Climate Change? Nahhh ...

You got to rake the floors. Get to work, citizen.

 

Record melt: Greenland lost 586 billion tons of ice in 2019

 

If one redwood is lost, that's en environmental tragedy. We will never see it replaced. One might go to replace it someday, but no one living or several generations of their grandchildren will see it.

 

Oh, FFS.

 

Wouldn't 1,000-year-old trees have survived a few wildfires over the centuries?

 

Undoubtedly. I guess the kicker to whether they survive is the dryness of the season and the intensity of the fire around them.

We have several bald cypress in eastern NC that document at more than 2,000 years old, one that has been proven to be more than 2,600 years old, and a few more scientist believe are 3,000. That just impresses the heck out of me, and I'm proud they are where they are.
The reason they've survived nature and man is because they are way the heck back up rivers and swamps. The officials who know exactly where they are won't reveal the exact locations to help protect them.

 

I know wildland fire experts say our efforts to tamp out every flame has resulted in massive fires we didn't have 100 years ago. We don't have the cleansing fires that remove debris from the forest floor, so they become filled with fuel (especially since we aren't raking them). So I guess that might result in massive redwoods being at risk more in 2020 than in 1820.

 

One of my high school friends became a diver and made a small fortune in rescuing old growth lumber from rivers in eastern NC. If there is a market for old, sunken logs, I can only imagine the price one of those standing trees would bring. Hope their locations remain a secret for years to come.

 

We have a double whammy of climate change that is drying everything out in California so we have more fuel. We have also encroached more into wild land leading to firefighters trying to stamp out problems so we don't lose homes. That's led to more fuel. More fuel—from both situations—means flames burn hotter. Trees that withstood periodic fires over the centuries are having a harder time with hotter fires. Hell, some trees don't drop seeds until there is a fire to open up their cones. So they were meant for fire. Just not this fire.

 

Lodgepole and Ponderosa Pines, if I remember my Forestry merit badge. However, I did not know eucalyptus was also part of that. They were responsible for much of the crazy spread of the Oakland Hills fire because the oil is highly combustible and the sparks they put off when aflame.