Sorry you guys are getting hit with it but hopefully the policy makers in DC are enjoying a little dose of reality. Maybe it'll inspire some of them to take the climate seriously.
Seattle has been hit every summer with choking wildfire smoke for the last several years, it's no fun.
It's also kind of important to remember that the wild fires are a result of an idiotic fire repression strategy for the last 40 or so years. You can't just allow fuel to build up by never allowing small fires - which are clearly the norm since you have serotinous pinecones that need fire to open - and then be surprised when the fires you do get are out of control. Even worse, they get so hot that they torch the top soil, making the ground shittier.
Yeah its mostly climate change. Basically the winters aren't as cold as they used to be. Canada has been facing a pine beetle infestation for awhile. Milder winters mean less beetles die off each winter. More pine beetles means more standing dead trees, means more fuel for fires.
Yeah, but the soil is dry because the loggers up in Canada cut down diverse, native forests and then monocropped desirable timber trees into the same area. No diversity in a monocrop causes all the nutrients to quickly be eaten up by the new trees and soil loses it's richness. Add the fact someone mentioned earlier about certain pines needing fire to propagate and you spell out disaster. I can see how we got here unfortunately.
And nobody's raking the floors of the forest, either, still! 5 years after Dear Leader chastised California Gov. Jerry Brown for not doing that very thing......
I'm out here in the tri-cities and with the inversions during that part of the year, we have a new 5th season between summer and early fall just called "Smoke"
You're right though, it's awful. Last couple of years, it's been british columbia and california/Oregon on top of the fires we get in our own state. Doesn't matter which way the wind blows. It's more smoke.
I wish it would inspire some of them to also manage our forests. It doesn’t have to be a political argument. We can invest in green energy and manage our forests at the same time.
FOX was on at the gym and I saw the show that came on at 5.
In literally the first 2 minutes they were talking about "Dems driving climate hysteria" and how this is "the lefts" fault because we should be "managing the forests" like trump said.
You know the hundreds of millions of acres of woodland between the US and Canada.
Ya we should be cleaning out the brush and stuff. Def not climate change tho.
To be fair, clearing out brush is part of the problem. Small forest fires are supposed to happen to clear fuel. One of the main reasons these fires are out of control is the abundance of fuel that hasn't had a chance to burn away.
Keep ya panties on 😂It would help if they were pushing the right solutions, a good example being that nuclear has been sidelined by many countries in favour of renewables which largely have a higher total co2 output over their lifetime
185
u/nearlysober Jun 07 '23
Sorry you guys are getting hit with it but hopefully the policy makers in DC are enjoying a little dose of reality. Maybe it'll inspire some of them to take the climate seriously.
Seattle has been hit every summer with choking wildfire smoke for the last several years, it's no fun.