On June 21, 08 there was a series of lightning storms throughout central and northern California which have resulted in approximately 1,400 fires starting. Most of them are nothing more than a smoldering tree trunk or a few bushes burning above the timber line. However, even if only 10% of them resulted in a serious fire that is still major. Attached is a photo of the major fires and smoke taken from space on June 25.
These fires are unprecedented for California but they are not because of global warming. We had a dry winter but California has many dry winters. There were only two real differences. One was that the lightning strikes were all over northern and central California and not just over the Sierras ~ where they usually occur.
The other difference is that federal and state rules keep the forests from being thinned out like they need to be. In a perfect state of nature most of the brush and some of the forests in California and many parts of the west would burn every 10 to 25 years. Many of the trees can't even reproduce without a fire allowing the seeds to spread and germinate. But man has been controlling fires in the west for over 100 years. And, because we can't let fires burn in many areas we need to do controlled burns, timber thinning (reduce the density of trees in an area) and remove the brush in a forest. When these aren't done an area that hasn't had a burn becomes set for a catastrophic type of fire.
Lake Tahoe is a prime example of what can happen when a forest is not properly managed. Fires have not been allowed to burn for over 100 years because of people being in the area. At the same time the forests have become much thicker, many trees have died and are now diseased and brush is growing inside of the forests. What resulted was a disastrous fire in 2006 that destroyed about 200 homes. The good news is that it could been a lot worse ~ the entire Tahoe basin could have burned.
I was listening to a report about how the earth is changing because of global warming on NPR in early 2008. It blamed the death of lodgepole pines in many parts of the west to the increasing warmth caused by global warming. Somehow it failed to mention that lodgepole pines only live for about 100 years and can only reproduce in an area where there has been a fire. This phenomenon can be seen in many areas of the Grand Tetons National Park. This is just another example of the media hyping global warming.
Another example is another report on NPR that occurred in early 2008 regarding global warming, where they stated global warming is causing insect to multiply and forests are being overwhelmed by these insect infestations and destroying trees . Again they failed to mention that a lack of fires and tree thinning has caused a buildup of diseased trees that are prone to insect infestations that kill off trees that, otherwise, would be healthy. This has been the real prime cause of the many major southern California fires in 2006 and 2007.
April 24, 2008 NPR story on pine tree infesting beetles:
