is not mistaking an animal with a cloud, please.

I'll repeat again here. Some Mediterranean biocenoses are shaped by fire. Not all. Other NOT.

And shaped by fire means that they can stand fire, they can even promote it, and are frozen in its current state by fire. This does not mean that this is the better, or only possible outcome for that place. Ecosystems are always trying to reach the most higher level of organization possible. And those are very humid, even in Mediterranean climates.

Still not pedantic enough. Ecosystems aren't designed and they aren't trying to reach levels of organization - they just are. There's no concept of "better." The current equilibrium for the climate in these regions of the west involves frequent fires. Stopping fires has disrupted the ecosystem by moving it away from the equilibrium state, resulting in situations conducive to much larger and more destructive fires (destructive to humans - to the ecosystem defining "destructive" is difficult, and the fires likely move the system back to equilibrium).

I'm not sure what your argument is trying to accomplish- its pretty clesr to anyone reading that the discussion is about how the ecosystem has evolved such that forest fires are an important and integral part of maintaining equilibrium, and pushing the system into disequilibrium is a root cause of the current fire disaster. I could at least respect a pedantic technically correct argument, but technically, ecosystems arent trying to reach any level of organization and the concept of "better" does not apply to ecosystems- theres no moral or other ranking to biomes!

> There's no concept of "better."

Such concept exists and is a clear one in fact. In ecology is called the climax of an ecosystem.

I think your ecology textbooks are a few decades out of date. Monoclimax theory is obsolete[0]. Its much more accurate to consider the equilibrium state than to imagine an ecosystem as working towards some idealized climax. And "better" is a very subjective human-centric term - its utterly meaningless without context (e.g. this ecosystem is better for supporting higher levels of biodiversity). Try asking a beachgoer and a skier whether summer or winter is "better" and see how far that scientific discussion gets you.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax_community#Continuing_us...

What were you hoping to gain by typing this out?

What do you think that is at risk here? my vanity?

It's surprising there isn't some sort of legal requirement to carry out strategic controlled burns.

If urban sprawl is the root cause of not conducting these, there should be more regulation and accountability on a small govt scale. They are the ones who approve/decline developer plans. Sounds like there may be a tragedy of the commons game theory issue here where certain counties are cashing in on local development projects while offloading the risk to outside counties.