> Now let's look at the source for their graphic and look back further at earlier dates from the same source. [3] - kind of paints a different picture, no?

Yes, but not in the way you're portraying it. The big shift downwards comes in a major shift in strategy in dealing with forest fires in the early to mid 1900s; it doesn't tell you much about the climate at the time. https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service...

> In 1935, the Forest Service established the so-called 10 a.m. policy, which decreed that every fire should be suppressed by 10 a.m. the day following its initial report. Other federal land management agencies quickly followed suit and joined the campaign to eliminate fire from the landscape.

I'm curious in how you interpret my comment here - in what way am I portraying this issue? What I mean to show is that forest fires have gotten immensely better, likely because of technology over the years. Which is exactly what I hear many climate change skeptics suggest - that technology will solve the problems, like we appear to be seeing here.

> What I mean to show is that forest fires have gotten immensely better, likely because of technology over the years.

I'm saying they haven't gotten better.

The drop in the 1930s-1950s shown in the wider chart has nothing to do with climate, and little to do with technology. It reflects a misguided change in fire management strategy (put out every fire ASAP), one that is now understood as a bad approach, because it causes build ups of unburnt brush that cause more dangerous, more intense fires.

But solutions don't just fall out of the sky. Saying that technology will solve the problem risks a bystander effect, where nobody is packing, reducing emissions, or working on clean energy because of a belief that such effort is wasteful as a the technology will appear out of nowhere.

And saying that technology won't solve the problem risks a discouraging effect, where people might avoid working on climate-resistant crops or efficient AC or improved fire control strategies because they believe their efforts can't help with climate change. It's not obvious to me that either of these hypotheticals are strong enough to justify shaping the public discourse around them.

> where people might avoid working on climate-resistant crops or efficient AC or improved fire control strategies because they believe their efforts can't help with climate change.

No. People will keep working on it. But being unrealistic and continuing to live and consume like you did in the 00's because "anyway, tech will save us" is the worst comportment anybody can have.

I too find that wildland fires on the West coast being conflated with climate change as bad messaging. You can read about the California valley being filled with smoke consistently during the late summer in "Up and Down California", a series of journals written between 1860-1865[1].

That said, I backpacked in the Sierras this summer and alarmingly saw many old Pine stands recently dead from what I assume is the drought. I also find the perilous state of the arctic ocean ice, the seeming breakdown of typical jetstream patterns(probably linked to the arctic ice) and the sky-high CO2(resulting in ocean acidification as well as warming) all particularly concerning.

[1] http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/up_and_down_california

If you want to read about particularly the smoke, the books are broken up by year and chapters chronologically, his writings during September particularly tend to describe the smoke.

Fires specifically is an annoying one. Politicians have huge incentive to point the blame at anything except poor management.

See:

> Approximately 1.8 million ha burned annually in California prehistorically (pre 1800). Our estimate of prehistoric annual area burned in California is 88% of the total annual wildfire area in the entire US during a decade (1994–2004) characterized as ‘‘extreme’’ regarding wildfires. The idea that US wildfire area of approximately two million ha annually is extreme is certainly a 20th or 21st century perspective. Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period.

from: Prehistoric fire area and emissions from California’s forests, woodlands, shrublands, and grasslands (2007)

https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/Fi...

And:

> Many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem [...] however, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends.

from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...

The book 'Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters' by Steven Koonin is worth a read if you get interested in learning more from a knowledgeable source that tries to cut through the hype. Of course, given the publicity of the issue it is often sensationalized, misconstrued, etc.

I suppose those sensational stories/papers get more attention so that’s the short answer? I’m with you though. My personal life has not been affected at all (yet) so I am fortunate. But it’s not worth the stress, I mean the top comment is someone saying they are losing a lot of sleep over climate change. Like buddy get a grip.