I live in a place that is likely to be even adversely affected (in terms of human living conditions) by the move out of the last several thousand years of relatively wet weather in the American southwest. Note that this change isn't expected to involve increasing temperatures of much note all by itself, just increasing dryness. AGW will likely do that, however.
I'd also note that talking about the climate of "California" doesn't make a lot of sense. If state boundaries were based on biomes/climatic zones, CA would likely be at least 3 different states. The coastal zone of Northern CA is essentially unrelated, climate-wise or ecologically, to either Central Valley, the high Sierras or the start of the great basin to the east.
My point is this: Fires in California will get worse and this shouldn't be news to anybody who cares. Both AGW and California's history point to fires becoming increasingly common. One without the other would be bad enough, but California has both.
What is so hard to understand about this?
4.4 million acres of burn in an already historically thinned forest is going to be entirely different than the same area of burn in a mostly un-thinned forest. The damage to the forest, the CO2 produced, the smoke levels ... all could be at least an order of magnitude different.