[g1313]

I'm in favor of reforming government agency forest management practices and increasing funding for treating vs firefighting. However, I am quite skeptical that capitalism (which I think is a good solution to many things) will help this problem. 

My rationale is:
1) The forest thinning practices seem to mostly involve removing brush and small trees, which have limited economic value for timber companies.
2) Clear-cutting to maintain fire breaks requires clearing down to the dirt and keeping it that way forever. The initial clear cutting might be profitable, but the maintenance seems unlikely to be. 
3) This last one is more editorial than factual, but companies are by definition profit-seeking, so even if a reasonable compromise is worked out in the beginning, I have my doubts on keeping it that way into the future when paid lobbyists will perhaps have a disproportionate influence on whether the fire breaks are 2 miles wide or 5 miles wide.

An article on SFGate gets into the causes for the fires in the last several years. A particularly depressing passage:

Q: But shouldn't there be a very tiny silver lining here? Things can't burn twice.

A: One of the interesting things we saw, especially in the LNU complex fire in Napa, Solano and Lake counties, is a lot of the areas that burned have already burned in the past couple of years-in some cases twice. There are some places where this is the third time they've burned in six years. Usually you would expect burn scars to last for a few years and reduce, if not prevent, fires. Most folks would think we'd have at least five or seven years of reduced risk in some of these areas. But there was just enough time for the vegetation to grow back and support a fire. The warming and drying effect has been so profound that stuff that had regrown was actually dry enough to burn pretty intensely.

I'm not convinced turning logging companies loose in our forests would do any more good than having had a recent fire. Having seen some logged sites, it's not like the loggers leave the place free of debris.

This is rather typical. Who said anything about letting them loose? But more in moderation would be a good thing.

[g1313]

I'm in favor of reforming government agency forest management practices and increasing funding for treating vs firefighting. However, I am quite skeptical that capitalism (which I think is a good solution to many things) will help this problem. 

My rationale is:
1) The forest thinning practices seem to mostly involve removing brush and small trees, which have limited economic value for timber companies.
2) Clear-cutting to maintain fire breaks requires clearing down to the dirt and keeping it that way forever. The initial clear cutting might be profitable, but the maintenance seems unlikely to be. 
3) This last one is more editorial than factual, but companies are by definition profit-seeking, so even if a reasonable compromise is worked out in the beginning, I have my doubts on keeping it that way into the future when paid lobbyists will perhaps have a disproportionate influence on whether the fire breaks are 2 miles wide or 5 miles wide.

An article on SFGate gets into the causes for the fires in the last several years. A particularly depressing passage:

Q: But shouldn't there be a very tiny silver lining here? Things can't burn twice.

A: One of the interesting things we saw, especially in the LNU complex fire in Napa, Solano and Lake counties, is a lot of the areas that burned have already burned in the past couple of years-in some cases twice. There are some places where this is the third time they've burned in six years. Usually you would expect burn scars to last for a few years and reduce, if not prevent, fires. Most folks would think we'd have at least five or seven years of reduced risk in some of these areas. But there was just enough time for the vegetation to grow back and support a fire. The warming and drying effect has been so profound that stuff that had regrown was actually dry enough to burn pretty intensely.

I'm not convinced turning logging companies loose in our forests would do any more good than having had a recent fire. Having seen some logged sites, it's not like the loggers leave the place free of debris.

This is rather typical. Who said anything about letting them loose? But more in moderation would be a good thing.