Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen
The NY Times is obsessed with the President — it cannot report anything without taking a pot shot at him.
In this case, NY Times Climate journalist, Kendra “Gloom is My Beat” Pierre-Louis, wades into the roiling waters of Climate Change and Politics, apparently far over her head.
The article in point is “Fact Check: Trump’s Misleading Claims About California’s Fire ‘Mismanagement’”, the NY Times’ response to a Presidential Tweet. Thanks to the brilliant investigative reporting of the Times’ staff writer, we get the lede as a subtitle: “On Twitter, the president claimed that the state’s wildfire woes are a result of poor forest management. The truth is more complicated.”
Who would have imagined that the complex problem of California wildfires could actually be “more complicated” than the President could communicate in 140 characters?
What did the President Tweet?
If we didn’t have the NY Times to tell us that it’s more complicated than that, we might have thought [if we were totally illiterate utter morons] that the problem was just Bad Forest Management and could be solved by denying California federal forest dollars. /sarc
It’s quite clear you see — the most careful nit-picking reveals that:
“This is misleading.
Mr. Trump is suggesting that forest management played a role, but California’s current wildfires aren’t forest fires.
“These fires aren’t even in forests,” said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Rather, the Camp and Woolsey fires, which are ripping through Northern and Southern California, began in areas known as the wildland-urban interface: places where communities are close to undeveloped areas, making it easier for fire to move from forests or grasslands into neighborhoods.” — NY Times’ Kendra Pierre-Louis
Technically, Kendra “Gloom is my Beat” tells us, it’s not a forest fire — it is a “wildland-urban interface” fire. We can see that this is not forest:
Pictured above: Paradise before the fire.
It’s the Burger King and the church both neatly tucked in amongst the pine trees that make it “not a forest”.
So when the pine trees burn like a blast furnace fed by 50 mph winds, whipped into a frenzied fire storm, it’s not a forest fire unless it’s in an official forest — the President was misleading us all by calling it a forest fire instead of … what? Maybe he should have said “wildfire” because it wasn’t actually in an official forest? How utterly inane.
By the way, it is simply false that the Camp Fire “began in areas known as the wildland-urban interface”. The Camp Fire, which destroyed Paradise, is known to have started near Pulga, which is east and a little north of Paradise, in the Plumas National Forest. So, the fire starts in a forest — a National Forest — and driven by high winds becomes a virtual fire storm that sweeps through the “wildland-urban interface” called Paradise.
“According to the [United States Department of Agriculture] report, 44 million houses, equivalent to one in every three houses in the country, are in the wildland-urban interface. The highest concentrations are in Florida, Texas and, yes, California.” — NY Times
To be perfectly clear, if fatuous, when lots of people (1 out of every 3) build houses in a forest, it is no longer a forest but becomes a “wildland-urban interface” by definition and therefore, the Times’ informs us, any subsequent fire there is not a forest fire.
“And the most “deadly and costly” fires happen at the wildland-urban interface, because they damage houses, towns and lives. The Camp Fire has already matched the deadliest fire in state history, killing at least 29 people, and the death toll may rise.
“We have vulnerable housing stock already out there on the landscape. These are structures that were often built to building codes from earlier decades and they’re not as fire resistant as they could be,” Dr. Moritz said. “This issue of where and how we built our homes has left us very exposed to home losses and fatalities like these.” — NY Times
Well, I’m glad that’s settled (and I hope the President has learned his lesson).
And what else did the President get wrong in 140 characters? Apparently, everything according to the Times.
“What Trump said: ” Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. “
The statement suggests that California’s forest-management problems are at fault. But the majority of California’s forests are federally held.
Of the state’s 33 million acres of forest, federal agencies, including the Forest Service and the Interior Department, own and manage 57 percent. Forty percent are owned by families, Native American tribes or companies, including industrial timber companies; just 3 percent are owned and managed by state and local agencies.” — NY Times
After insisting that the Camp Fire was not in a forest (and incorrectly claiming that the fire did not start in a forest — it did), the Times insists that because the federal government controls 57 percent of California’s forests it must be their — the Federal Government’s — fault. Not to put too fine a point on this, but if one is going to insist that it was not a forest fire and did not happen in a forest — how can the Federal Government’s majority control of the forests enter into the discussion?
That’s my fact-check of the NY Times’ failed fact-check.
My question? Has the NY Times editorial staff lost its collective mind altogether?
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I must admit I get weary of the NY Times’ absurd Editorial Narrative on the Environment and Climate Change — so many of their pieces on these topics are sophomoric and some are just plain silly — the above is a fine example of the “silly” category.
[Don’t they have real live Editors any more? — guys and gals with a lifetime of experience and a cigar or cigarette holder stuck in the side of their mouth — real life Perry Whites — who have seen it all and are tired of Cub Reporters making the paper look stupid?]
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This story does have a serious side — and bless her heart, Pierre-Louis actually reports on it in a different article co-authored by Jeremy White. This article is the real story behind the recent California Fires:
Americans Are Moving Closer to Nature, and Into Fire Zones
The fact is that one out of every three American homes are being built or already exist in “wildland-urban interface” or in the “wildland-urban intermixed” areas.
Here’s the definitions:
“The WUI [Wildland-Urban Interface] definition in the Federal Register was developed to identify communities at risk in the vicinity of public lands. According to this definition, “the Wildland-Urban Interface is the area where houses meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation” (USDA and USDI 2001).
Areas where houses and wildland vegetation intermingle are referred to as intermix WUI.
Developed areas that abut wildland vegetation are characterized as interface WUI.
Although this definition was developed in conjunction with wildland fire policy, it does not explicitly account for differences in fire risk.
[reformatted for clarity — kh]
The Wildland-Urban Interface In The United States — RADELOFF et al. (2005)
The Camp Fire situation looks like this, in a series of images: (first one is a repeat)
The Camp Fire is believed to have started in Pulga — just east and north of the number 70 on the highway just outside of the red circle around Paradise. It is in the Pulmas National Forest, and indicated as WUI on the Silvis WUI map (second below).
Chico is a town – a city – it has houses and stores and a university. Paradise is both wildland-urban interface and wildland-urban intermix:
A close look at Paradise from the satellites:
Where we see gray and green intermixed we are looking at areas like these (repeating the picture far above):
The buildings (and the homes) are quaintly nestled into the landscape of coniferous forest — this is both intentional and foolish.
The result of this desire to get right into “Nature” is this:
Photo credit: Noah Berger/AP
And the Woolsey Fire in Malibu?
The Woolsey Fire started in the upper right hand corner, in the interface/intermix area shown (in the last image) in yellow and orange. Southern California’s infamous Santa Anna winds — the Diablo Wind, the Devil Wind — swept down from the northeast, blowing the fire south and west through the rugged chaparral-covered hills all the way to the sea at Malibu [whose point produces the famous surfing conditions there ].
Southern California chaparral “is characterized by nearly impenetrable, dense thickets (except the more open chaparral of the desert). These plants are highly flammable during the late summer and autumn months when conditions are characteristically hot and dry. They grow as woody shrubs with thick, leathery, and often small leaves, contain green leaves all year (are evergreen), and are typically drought resistant (with some exceptions). After the first rains following a fire, the landscape is dominated by small flowering herbaceous plants, known as fire followers, which die back with the summer dry period.” [source: Wiki] The chaparral is routinely destroyed — and restored — by infrequent fires (burning on average every 10-15 years).
[I grew up in Southern California — Los Angeles born and raised with university in Santa Barbara just north up the coast. I saw chaparral wildfires many times — manzanita brush can almost literally explode as the Santa Anna winds push fire through the hills and canyons — fleeing a chaparral fire in the hills is a terrifying experience that you will want to skip.]
We humans make lots of mistakes — one of them is building homes in among the trees and chaparral. We also build on crumbling sea cliffs, hurricane prone ocean fronts, in known flood plains and on sand bars/barrier islands — we build our homes in the darnedest and most dangerous places.
Fact-Check Wrap Up: The Times apparently feels compelled to denigrate the sitting President at every opportunity. He did use the language of the common man, calling these fires “forest fires” – quite correctly. In the case of the Camp Fire, they have been super-charged by decades of misguided forest management policies that have left many western forests with very high fuel loads — the result of policies that called for quick response suppression of every fire instead of letting the natural succession of fire and recovery take place. We are now paying the price. This mismanagement was almost universal and cannot properly be blamed on the Federal Government or State Government alone. State, County and municipal planners have created fire-risk nightmares all over the country by allowing homes to be built in areas that are at extremely high risk of fire. It is “more complicated” – – the situation will not be improved or corrected, nor could it possibly be, by denying California federal forest funds.
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Author’s Comment Policy:
We have seen these same types of problems with flooding, storm surge and hurricanes. Localities have failed to protect their citizens by forbidding the building of homes and businesses in know high-risk areas — and for many years failed to enact and enforce sensible building codes for the protection of buildings in risky locations. In my youth, homes all over California had beautiful redwood shake roofing — and redwood shake siding — which would dry to tinder in the hot dry California summers, igniting at the first few sparks from distant fires. They are now forbidden, but only after huge loses of homes. It is complicated and causes and results are chaotic in nature.
Where are the codes requiring sensible set-backs from highly flammable local vegetation? And codes specifying non-flammable siding and roofing? And codes requiring adequate cleared roadside verges that won’t turn fire escape routes into graveyards?
I am blessed by living in a modern Eden — the central Hudson Valley of New York State — where we have sensible, four-season weather with few extremes, [almost] no tornadoes, no hurricanes, and no fire storms. The area is heavily wooded but receives so much rain that forest fires, involving trees, are very rare — we do have occasional brush fires. The humidity makes for a bad allergy season though. And we had six to eight inches of beautiful light white snow last night.
I am discouraged by the lack of journalistic standards in general and appalled that the NY Times has reverted to old fashioned Yellow Journalism.
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Kip Hansen said:
“Who would have imagined that the complex problem of California wildfires could actually be “more complicated” than the President could communicate in 140 characters?”
How would more letters help when he’s directly stated that there is no reason for the fires other than forest management being so poor.
The problem isn’t a lack of characters, it’s make a false statement.
Lack of good forest management policy is the primary factor that allowed what should have been a small fire to take out a town. The fact that there was a fire at all is the fault of state utilities regulators who took 5 years to give permission for PG&E to replace the line towers in that are that they asked to do back in 2013. These thousands of lost homes and dead citizens are the fault of California’s state government.
Phillip ==> It is the odd expectation that ANY situation could be properly described in a Tweet….the President should quit Tweeting (along with the rest of the world) and journalists shuld gro up and dd quit reacting like outraged teenagers to every Tweet.
Kip,
In general, I agree with both statements, but this was a particularly egregious and ill-timed tweet.
The fact is that Trump’s tweets have an effect on public perceptions. If his tweet was erroneous, which this one clearly was, it should be corrected. (As should your partly erroneous post, as I explained in detail – maybe too much detail, but I went to considerable effort to check the facts.)
Kristi ==> Which to you think is worse for the country–the NY Times’ constant unrelenting attack on the sitting President over silly little points like “forest fire” vs “wildfire” (in this case, entirely wrongly) or the President’s blaming California’s fire management policies which are only partly, not solely, responsible for the continuing problem.
You obviously do not follow the President on Twitter (nor do I) or you would know that he made other Tweets in support of the firefighters, promising and sending Federal aid, and Tweets to succor the victims.
You have not pointed to any errors in my essay — just points you disagree with.
Kip,
His first tweet was sending blame for forest mismanagement, and that led to posts on WUWT echoing this idea, blaming environmentalists, California, etc. Only 14 hours later did he send any thoughts about aid or the victims.
The NYT wrote about it. So did others. He threatened to cut off funding! Even the head of Cal Fire was offended by it, and said it was wrong. You were so offended by NYT carrying the story that you wrote an erroneous “fact-checking” response of your own – and I have pointed out the errors! It’s not a matter of disagreement, it’s facts! The Camp Fire was not primarily a forest fire. If you want to argue about forest management, it would have been more appropriate to malign clear-cutting. Virtually the whole area between Pulga and Paradise has been clear-cut – until you get the to band around Paradise, the “urban-wildland interface.”
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Paradise,+CA+95969/@39.7814049,-121.5187046,10955m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80832bd49578303f:0x50c92f9d6b33aa70!8m2!3d39.7596061!4d-121.6219177
I don’t know what forest managers could have done differently, unless it was to cut a band around the town and keep it mowed.
Kristi ==> Honestly, you seem to always comment on everything except the main thrust of an essay here. You are being as silly as Kendra (who had orders to be silly, in all probability, from her editors).
You have pointed out no “errors”, you have only insisted that your opinions are somehow “truer” than mine.
This opinion piece was not about forest management, or President Trump, or his Tweet. If you manage to figure out what it was about, you can comment on that and I will reply.
I was recently reading that environmentalists had been opposing controlled burns to reduce fuel load in the forests because of the pollution it would generate. But, tying back to the heme of this website, do fires have any noticeable affect on the climate/weather?
I know that volcanic eruptions with ash propelled high into the atmosphere can have lasting cooling effects. But in the case of the united states, the magnitude of wildfires has dropped from over 50 million acres per year to under 10 million in the last century. I would expect similar drops around the world as people try to prevent their local neighborhoods from burning.
Does the lack of low altitude particulate soot from the fires have any noticeable effect on the environment and the temperature?
There is no “one” thing that caused this but there are several aggravating factors.
First of all, if you get on Google Earth and look at Camp Creek, you will see that it passes under a large 3-line major regional interconnect. In fact, this line connects the Oroville Dam powerhouse with the Feather River Powerhouse a ways up the river. This is not a line that would be de-energized even when they have winds. They do de-energize the distribution lines that go along the roads into the neighborhoods, but not lines like this.
Back in 2012 there was a storm that damaged several towers on that line. In 2013, PG&E presented the state utility regulators with a plan to replace several of the towers *right* in the area where this fire started. Some of the damaged metal towers had been replaced with temporary wooden supports until they could get the regulators to give permission for permanently replacing the towers. They didn’t get that permission until 5 years later (this year) and PG&E had not yet started the work. In other words, they knew there was a problem there, they submitted a plan to fix it, and the state dragged their feet on it for FIVE years.
Secondly, the major problem we have in a more general sense is overgrowth of trees. Currently a private land owner can not cut trees larger than 30 inches or clear any roads to get anything they do cut without getting a very expensive state permit that costs thousands of dollars after all the inspections, consultations, reports, and impact surveys are doing. Gov. Brown made a last minute proposal to the state Assembly to allow private property owners to take trees up to 36 inches and to create temporary roads without a permit provided they replant the road after they are done clearing. A slew of various “environmental groups” pushed back hard against it and it died in the Assembly.
When forests thicken from 60 trees per acre to over 200 trees per acre, they become more susceptible to drought. A tree pulls a lot of moisture out of the ground and transpires it into the air. The more trees you have in a given space, the more water is being pulled out of the ground and pushed into the air. Prior to western settlement by Europeans, we had about 400,000 to 600,000 natives living in our forests. They used open flame as their only source of light, heat, and food preparation. They had no such thing as “red flag” restrictions and when the winds came up, embers from their camp fires flew and we had very frequent fires. They also sometimes intentionally used fire to clear forests for planting. The point is that frequent fires kept the understory clear of brush. When fires did burn, they burned cool, low to the ground, and did not erupt into massive canopy fires. In fact, about 1,000 years ago, California had a 200 year long “megadrought” and our forests survived just fine.
When we have too many trees per acre, we not only have a problem with fire caused by very dense fuel loads, but we also get problems with complications of drought stress like bark beetles. Yes, this fire was likely started by a PG&E line but it was made much worse by years of bad forestry policy.
Prescribed burning in chaparral areas such as in Ventura County is off the table, too, because these same “environmental groups” have lobbied against it due to “air quality concerns”. So instead of releasing that air pollution is small, managed amounts, it all gets released at once in huge conflagrations. Add to the pollution from the burning chaparral, several homes, furniture, vehicles, and maybe a resident or two. These people are quite insane and have no idea what they are talking about when they lobby. But there is an up side for them — fires like the one in Paradise burn rural people out of their homes and help realize their goal of “sustainable development” where rural towns are eradicated and people moved into larger areas.
My recommendation: No forest area within 10 miles of a densely populated area should have more than 60 trees per acre. ANY area with more than 100 trees per acre should be declared a hazard. An area with 200 or more trees per acre should be declared a direct threat to public safety and should be thinned under threat of imprisonment or fine.
crosspatch ==> Thanks for filling in the infrmation gaps.
Crosspatch,
Clear-cutting is far more likely to result in large numbers of trees/acre than no cutting at all. So is taking out large trees, which open canopy gaps allowing the understory to grow. Road construction is the same. Thinning of small trees can help, but it’s expensive, especially in the absence of roads (if you’re going to take the wood out).
“…thinned under threat or imprisonment or fine” To whom? Do you really want to make this a criminal matter? Who is responsible? Who pays for it? To me it seems like it’s zoning and land developers that are creating part of the problem.
There is no single solution. It’s a complex problem that has to be addressed using a multi-faceted approach.
Excuse me, where did I say *anything* about clear cutting? I was talking about thinning. Though I would allow small clear cuts of 100 acres or less per 640 acre section to mimic burn scars and provide forest meadow habitat.
For example: http://www.sbcounty.gov/calmast/sbc/html/healthy_forest.asp
crosspatch,
Sorry, you’re right, you didn’t mention clear-cutting. I think what made me think of it is that often that’s where you get overstocking like you see in the “overstocked forest” photo in your link.
The “healthy forest” photo doesn’t really look like a healthy forest to me. I can see clearing that much for the sake of fire control around inhabited areas. But it looks completely unnatural. There’s no forage for animals. And if something caused the larger trees to die, there’s nothing in the understory to replace them.
A fire would have to be very hot to clear coniferous forest. Meadows are more often due to high water table or other microhabitat factors – or they are historical, as in the Camp Seely photo (which could also explain how thin the surrounding forest is). I wouldn’t be surprised if the Yosemite Valley meadow had been at least partially cleared by humans for livestock. Overgrazing can facilitate meadow being replaced by trees. Simply clearing forest won’t create a stable meadow habitat unless the conditions are right for it.
” Meadows are wetlands or semiwetlands
supporting a cover of emergent hydrophytes and
mesophytes and dry herblands of the subalpine and alpine
zones. These meadows are concentrated use points which,
once destroyed, are not quickly replaced. ”
https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr084/psw_gtr084.pdf
That said, I’m not an expert on California ecosystems; I did do a little research before writing my comment, though. Here’s one nice little summary.
https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/viewFile/10933/10206
Cold fronts from the north-east still threaten California.
Circulation does not change due to very low solar activity.
The observed magnetic field is highly asymmetrical.
Lines of inclination are highly elliptical, with the North Magnetic Pole situated near one end of the ellipse.
The strength of the magnetic field is no longer a maximum at the North Magnetic Pole. In fact, there are now two maxima, one over central Canada, the other over Siberia.
Magnetic meridians do not converge radially on the North Magnetic Pole.
http://www.geomag.nrcan.gc.ca/images/field/fnor.gif
The polar vortex in the lower stratosphere takes exactly the pattern of the magnetic field in the north. This always happens in long periods of very low solar activity.
The green parts of the maps are the Federally owned forest. Sierra Pacific Industries the largest private landowner in CA and a timber products company might be surprised to find that it doesn’t actually own any forest.
Thanks for all the information here. I’m learning more about fires and forest management here than from any regular news site. Our house was in lower Paradise and, sadly, burned to the ground Nov. 8th. We were planning to retire there; meanwhile, two of our children lived there: one while going to the local state college and the other working in Chico as a special education teacher. They evacuated safely. No one expected any fire to move so quickly!
I do think population density was a problem: we lived on an acre, as did our neighbors, but there were many high-density mobile home parks and small houses on small lots. I do think the structures themselves were the fuel for the fire once it got going.
I can say that while our house burned down, nearby trees did not: from the one photo we have, our cherry tree and pistachio tree still stand, as does the line of old trees in my neighbor’s yard. Another neighbor’s house burnt, even though they had kept their yard free of debris or fuel for fire. I think the embers flew from one house to another. We want to rebuild, but we need to consider more fire resistant materials than the wood that was everywhere in our house— outside, inside, ceiling was lined with wood, stairs railings were wood, deck was wood… we loved it, but I bet it burned quickly.😔
I suspect that a metal roof, which I’ve had and loved for 25 years, would provide the most bang for the buck—and it would eliminate the need for costly reroofings every 30 years or so.
Janelle ==> I’m sorry for your loss but heartened that all evacuated safely!
I think you are right abut the houses being fuel for the firestorm — based on pictures showing trees remaining standing around burntti-the-foundation homes.
Here’ to better times!
In this discussion let us not forget that, as the SF Chronicle reported two days ago or so, California has a $15 Billion surplus and a $14.7 Billion Rainy Day fund. Much more than the $1 Billion mentioned in the article needs to be spent to bring this situation under control and fast.
Jon, it probably isn’t going to happen. “Progressive” Democrats are not going to go out of their way to save towns they want eradicated anyway. They don’t see the challenge as stopping the wildfires, they see the challenge as convincing people not to live in the woods. Millions spent on forest management is millions they could have spent buying votes in LA. These are the very areas that the notion of “Sustainable Development” says need to be depopulated.
Years back a community in the Sierras around Lake Tahoe instituted very strict prohibitions against cutting trees of any size. It basically created a situation where people could not create “defensible space” around their homes on their own property. A few of the homeowners did it anyway and payed the large fines. The community eventually burned and their homes were saved.
Look at how well Arizona has fared (compared with past years) since Governor Jan Brewer told the Feds to pound sand sand set state resources to clearing underbrush and debris.
The 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria were the most devastating in Australian history; 173 people tragically lost their lives, 414 were injured, more than a million wild and domesticated animals were lost and 450,000 hectares of land were burned.
The impact of the bushfires was so overwhelming that Victoria Premier Brumby announced a royal commission into the fires on 13 February 2009, even before the full extent of the disaster was known.
The commission investigated ‘all aspects of the government’s bushfire strategy’ and included among its 67 recommendations that the Victorian government revise its advice around preparation for bushfires along with its bushfire education policies, and that it modify building codes, including banning the construction of homes in high-risk areas.
Class action lawsuits initiated in the Supreme Court of Victoria against electricity distribution company SP Ausnet eventually led to a $494 million settlement in relation to the Kinglake fire and a $300 million out-of-court settlement in relation to the Marysville fire. At the time these sums were the largest class action settlements in Australian history.
http://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/black-saturday-bushfires-kill-173-people-in-victoria
Richard ==> Your new assertion is even wackier than the first. Paying for a newspaper so that one can read it without stealing it is right and proper. One also gets the right to criticize the same paper as a reader and subscriber. It would be dishonest to read and subsequently criticize without paying for the priviledge.
The facts dont matter to the new York Pravda all that matters to this liberal leftist rag is destroying Trumps presidency replacing him with democrat and forcing America to abide by the Paris Accord which belongs in the paper shredder with all those UN Treaties
The people would have survived any fire if they had just gone down into the potato cellar.
But obviously there are no more potato cellars in the US.