Comments (18)

• Brent

  The crazy environmentalist agenda is the most reasonable explanation for the fires, yet it is likely inevitable that some will say God is Striking Down California.

  No matter which explanation is true, though, Bush sending in FEMA will be what finishes the job.

  Published: October 24, 2007 2:10 AM

• Grant

  What do we have today? We have fires that are no one's responsibility. Oddly, and by some strange practice that dates back to, hmmm, the beginning of time, rulers are not to be held responsible for actions that take place on their watch. So the government is not liable. It should be but it isn't. So putting government in charge is always a perfect storm for disaster without responsibility.

  
  If government were held responsible for its actions, would we still call it government?

  Published: October 24, 2007 2:19 AM

• Johnny Kramer

  Fabulous, as Lew's articles always are.

  I was especially taken with this excerpt from the recent Mises article Lew linked to:

  "When a major wildfire outside Ketchum, Idaho threatened homes insured by AIG Private Client Group, the company sent private firefighters to spray a barrier of fire retardant on the homes most at risk. According to an AIG spokesman, 'We're not only in the business of paying claims, we're in the business of preventing them.' "

  It's long seemed quite sensible to me that, in the absence of government, the insurance companies would likely be the first to step into the firefighting and ambulance businesses, and that they would also help spark all kinds of advances in things like construction and health care in order to pay the fewest possible claims.

  Published: October 24, 2007 3:28 AM

• TokyoTom

  As much as I like Lew's correct analysis that government ownership and action present key problems relating to the California brush fires, much of his analysis and commentary is sheer nonsense.

  1. What's burning now in SoCal is largely brush and grass, not forests. Roger Sedjo's piece - about the supposed "capture" of the Forest Service by enviros basically just isn't relevant. (But that's another story of an agency that has long been mismanaged and has a great record of selling huge amounts of timber at far less than the FS's costs of planning for the sale or building the roads.)

  2. As today's NYT editorial correctly points out, "the fire cycle in Southern California is natural — an inevitable and necessary part of local wildland ecology — its economic impact is not. The fires burn where they always burn, and what has changed is how much humans have built in the fire zones over the past couple of decades." If the government has done anything, it has been to create a moral hazard by TOO AGGRESSIVELY fighting fires in the past.

  3. Enviros are clearly not at fault - they haven't created the fire risk or twisted the government's arm to make it greater. Nor have they been the ones moving into the area and damanding that government provide fire control.

  4. Lew's analysis of nature and environmentalism, at least in these circumstances, is so broad as to be essentially meaningless.

  "Nature" is neither "evil" not the "enemy" - it is merely the clay that we face and try to mold. In this case, it is very clearly man's foolishness and risk-taking that are most to blame. Nature is what she is, and hot, timber-dry areas burn.

  THIS is just silly and counterfactual:

  The problem is in the theory of environmentalism. Under it, ownership is the enemy. Nature is an end in itself. So it must be owned publicly, that is, by the state. The state, in its management of this land, must not do anything to it. There must not be controlled burning, brush clearing, clear cutting, or even tourism. We can admire it from afar, but the work of human hands must never intervene.

  Okay, many enviros don't understand property rights, but many do. But in any case, they simply didn't put this land into the state's hands - rather, the state stole it from Mexico, and ended up with possession of the least valuable pieces (along with a few Native Americans).

  I agree that the main solution, if any to be found, lies in leaving property owners to work together to deal with their own problems, rather than relying on government. It would probably help if there was no government ownership of any of these marginally productive lands, so that private owners could more easily band together to make their own determinations as to when to risk making "prescribed burns" - but the answer clearly doesn't lie in using taxpayer funds to destroy the chaparral, which is adapted to thrive in these areas, for the benfit of private owners.

  5. Yes, the government's policy of forced evacuations defies not only common sense, but violates basic freedoms. People ought to be able and die defending their property if they choose to. And, BTW, it is the firefighters who put there lives at risks because some developers and homeowners who put their homes in the worst burn zones who are the ones who think that such homes are just an invitation to be burnt - but aren't they right?
  http://www.californiachaparral.com/afirefighters.html

  6. I do agree that state and federal funding of fire-fighting crowds out private efforts, in many places the fire fighters are locals, doing the best they can and certainly triaging resources. I also agree that the government should not be bailing out the private property owners damaged or providing further funding. The people in these areas should be bearing their own costs.

  7. Finally, and not surprisingly, there is a clear linkage between the record wildfires seasons recently and climate change, including in SoCal. In most forested areas, warmer temps and earlier snow melt have lengthened the fire season by more than two months. Accumulation due to fire suppression in some areas is a problem, but that is not what is responsible for the longer, hotter and drier fire season - and clearly not for the burns now being seen in higher mountain areas where there has been no past fire firefighting. Climate change is also expected to lead to wetter weather in SoCal, which then provides for luxurious growth and alot of fuel for the fires when they come. See:
  http://secure.ntsg.umt.edu/publications/2006/Run06/SRunningScienceAug18.pdf
  http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5789/940?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=swetnam&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

  And this, from the IPCC summary of impacts of climate change in North America:

  Since 1980, an average of 22,000 km2/yr has burned in U.S. wildfires, almost twice the 1920 to 1980 average of 13,000 km2/yr (Schoennagel et al., 2004). The forested area burned in the western U.S. from 1987 to 2003 is 6.7 times the area burned from 1970 to 1986 (Westerling et al., 2006). In Canada, burned area has exceeded 60,000 km2/yr three times since 1990, twice the long-term average (Stocks et al., 2002). Wildfire-burned area in the North American boreal region increased from 6,500 km2/yr in the 1960s to 29,700 km2/yr in the 1990s (Kasischke and Turetsky, 2006). Human vulnerability to wildfires has also increased, with a rising population in the wildland-urban interface. A warming climate encourages wildfires through a longer summer period that dries fuels, promoting easier ignition and faster spread (Running, 2006). Westerling et al. (2006) found that in the last three decades the wildfire season in the western U.S. has increased by 78 days, and burn durations of fires >1000 ha in area have increased from 7.5 to 37.1 days, in response to a spring-summer warming of 0.87°C. Earlier spring snowmelt has led to longer growing seasons and drought, especially at higher elevations, where the increase in wildfire activity has been greatest (Westerling et al., 2006). In Canada, warmer May to August temperatures of 0.8°C since 1970 are highly correlated with area burned (Figure 14.1c) (Gillett et al., 2004). In the south-western U.S., fire activity is correlated with El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) positive phases (Kitzberger et al., 2001; McKenzie et al., 2004), and higher Palmer Drought Severity Indices. Insects and diseases are a natural part of ecosystems. In forests, periodic insect epidemics kill trees over large regions, providing dead, desiccated fuels for large wildfires. These epidemics are related to aspects of insect life cycles that are climate sensitive (Williams and Liebhold, 2002).

  
  http://www.gtp89.dial.pipex.com/14.pdf

  TT

  Published: October 24, 2007 7:25 AM

• Brent

  I guessed Tokyo Tom instantly - at "As much as I like Lew's correct analysis...". How long did it take others?

  Published: October 24, 2007 11:54 AM

• Larry N. Martin

  Well, somebody has to blame the fires on global warming...

  ;-)

  Published: October 24, 2007 12:06 PM

• Yancey Ward

  Brent,

  First sentence.

  Published: October 24, 2007 12:19 PM

• Dave

  TokoyTom,

  Insightful commentary. I disagree with some points, mostly because I remain unconvinced about global; on the other hand, I remain unconvinced that there isn't any...

  
  

  Published: October 24, 2007 12:55 PM

• Dave

  Oop.. meant to say "global warming"

  Published: October 24, 2007 12:56 PM

• Robert M.

  People who criticize religion and then support the theory of global warming are humorous to me.

  They say religion is just a silly way to explain things that followers don't understand...

  Well meet the religion called global warming.

  Things blamed on global warming:
  -Strong hurricane season
  -Weak hurricane season
  -Flooding
  -Drought
  -Drowning of polar bears
  -Honey bees dying
  -Attempts to brainwash children into mindless statists (ok so they got one right)
  -More disease

  So in the past when bad things happened people said, "We must have angered the Gods."
  Now they say, "I must have made too big of a carbon footprint."

  The high priests of global warming have come up with endless catch-phrases and meaningless sayings to cause a trend that sweeps up a huge amount of people, most of whom have no idea what they are supporting. It's easier to follow a trend than to think for themselves.

  That being said, I think the issue deserves debate and I respect people such as TT who don't just spew the usual garbage.

  Published: October 24, 2007 4:51 PM

• David Bratton

  1. What's burning now in SoCal is largely brush and grass, not forests. Roger Sedjo's piece - about the supposed "capture" of the Forest Service by enviros basically just isn't relevant.

  Says you. But you don't give any reason why it isn't relevant.

  2. As today's NYT editorial correctly points out, "the fire cycle in Southern California is natural — an inevitable and necessary part of local wildland ecology — its economic impact is not. The fires burn where they always burn, and what has changed is how much humans have built in the fire zones over the past couple of decades." If the government has done anything, it has been to create a moral hazard by TOO AGGRESSIVELY fighting fires in the past.

  Breathtakingly absurd. What the government has been doing is preventing land owners and local communities from taking steps to prevent and control fires.

  3. Enviros are clearly not at fault - they haven't created the fire risk or twisted the government's arm to make it greater. Nor have they been the ones moving into the area and damanding that government provide fire control.
  

  
  It doesn't seem clear to me at all. Why aren't there fire breaks? Why aren't there set backs to prevent fires from burning neighborhoods? Why aren't there periodic underbrush clearings? Nature certainly can be tamed and it is the federal government that has been preventing the locals from taking the steps necessary to protect themselves and their property. Of course the enviros are at fault. Who else is filing these lawsuits and lobbying for restrictions?
  

  
  And BTW why shouldn't people move into whatever area they want?
  

  4. Lew's analysis of nature and environmentalism, at least in these circumstances, is so broad as to be essentially meaningless.

  "Nature" is neither "evil" not the "enemy" - it is merely the clay that we face and try to mold. In this case, it is very clearly man's foolishness and risk-taking that are most to blame. Nature is what she is, and hot, timber-dry areas burn.

  Hot dry timber areas like for example Alabama or Texas?

  5. Yes, the government's policy of forced evacuations defies not only common sense, but violates basic freedoms. People ought to be able and die defending their property if they choose to. And, BTW, it is the firefighters who put there lives at risks because some developers and homeowners who put their homes in the worst burn zones who are the ones who think that such homes are just an invitation to be burnt - but aren't they right?

  The homeowners and developers would take steps to mediate the fire risk if the government would let them. Their insurance carriers would compel them to.

  6. I do agree that state and federal funding of fire-fighting crowds out private efforts, in many places the fire fighters are locals, doing the best they can and certainly triaging resources. I also agree that the government should not be bailing out the private property owners damaged or providing further funding. The people in these areas should be bearing their own costs.

  And the government should not be standing in the way. The people in those areas should be free to do what they need to do to protect their property.

  7. Finally, and not surprisingly, there is a clear linkage between the record wildfires seasons recently and climate change, including in SoCal. In most forested areas, warmer temps and earlier snow melt have lengthened the fire season by more than two months. Accumulation due to fire suppression in some areas is a problem, but that is not what is responsible for the longer, hotter and drier fire season - and clearly not for the burns now being seen in higher mountain areas where there has been no past fire firefighting. Climate change is also expected to lead to wetter weather in SoCal, which then provides for luxurious growth and alot of fuel for the fires when they come.

  Of course. It had to come to this.

  You have not demonstrated any linkage of any kind. Two numbers rising at the same time is a correlation only. Ice cream sales go up at the same time drownings go up. Linkage?

  I can't help but notice that the statistics you give us depict the increase in fires beginning shortly after the EPA was created in 1971. An obvious and undeniable linkage and I'd have to say the debate on that is over wouldn't you?

  
  

  Published: October 24, 2007 6:17 PM

• Philemon

  Brent wrote: ‘I guessed Tokyo Tom instantly - at "As much as I like Lew's correct analysis...". How long did it take others?'

  This is embarrassing; it wasn’t until the IPCC came up that I twigged it.

  Published: October 24, 2007 7:55 PM

• William H. Stoddard

  I too tend to find global warming looking like a religious belief rather than a scientific theory. One of the things that strikes me is the famous "precautionary principle," which says that if there is any chance that global warming is true, we should bet on its being true, and take action to stop it, because the consequences of failing to do so are unbearably harmful. That seems exactly like Pascal's wager, an argument for Christian faith based on the risk of eternal damnation if God does exists and one has acted as if he did not—one of the most famous bad arguments in theology.

  Published: October 24, 2007 11:02 PM

• TokyoTom

  David, most of your comments are not well-reasoned, but I appreciate the opportunity to write more.

  1. Sorry, Sedjo's criticism is directed to the Forest Service, which doesn't manage the SoCal chaparral lands which have been developed and from from which so many have been evacuating. You wanna demonstrate how his article IS relevant?

  I agree with some of his criticsm of the environmental groups with respect to forests, but this leaves out alot of history, ignores the gross bureaucratic mismanagement and bad incentives that drove the enviros in the first place - and that are still very real problems - and ignores that the Bush administration itself has stood in the way of more effective local management. One's dislike of enviros should not blind one to the fact that they do not own or manage the forests.

  For more perspective on forests, I would recommend that you take a look at what John Baden, a former forester, pillar of the free markets environmentalists/property rights enviros and a member of the Mt. Pellerin Society, has to say about the USFS, bureaucrats, enviros and the Bush administration:

  In the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, August 28, 2002
  Bush Forest Plan Doomed to Failure
  by John A. Baden, Ph.D. and Pete Geddes
  http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=18

  In the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, July 03, 2002
  Reform, Don't Privatize National Forest Management
  by John A. Baden, Ph.D. and Pete Geddes
  http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay_print.php?id=20

  In the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, February 13, 2002
  Forest trusts a sensible reform
  by John A. Baden, Ph.D.
  http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=130

  In the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, September 13, 2000
  Suggested Cures for Forest Fires Way Off Mark
  by John A. Baden, Ph.D. and Pete Geddes
  http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=32

  A Century of Forest Service Ineptitude
  By John A. Baden and Andrew C. St. Lawrence, October 1997
  http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=4816

  In the Investor's Business Daily, August 08, 1997
  The GOP Can't See The Forest For The Trees
  by John A. Baden, Ph.D.
  http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=203

  In the Seattle Times, January 31, 1996
  Forest amenities in Thunder Mountains
  by John A. Baden, Ph.D. and Douglas S. Noonan
  http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=264

  2. You call my argument - that if the government has done anything, it has been to create a moral hazard by TOO AGGRESSIVELY fighting fires in the past - "Breathtakingly absurd", and assert that What the government has been doing is preventing land owners and local communities from taking steps to prevent and control fires.

  Care to back up your bravado with facts?

  Do you deny that the use of government funds to fight fires creates a moral hazard by subsidizing the assumption of risk by homeowners?

  Do you also take disagree with the NYT's statements that fire is a natural part of the SoCal ecosystem and that more and more people have moved into areas that have always experienced frequent fires?

  The government has no responsibility to fight fires to protect landowners or local communities from the risks that they have moved into, nor to manage federal or state lands to suit private owners.

  I agree that when the fires come, the government shouldn't be forcing people to leave (althought the anecdotal evidence is that when the fires come, officials are too busy to prevent those who really want to stay), but the government is not at all interfering with intelligent development, home-building and fire prevention. Just what are you talking about?

  3. Why aren't there fire breaks? Why aren't there set backs to prevent fires from burning neighborhoods? Why aren't there periodic underbrush clearings? Nature certainly can be tamed and it is the federal government that has been preventing the locals from taking the steps necessary to protect themselves and their property. Of course the enviros are at fault. Who else is filing these lawsuits and lobbying for restrictions? And BTW why shouldn't people move into whatever area they want?

  Good Qs. Ever think a little research might help, or are your preconceptions so set that they get in your way?

  Of course wise developers and homeowners take steps to abate the risks of fire, including some of the steps you mention. Firebreaks are expensive and meaningless in the face of the strong Santa Ana winds, though useful in small fires. And if homeowners there want to "tame" the chaparral or other parts of nature - fine with me - as long as they own what they're taming. As far as I can see, the only way to tame it, other than ripping out all vegetation and turning it into desert, is to get ready for occasional fires by having fireproof homes.

  But it certainly is NOT the government's job to spend taxpayer's money to manage fire-prone areas for the benefit of private property owners. Why should we be paying tax dollars for undergrowth clearing (only in forests, BTW)?

  Turns out, of course, that bureaucrats have found out that the best way to have big budgets is to fight fires - which simply exacerbates the problem by leaving more vegetation to burn later. The FS simply doesn't have incentives to keep its budget small by helping to mitigate risks where they are most important - around people's homes and communities.

  The chief answer lies in letting private parties assume their own risk. A secondary aspect is to stop the abuse of taxpayer dollars and end all of the misincentives and polical fighting over what the FS and other government agencies do. The latter can be achieved by privatizing the public lands - through sell-offs or by quasiprivatization through local land/forest trusts that essentially end federal funding.

  There are some good reports here by an economist who has occasionally published at Cato:

  http://www.ti.org/fireshort.html
  http://www.ti.org/fire.html
  http://www.ti.org/firesvc.pdf

  The pdf above has an excellent, in-depth description of the many woes created by budgetary misincentives in the Forest Service and other agencies, that I highly recommend to Lew or to anyone else seriously interest in this issue, which is likely to be on the burner for the foreseeable future. Here is a sample:

  "The Forest Service told Congress that the recent high costs of fire suppression were due to the heavy fuels built up over decades of past fire suppression. Rather than being embarrassed by its mistaken fire suppression policies of the past, the Forest Service turned the fuel build-up into a revenue generator as it insisted that Congress provide it with hundreds of millions of dollars of supplemental appropriations to treat or reduce the fuels.

  "Yet the truth is that the fuel build-up is not the only reason, or even the main reason, for the high cost of fire suppression in the 1990s. A more important reason is the weather, specifically hot droughty summers over much of the U.S., at least some of which have resulted from El Nino or La Nina events. An even more important reason is the budgetary process, which allows and even encourages Forest Service fire commanders to spend huge amounts of money fighting fires."

  "As long as the West has forests, it will have fires. As long as the Forest Service has a blank check for fire suppression, taxpayers will spend a lot putting those fires out. If the new wisdom is wrong, how did get to be so widely accepted? The short answer is that most interest groups, and especially the federal agencies—which themselves must be considered interest groups—have a strong incentive to increase federal spending on the public lands.

  "This paper shows that poorly designed incentives—starting with the blank check Congress has historically given the Forest Service for fire suppression—are responsible for most of the problems created by past fire management. Though federal land managers have the best of intentions, a bureaucracy cannot be trusted not to abuse a blank check, and a bureaucracy with a blank check cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the need to spend that check. Yet the current policy, which combines a blank check for fire suppression with a near-blank check for other fire management, is hardly an improvement.

  "What should be done instead? This paper reviews a number of alternatives that have been proposed by various interest groups and policy analysts. The two most effective alternatives are for Congress to simply stop funding federal land fire suppression or for Congress to decentralize federal land management and let each management unit fund itself out of its own receipts."

  4. Hot dry timber areas like for example Alabama or Texas?

  Your point, please? I'm happy to let private timber owners to manage for fire. But SoCal's chaparrals are not forests. But again, I would love to see better management of all public lands, something that will be best achieved by getting governments out of them.

  5 & 6. The homeowners and developers would take steps to mediate the fire risk if the government would let them. Their insurance carriers would compel them to.

  Huh? Do you think that the government STOPS people from taking actions to mediate fire risk on their properties, or that insurers aren't involved in some way? Of course homeowners' freedom to manage property ends at their property line.

  The government actually spends money trying to warn people of risks. Unfortunately its fire suppression/fighting policies ironically create more risks and while subsidizing homeowners - because this is advantageous to the bureaucrat's budgetary interests/incentives.

  7. I have established a clear and undeniable linkage between actual climate change and increased fires/fire risk. The western fire season is now nearly three months longer than it used to be, and getting longer. I haven't tried to establish a link here between climate change and man's influence on climate, but the climate has clearly been changing.

  As for another correlation, since you seem to have difficulty following, is that wetter springs
  lead to luxuriant shrub growth - which provides more fuel when it dries out. In the southwest, the pattern of growth and burns is closely tied to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). El Niño events coincide with above-average cool season precipitation and increased moisture availability during the growing season, while La Niña events correspond with drought conditions.

  The long-term climate change that is being seen throughout the west is an overlay to the multidecadal ENSO pattern and has contributed to an unusually powerful La Niña drought this year.
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1466-822X.2001.00234.x?journalCode=geb
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071024103856.htm
  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-winds22oct22,0,3490657.story?coll=la-home-local

  Finally, sorry, but does the EPA manage the forests or other public lands?

  David, I hope that the above is useful for you as a start, as it is clear you care about how the government bungles resource management issues.

  TT

  Published: October 24, 2007 11:29 PM

• TokyoTom

  Larry: I hope you will see that my views are more complex than "global warming is to blame for the fires". But yes, someone indeed needed to point to how climate change contributes to the problem.

  Robert M.: Thinking IS difficult, particularly as we have an innate cognitive conservativism that unconsiously filters out information inconsistent with our maps of reality.

  While I respect the important reflex against statism, I hope that you will also see that for many - even Lew - the reflex against statism also leaves many prone to a different religion that also get in the way of seeing a more complex reality: the religion that there are no real problems, but only evil statists/lefists/enviros declaiming them.

  One would hope that Austrians, at least, would realize that fights in the public arena are common in cases where, as Cordato puts it "irresolvable inefficiencies, i.e., inefficiencies that cannot find a solution in the entrepreneurial workings of the market process, arise because of institutional defects associated with the lack of clearly defined or well enforced property rights", and accordingly think first to examine whether the alleged "problem" might well indeed involve a lack of clearly defined or well-enforced property rights over some resource.

  As for climate change "religion" - sure, you have a point. People are overly simplistic, aided by tribalism, cognitive conservatism, limited time and other priorities.

  But the climate IS the climate, so when it changes it inevitably has very wide effects. Those who don't want to listen to the "high priests" like Gore should go directly to the IPCC reports themselves, and to supplementary and critical commentary on them at RealClimate, Climate Audit etc., for indications of the very wide effects that are underway and further anticipated.

  William: You paint climate change as if the only concern is whether we act, through our governments, to do anything to "mitigate" or lessen possible future warming by proactively changing our energy systems, etc.

  But climate change is already upon us, and given the tremendous inertia in the system we face a fair amount of further climate change and ripple effects even if we do nothing to mitigate climate change. We need to ADAPT as well, and we can't do that by putting our heads in the sand. Those who do may be badly burnt (if you will excuse the expression).

  TT

  Published: October 25, 2007 12:05 AM

• Daniel H. Baehr

  Having lived in San Diego since 1974 this is at least my 4th major fire. I certainly agree with most of yout thinking on private ownership, controlled burns, clearing etc., but I really find it hard to blame Nature and the results of what occurs because of the Stupidity and total arrogance of the Human Species.[Nature is to be Ruled and made to bend to OUR shorted-sighted WILLS. More nauseating Judeo-Christian BS. How's that been working for the past 3000+ years?]
  As a recovering Methodist I evolved from that kind of
  sunday school Propaganda many, many years ago.[ God is merciful--isn't SHE?]
  While people continue to think and be brain-washed into believing that they are somehow superior and separate to the rest of life, they will continue to suffer.
  Mean,dangerous, cruel and often thoroughly EVIL. What a perfect description of Governments and ALL organized religions.
  Namaste,
  Dan Baehr

  Published: October 25, 2007 2:13 PM

• Francisco Torres

  
  TT:
  The forested area burned in the western U.S. from 1987 to 2003 is 6.7 times the area burned from 1970 to 1986 (Westerling et al., 2006). In Canada, burned area has exceeded 60,000 km2/yr three times since 1990, twice the long-term average (Stocks et al., 2002).

  Maybe this represents more a link between forest fires in these areas and the increasing restriction of property rights, i.e. the ever increasing government's unwillingness to let people cut old trees for lumber on their own property. As less and less property owners are allowed to cut down older trees, the risk of forest fires increases with each passing year, this mythical global warming notwithstanding.

  Published: October 26, 2007 6:42 PM

• TokyoTom

  Francisco, interesting speculation, but did you miss the rest of what Westerling had to say?

  "Westerling et al. (2006) found that in the last three decades the wildfire season in the western U.S. has increased by 78 days, and burn durations of fires >1000 ha in area have increased from 7.5 to 37.1 days, in response to a spring-summer warming of 0.87°C. Earlier spring snowmelt has led to longer growing seasons and drought, especially at higher elevations, where the increase in wildfire activity has been greatest (Westerling et al., 2006)."

  This is clearly CLIMATE CHANGE, whether or not one can make a further attribution of any of that to man's activities.

  Further, I think that this speculation is largely uninformed: "Maybe this represents more a link between forest fires in these areas and the increasing restriction of property rights, i.e. the ever increasing government's unwillingness to let people cut old trees for lumber on their own property. ... [L]ess and less property owners are allowed to cut down older trees"

  The discussion about older trees relates mainly to remnant areas of old growth in Washington/Oregon's fedearally-owned temperate rain forests that Clinton declared off-limits. Clinton also set aside a bunch of marginally productive high alpine areas - that are clearly more valuable economically for recreation and other uses than forestry.

  The Endangered Species Act prevents cutting of trees on private property only in very limited circumstances and isn't seen as a factor in the growing fire seasons and larger and longer fires.

  TT

  Published: October 30, 2007 11:33 PM