To be fair, blaming these wildfires on global warming when proper forest management techniques aren't being used and resources are being cut sort of contributes to this phenomenon...doesn't it?
I'm a little sour on this term because it acts (consciously or unconsciously) to deflect from the actual problem of large-scale desiccation. Every time I hear it makes me think of someone saying 'Mars never has forest fires, because the vegetation has been cleared properly.'
Forests naturally burn. In California (at least) trees have features specifically evolved to fit into an environment with periodic natural fires. There are written reports of fires in North America going back many hundreds of years, and I believe the natives experienced fires before that as well, as evidenced by cultural practices and oral history.
So you can either not manage the forests and avoid building into areas that would be affected by natural fires, or you can build into those areas but you do need to manage the forests.
Where do you get the idea that forests don’t need to be managed if we are to live in and around them? It seems like magical thinking to me.
Note that this is orthogonal to the effect a warming earth has on severity. Qualitatively, you needed to manage forests in North America 1,000 years ago, and you still need to manage them today.
Yes, this is what I have in mind. If you want to live in a forest you need to assume you'll be on your own in the case of natural disasters and have some survival/escape plan. Building into/exploiting all available primeval land seems like a Bad Thing to me.
it goes well beyond that, the bark beetles have killed a lot of pine trees, which is just standing dead timber. now dry that out and you have dead forests full of kindling.