California wildfires hit CTRL+Z on 18 years of CO2e removal

Researchers studying the effects of California's record-breaking 2020 wildfire season have uncovered some unsettling evidence. The fires in that single year undid all the state's greenhouse gas emission reductions since 2003 by a factor of two. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Australian approach

Wasn't this an excuse by a recent Aussie administration?

The CO2 from their forest fires were so much higher than all their industrial emissions that there was no need for any reductions in their man made sources

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Australian approach

That is not the conclusion that I would draw. It is indeed an excuse.

[Diogenes]

Re: Australian approach

But Australia is already a net carbon sink.

[Jellied Eel]

Mismanagement

"Although wildfires are to some extent natural occurrences, human activity contributes to making wildfires 'unnatural disasters' through man-made climate change and development … in fire prone areas," Jerrett said.

There's very little that's unnatural about wildfires, and probably very little due to development, other than increasing the impact of eventual fires. So build stuff in the woods, don't be too suprised when it burns in a wildfire. That's the unnatural situation that Australia has, ie not allowing landowners to reduce fire risks.

California's problem seems to be in not managing it's land, so fuel loads increase, especially when there are millions of dead trees due to pine borers. So fires become more intense to the point where even it's fire tolerant species burn and the state gets fined $80/t for the CO2 emissions. Or they just try to pass those costs on to ConEd, who pass them on to Cali customer's bills. If Cali were serious about reducing the risk of wildfires, it should take a more active responsibility for managing their land properly.

[Adam Azarchs]

Re: Mismanagement

This is not really true. Natural wildfires historically happened during the rainy season, because they were started by lightning. Because the rainy season is generally colder and wetter, the fires would burn though the undergrown but leave the larger mature trees mostly intact. By contrast, the recent fires have mostly been caused by human ignition sources, during the driest, hottest times of year. Worse, many were caused by electrical sources on days with high wind. Those fires spread much faster and burn much hotter than the natural fires, and are thus far not damaging. Some of the most damaging fires in recent years started or spread through regions which had had fires or were clear cut just a few years previously, still you really can go blaming historical for suppression efforts for them. The mismanagement love is popular with a certain crowd that wants to authorize more clear-cutting, though.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Mismanagement

Some of the most damaging fires in recent years started or spread through regions which had had fires or were clear cut just a few years previously, still you really can go blaming historical for suppression efforts for them. The mismanagement love is popular with a certain crowd that wants to authorize more clear-cutting, though.

The perfect management is a theory popular with a certain crowd that thinks forests should be left to grow wild. But who said anything about clear cutting? Wildfires were more common in the past, ie acres burned. Fires are simple things, run by the triad. Fuel, oxygen, heat. Allow fuel to grow unchecked, oxygen's a given, add heat and away they go.

We can mostly only influence one of those, so we could take some active measures to reduce the fuel load. Cali doesn't want to do that, Australia makes it illegal. Clear cutting is one option, but also a misnomer. Cali could clear cut parcels of it's forests to create fire breaks and reduce fuel loads.. If that cutting removes all the fuel. It could just cut fire breaks. It could thin out forests and do some brush clearing. It could remove the millions of dead trees from it's pine borer infestation.

But it doesn't. Much simpler to do nothing, and blame 'climate change' when it inevitably burns.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Mismanagement

> so we could take some active measures to reduce the fuel load. Cali doesn't want to do that

CA has long used controlled burns. There was a brief period in the 70's where that was deliberately put on hold, but then it was restarted after some larger fires.

However, timing controlled burns is hard because of certain constraints: 1. The wind should not blow dense smoke in into populated areas (while populated areas have been increasing) , 2. Should be done when risk of accidentally spreading fire is low (but due to drought and increased temperatures, the time windows of high risk have been getting larger).

As for 1, it might be possible to ignore the inconvenience or health issues of homeowners (esp since the general public is now already used to breathing smoke for weeks on end) although there would be lawsuits for sure.

As for 2, that cannot be solved. Point of no return?

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Mismanagement

CA has long used controlled burns. There was a brief period in the 70's where that was deliberately put on hold, but then it was restarted after some larger fires.

But it was also disrupted by environmentalists and lobby groups like the Sierra Club. Save the tufted owls, keep the pine borers well fed. But here's an article that discusses the issue-

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-09-13/150-million-dead-trees-wildfires-sierra-nevada

Some areas have 500 to 800 trees per acre, compared with 60 to 100 pre-settlement. As North puts it, there were too many straws in the dry ground competing for water. The beetle toll was the greatest in the densest stands. There dead fuel will keep piling up for years to come.

And ultimately, that dead wood will burn in an uncontrolled fashion, with the increased fuel load increasing the intensity, and killing even the fire tolerant trees. Controlled burns are also a possible way to slow the borer infestations.

However, timing controlled burns is hard because of certain constraints: 1. The wind should not blow dense smoke in into populated areas (while populated areas have been increasing) , 2. Should be done when risk of accidentally spreading fire is low (but due to drought and increased temperatures, the time windows of high risk have been getting larger).

Yup. The longer the problem is ignored, the higher the risks. I totally agree about population pressure given people have been sold on the idea of having the forest on their doorsteps. It is a beautiful place to live, but the fire risk is also high. I don't know if Cali's building codes include managing fire risks, but one option could be to have mandatory fire protection, so say a minimum 100-200yd fire break for properties. But that would also need property owners to understand the risks and maintain their land to minimise them. Not the Australia situation where property owners can get large fines for scrub and brush clearing.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Mismanagement

If they really wanted to deal with it they'd allow controlled logging. While clearcutting is most efficient, there are logging machines today that allow a person to harvest individual trees in a stand if trees. I think the track width is around 6ft, and it can handle 40-50ft trees including stripping the branches and bark off on the spot. Goes from tree to log in about 2 minutes. Another machine can go behind the first to gather the debris and convert it to mulch, or chips to make particleboard from.

Have loggers and the power company work together with professional arborists to select trees, and they can clear the forests down to a healthy growth level without clearcutting entire forests. The logger get trees, the power company gets their right of ways cleared, the forests are healthier and wildfires become a thing of the past.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Mismanagement

While clearcutting is most efficient, there are logging machines today that allow a person to harvest individual trees in a stand if trees. I think the track width is around 6ft, and it can handle 40-50ft trees including stripping the branches and bark off on the spot. Goes from tree to log in about 2 minutes. Another machine can go behind the first to gather the debris and convert it to mulch, or chips to make particleboard from.

Exactly. I find some of the tech fascinating, like the 'cut-to-length' logging machines that can grab a tree, cut it, run it through a de-limber, chop the log into manageable lengths and plonk those on a truck. Providing they can get access, but that's kind of the point and the problem. Without thinning or sensible management, forests get choked and less healthy. Especially when globalisatiion and nature can also have a huge impact, eg-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_long-horned_beetle

Due to high tree mortality caused by larval feeding outside its native range, A. glabripennis can change both forest and urban ecosystems. In the United States, it can potentially destroy 30.3% of urban trees and cause $669 billion in economic loss. Early detection is used to manage infestations before they can spread.

Plus there's a wide range of other insects and fungi that can destroy specific species. As you say, a combination of arborists, foresters, fire safety experts should be able to plan, select and fell to create healthier forests and reduce the fire risks.

And there are economic benefits. Imports of foreign lumber have had the unfortunate side-effect of importing pests and diseases. Activism has prevented healthy forest management. Technology has made it much easier to selectively fell trees and reduce monoculture. Activism may also have created problems, like the Sequoia being red-listed and endangered.. Which it kind of is, because poor management will increase the fire risks and kill those trees. But timber and lumber prices have also rocketed in the US, both for plain lumber and products like chip & particle boards. The US uses a lot of wood in construction, and could arguably use more. Build a timber-framed, floored and clad building with some decent furniture, and you've captured carbon potentially for 100+ years. Much less if it's trendy Ikea junk that'll end up in landfill in a few years.

Plus woodworking, furniture & cabinet making etc is a fun hobby that can turn into a lucrative business producing useful products, and doesn't necessarily need much investment to get started. Shame there's no real way for those crafts to get carbon credits, even though they're doing practical carbon capture & storage.

I guess the biggest problem is a lack of joined-up thinking and policy. Misguided environmentalists want to save all trees, even if that leads to unhealthy forests and fires. Companies like ConEd probably see felling around power lines as a cost, rather than a social benefit. Demands for 'renewables' lead to more overhead power lines, which means more risks. It's all rather weird when the economic costs of doing nothing are massive, and there are economic benefits for doing something sensible and practical.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Mismanagement

"Much simpler to do nothing,"

But, but, but, nothing is something! All those fallen trees create ecosystems for insects, small animals and that increases the general food supply for the larger animals. it's all good, green and eco friendly!! It also encourages varieties of fungi. California surely is good with more and varied fungi man!

[jmch]

Re: Mismanagement

Increased heat and droughts caused by climate change are a marginal contributing factor to the fires, but absolutely the #1 culprit is overdevelopment and lack of land management. The main reason for droughts is most of the water is being sucked up by excessive agriculture including heavy cultivation of species that require lots of water eg almond trees. Suburban planning also means massive sprawl, and because suburbs and the requisite infrastructure are expensive to maintain and under-taxed, municipalities have to keep growing to stay solvent (like a physical ponzi scheme)

The combination leaves lots of homeowners / landowners who are both in close proximity to woodland, and unable to sufficiently water their lawns / other vegetation which cerate a buffer zone between the forests and human sources of potential ignition.

[Adam Azarchs]

Misleading

> The study didn't account for the growth of new vegetation in fire-swept areas

That's a pretty important caveat. In a steady state, forests fix some carbon, but dead leaves and wood also release carbon (and methane, which is worse) into the atmosphere as they rot. On the other hand, charcoal, once buried under new growth, is actually a really good way to sequester carbon. And recently burned areas are going to see very rapid vegetation growth, which will fix carbon. So yeah, over time scales of a few years, forest fires release lots of carbon, but over multi-decade timescales I suspect that a forest that gets periodic alternating cycles of fires and regrowth is going to sequester more carbon than one which doesn't. Especially if those are relatively cool fires which burn the undergrowth (which grows back very quickly) but leaves the big, mature fire-adapted trees behind.

That said, while many of these ecosystems are adapted for fire, they're adapted for the less intense fires you get when they're caused by lightning that is usually accompanied by rain (last year's Big Basin fire being a freak exception). In recent years, most of the wildfires in California were caused by human ignition sources, on hot, dry, windy days, when the fires spread faster and burn hotter. So instead of mostly just burning undergrowth and leaving the older trees behind, it burns everything. That's harder to recover from.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Misleading

In recent years, most of the wildfires in California were caused by human ignition sources, on hot, dry, windy days, when the fires spread faster and burn hotter. So instead of mostly just burning undergrowth and leaving the older trees behind, it burns everything. That's harder to recover from.

I sometimes wonder if publicity around wildfires also encourages arson, or even 'terrorism'. It's sadly a cheap way to create massive damage. It's also fascinating to see how quickly the landscape does recover from large fires, but the recovery might be something we don't necessarily want. On the 'climate change' front, there's a lot of research that's used soil core samples that show lots of past wildfires from the char layers. That gives pretty strong indications that there are cyclical events that may lead to large wildfires. Most probable suspect is the combination of PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation).

Those have different periodicties, but sometimes peaks coincide leading to drought events like the 'Dust Bowl' from the 1920s. I think there's pretty strong evidence that we're currently in much the same conditions, and it's got very little to do with anthropogenic climate change. It's just nature doing it's thing and being misatributed for personal or political gain. Some druids think they can create thermometers out of bristlecone pines, more sensible scientists know the tree rings and wood density just tell us about growing conditions around those times. So probably more reliable to say it's likely there was a widespread drought in around the 1920's than trying to say the average temperature was 22.72C.

[Teejay]

Maybe...

Maybe, just maybe, they should start removing all the old, dry wood again that the tree harvesters left behind, like they used to do, before eco warriors stopped them. Same problem as in Australia. And, no, you won't find this on the BBC or in the Guardian.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Maybe...

So long as there's rain, redwood trees grow like weeds and they're nearly indestructible. They'll blanket steep unstable granite mountains in the Sierra mountain range. Pine trees are less fire resistant but make up for it with faster growth.

The California fires were those massive trees turning into giant torches because they were dying/dead of dehydration.

If they're not being logged now it's because you can't reach them. You can't put all the blame on environmentalists.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Maybe...

If the "environmentalists" weren't stopping any and all forest management, the hard to reach trees would be outliers that make no difference so yes, you can blame the "environmentalists." One redwood going up would not be noticed, but by stopping intelligent forest management "environmentalists" are directly responsible for forest fires so large that can be seen from space and so hot nothing survives.

[Chris Miller]

But all the carbon in the CO2 produced by wildfires, like the CO2 and CH4 emitted by domesticated livestock, must have been originally captured from the atmosphere by photosynthesising plants (part of the carbon cycle, which some of us learnt about in school geography, unless we were taking part in a klimastreik that day). It's not directly comparable to emissions from fossil fuels, which are what ultimately increases CO2 in the atmosphere.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't necessarily imply steady state.

[HighHair]

All in perspective...

Just remember that CO2 constitutes just 0.04% of Earth's atmosphere (air).

99% of the atmosphere is made of oxygen and nitrogen and are not greenhouse gases.

However there can be up to 4% of water vapour in the atmosphere which does affect greenhouse conditions.

Argon makes up 0.94% of the Earth's atmosphere and is also not a green house gas.

This leaves only 0.06% of gases (including CO2) in Earth's atmosphere which ARE greenhouse gases.

[Spherical Cow]

Re: All in perspective...

The problem with air being 0.041% CO2 now is that it should be 0.028%. It's a big difference.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: All in perspective...

No, it isn't. Plant death occurs at 150ppm. 280ppm and even 400ppm is way too close to plant death, and plants thrive at 1200ppm. Ever wonder why plants from the store always look so good, then wither back at home? Now you know, greenhouses supplement the air with CO2 for the plants. As it is now, plants are practically suffocating. Even if CO2 magically got knocked back to 280ppm, it wouldn't make a bit of difference in global warming.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: All in perspective...

The problem with air being 0.041% CO2 now is that it should be 0.028%. It's a big difference.

Strictly speaking, it isn't. Then again, if it was halved instead of nearly doubled, it would be. So at 0.014%, we'd all be dead instead of enjoying the benefits of CO2 fertilisation and the greening of the Earth.

Practically, the issue's pretty simple, so the probability of photons hitting a CO2 molecule, and not something else. Like H2O, which is far more common. But then at it's core, at least in the dogmatic/PR sense, CO2-driven climate is much the same as homeopathy. It starts with a gish-gallop throwing in stuff like S-B equations, black bodies and sciencey sounding stuff. So the theory what the Earth's temperature should be, vs what's actually observable. The increase in temperature over the black-body calcs and actual is therefore due to CO2. And as CO2 levels are at the highest level they've ever been, we're doomed.

But snag with that is if true, then the less CO2 there is, the more effect it must have. Which kinda defies most traditional views held in science. Plus the Earth never really has been a black-body, it's albedo constantly changes and over geological timescales, CO2 levels have been far higher than they are today. Funnily enough, during periods where a lot of life evolved.

[Filippo]

Re: All in perspective...

Picking a way to represent data that results in small numbers is a rhetorical strategy.

In actual reality, things in very small percentages cause very large problems all the time.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: All in perspective...

Minor alteration

In computer models things in very small percentages cause very large problems all the time.

[imanidiot]

Re: All in perspective...

In reality too. Or do you think 0.0002 % HCN wouldn't be a problem outside a computer model?

[charlieboywoof]

they are just looking to tax something else

[0x80004005]

Easy!

Cut down the Cali forests. Claim a "CO2 Emissions Avoided" grant because they would have otherwise burnt at some point.

Then ...

Export to the UK

Stuff the trees into Drax

Claim another "CO2 Emissions Avoided" grant because you're burning Biomass not Coal.

Then...

Plant a new forest in California, claim a "CO2 Sequestration" grant because your new trees are absorbing it.

I'm sure there's a flaw in this plan somewhere...

[codejunky]

@0x80004005

Just wanted to say great comment. I can imagine a politician somewhere coming up with this seriously

[Col_Panek]

Best way to sequester carbon

I cut down a bunch of spruces and started burning them in a biochar retort, which in my case was a meter deep ditch in my garlic patch which took ten minutes to dig. I got about 35 gallons of biochar which went into my mulch piles to soak up nutrients. When spread in the garden, it will sequester the carbon for hundreds of years, and keep nutrients from leaching out.

A retort relies on the structure to pyrolize the material at the bottom of the pile, starving it of oxygen. An untended fire that's a level pile of brush will just turn to ash and the CO2 will just escape into the atmosphere. Of course half the fuel in a retort is gone, but the other half is eternal carbon (to a first approximation).

So, getting rid of brush, sequestering carbon, and making fertilizer. What's not to like?

[Colin Bain]

Previous times

According to the data, Early 20th c had more and more extensive fires in US than currently occur. Also our cities an towns have expanded extensively in that timeframe so more prone to fires.

Just wondering if this has been factored in somewhere

[Marty McFly]

Uh, err...

So basically the human contribution to the carbon equation is a mouse-fart compared to what nature does normally.

[codejunky]

Re: Uh, err...

@Marty McFly

"So basically the human contribution to the carbon equation is a mouse-fart compared to what nature does normally."

Your gonna upset the Canute's