New England's Dark Day
Man-made climate change makes for easy storytelling and easier self-flagellation, but the more earth history I read, the less massive climatic events surprise me. Australia was the smoke-filled continent long before Europeans arrived. California fires are nothing new: Pre-1800, about 1.8 million ha burned each year.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sierraforestlegacy.org&#x2F;Resources&#x2F;Conservation&#x2F;FireForestEcology&#x2F;FireScienceResearch&#x2F;FireHistory&#x2F;FireHistory-Stephens07.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sierraforestlegacy.org&#x2F;Resources&#x2F;Conservation&#x2F;Fi...</a><p>&gt; 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.<p>And: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;royalsocietypublishing.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;full&#x2F;10.1098&#x2F;rstb.2015.0345" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;royalsocietypublishing.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;full&#x2F;10.1098&#x2F;rstb.201...</a><p>&gt; Many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem [...] however, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends.<p>For that matter California can go into drought for <i>hundreds of years at a time</i> which lead to the downfall and forced migration, understandably, of peoples in the area.<p>That&#x27;s not to minimize man-made impacts, which certainly change the game! But I worry the focus on man-made change leads people to fail to appreciate just how much living on earth, on the geological scale, is riding a wild horse. If we can barely stomach a single weather anomaly without thinking it <i>must</i> be the result of man-made climate change (and would not be there otherwise), rather than a part of a planet with a big history of anomalies, it will lead us to thinking less clearly. (Of course all kinds of denialists aren&#x27;t helping there, either.)<p>Our job is to steward the earth so we can stave off things like mass death, famines, etc. California should be thinking about the engineering needed to live in a biome that genuinely wants to be on fire, sometimes, and we should be routing around this possibility. It&#x27;s somewhat frustrating to see the governor jump to climate change if only for its convenient exculpatory power, as if when we are not sequestering carbon, we humans are <i>otherwise</i> helpless.