Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Keeping the area immediately around houses is encouraged, BUT--
Privately owned and managed forests in CA are not burning...It's the public lands where the environmentalists have successfully lobbied to prevent logging and proper forest management/clean up that are burning.
Nonsense. Public and private lands are both burning.
Nonsense. Public and private lands are both burning.
But where do they start and why do they get so big that they spread to private land?
"While the largest fires happened predominantly on federal lands, the majority of the most destructive fires burned across private land, destroying homes and businesses, according to state and federal records.
It is not surprising that most of the large fires happen on federal land, Rice has said, considering 60 percent of California is under some type of federal land management." https://www.redding.com/story/news/2...nd/1971196002/ Note that they say "private land," not private forests. We're talking about suburban lots with houses.
The Feds own 57% of CA's forests, the state 3%. Private ownership 40%-- but the private ownership is in small patches, while the govt tracts are large. Logging on private lands accounts for 80% of lumber production in CA, thanks to misguided "environmental" policies since 1990.
Periodic, natural fires in WI would clear patches of forest, giving oaks an advantage, and maintained the health of the oak forest.
Now, with the modern Smokey Bear attitude, there are fewer fires, giving the more shade tolerant species like maple the edge....This why WI's oaks are aging and not being replaced fast enough....
Add in the problem of increasing numbers in the deer herd. Deer love to nibble on (and kill) oak seedlings/saplings.--Oaks need more wolves or more hunters.
Deer are easy to blame; but I don't think it is all their fault. I live at about 1,400 feet above sea level. For a while I owned property that was about 800 feet above sea level. That property still had limestone in the soil. Where I am located is where the limestone has been leeched out over the years from acid rain. If I cut a road through some of the property at the lower elevation, with the limestone still in the soil; the next year it was hard to find the road because it grew up so quick. At the higher elevation new trees grow very slow and, of course, the deer eat them because they do not have the smorgasbord of vegetation.
I just think that we are responsible for creating the lack of vegetation and now our deer eat what is left.
Don't forest fires 'sweeten' the soil from the alkaline ash? But the ash on top of the soil does not replace limestone in the soil.
Keeping the area immediately around houses is encouraged, BUT--
Privately owned and managed forests in CA are not burning...It's the public lands where the environmentalists have successfully lobbied to prevent logging and proper forest management/clean up that are burning.
Nope, pretty much ALL the wild lands in California are burning.
Easy way to tell....if Cal Fire is managing the fire odds are that it is on private land.
If it is a Federal team....odds are it is public land.
Doesn't work all the time especially when the whole state is burning.
Just had a friend with a Federal team head down to California for a fire that is burning primarily on private land. California has run out of fire teams.
But yes, the environmental community and elected officials do deserve "credit" for this mess particularly on public lands.
It's only cheaper while the govt subsidies and tax breaks are in effect. Disposing of spent wind mills is also a problem. It isn;t quite that simple.
Wind is already competitive with the cost of construction of high efficiency natural gas power, and far cheaper than coal or nuclear. Operation costs are far cheaper, because wind power needs no fuel input and creates no ash or spent fuel. Maintain the plant and you are golden.
Solar is a power source waiting for a storage solution. Even with Trump's 25% solar panel tariff, solar is now cheaper that any other electricity source, but only in the daytime. Repurposed EV batteries may become common enough to be practical. A car owner may not be happy with only 80% capacity in the car battery, but it could serve several years as solar roof storage before needing to be recycled. A neighbor just a mile away is 100% off grid, because the power company wanted $60,000 to run power to his new house site.
There are a few wood power options. The one I like most is fast pyrolysis, because it can be accomplished with mobile equipment in the woods. The residual carbon can be used to power the system, and only the crude has to be hauled. However, as long as we maintain our massive fossil fuel subsidies, it's unlikely to become competitive.
Hauling to a steam boiler is only competitive if you don't pay for hauling. That's why lumber mill co-gen plants are profitable. Log the timber, mill it to lumber and veneer, and burn the waste. Use the waste heat for kilns and presses, so even the heat that blows through the turbines gets used. If you go to Canada, you will see vast greenhouse installations heated by waste heat from power plants.
The heat of vaporization of water sets strict limits on the efficiency of steam generation, which has a theoretical maximum of around 48%. Waste heat could be used to distill fresh water, but desert climates rarely have a ready source of firewood.
Wood power is likely to stay a niche market until alternate fuels become too rare or expensive to be practical. Hydro is pretty well tapped and coal has priced itself out of the market. Nuclear is dying as more plants age past reparability. Thanks to fracking, natural gas is cheap, can be boosted to 60% efficiency if you want to pay for it, and the methane molecule only has one carbon, which accounts for our falling greenhouse gas emissions. Natural gas can be brought online quickly to compensate for wind and load variation, so for the foreseeable future, a combination of wind and natural gas on the grid will be the preferred solution.
A trivially obvious observation about the huge fires out west is that the same area doesn't burn again for many decades...One big blaze and it takes decades for the fuel to build up again....
Mother Nature would have frequent, small fires that don't damage the dominant trees but just get rid of the debris, rather than occasional, large fires caused by misguided (even if well meaning) "environmentalists".
The natural weather cycles have made conditions drier over the past 20 yrs in CO & CA, so the pine bark beetles have caused even more damage to trees than they do in wetter portions of the cycle. That means more fuel has built up, and it's harder to keep ahead of things with controlled burns or other clean up activities.
With more people living in remote areas, controlled artificial burns are harder to accomplish, and there is reluctance to allow small natural burns to go unchecked.
Ironically, the Latin word "populare" means "to devastate."
Foresters learned years ago how to maintain the Longleaf pine forests here in the lower South. They usually burn them every 2-3 years during the winter months. Without fire, invasive plants would take over the entire forest in just a few years.
The Feds own 57% of CA's forests, the state 3%. Private ownership 40%-- but the private ownership is in small patches, while the govt tracts are large. Logging on private lands accounts for 80% of lumber production in CA, thanks to misguided "environmental" policies since 1990.
This is just wrong, If you get a map showing public and private ownership of land, in rural California especially Northern, the land looks like a checkerboard. Here's one example
This is just wrong, If you get a map showing public and private ownership of land, in rural California especially Northern, the land looks like a checkerboard. Here's one example
Those are BLM holdings, which reflect the sections allowed for homesteading and the sections reserved by the feds. USFS land is much more uniform. There are few private inholdings in national forests, and the USFS has worked hard to eliminate them.
Solar is a power source waiting for a storage solution. Even with Trump's 25% solar panel tariff, solar is now cheaper that any other electricity source, but only in the daytime. Repurposed EV batteries may become common enough to be practical. A car owner may not be happy with only 80% capacity in the car battery, but it could serve several years as solar roof storage before needing to be recycled. A neighbor just a mile away is 100% off grid, because the power company wanted $60,000 to run power to his new house site.
The "need" for batteries in relation to Solar is mostly hype (and battery salesman talk). Grid Tied Solar PV is generally used fully and completely on the Grid at the time it is generated (in the middle of the day, (duh, huh?)) because the daytime is when most folks use electricity the most.
There is no point in storing the valuable and useful daytime power for the night, as the night is and will continue to be surplus from the surplus Coal and Nukes that have been over-built for decade(s). Coal and Nukes were over-built trying to hit the valuable daytime peak -- but now they are just surplus -- running all night. Coal and Existing Nukes are slowly being bankrupted off-line and/or put on welfare, but it will continue to be this way for a decade(s) or more.
Most Grid Tied Solar that do have any batteries just function as an over-sized UPS / back-up for the house or business where they are placed.
The "need" for batteries in relation to Solar is mostly hype (and battery salesman talk). Grid Tied Solar PV is generally used fully and completely on the Grid at the time it is generated (in the middle of the day, (duh, huh?)) because the daytime is when most folks use electricity the most.
There is no point in storing the valuable and useful daytime power for the night, as the night is and will continue to be surplus from the surplus Coal and Nukes that have been over-built for decade(s). Coal and Nukes were over-built trying to hit the valuable daytime peak -- but now they are just surplus -- running all night. Coal and Existing Nukes are slowly being bankrupted off-line and/or put on welfare, but it will continue to be this way for a decade(s) or more.
Most Grid Tied Solar that do have any batteries just function as an over-sized UPS / back-up for the house or business where they are placed.
Daytime is the peak load because of industrial and office uses. Daytime home electrical use is minimal, because people are at work and nobody is home to use electricity. Peak home use lasts for about an hour starting at 7 AM and for a couple of hours after 6 PM. If you want to burn forests, those are the hours when you would have to do it. Coal and nukes are dying, and come nowhere near meeting demand. That is why new natural gas and wind facilities are being built.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
