this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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There’s one key villain in the L.A. wildfires. Any student of history knows who it is (www.sfchronicle.com)
submitted 1 day ago by silence7 to c/climate
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[–] silence7 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

These are places that took relatively minor damage from lower-intensity fires in past years. A lot of places that burned are well into town.

There is some amount of moving people out of the wildland-urban interface that makes sense, but we also need to act by:

  • Going ahead with building codes which make buildings more resistant to wind-blown embers from fires which might be a mile or more away
  • Ending the use of fossil fuels, so we don't make the situation worse
  • Actively managing vegetation to prevent fuel accumulation where this makes sense.
[–] reallykindasorta 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Climate change is certainly exacerbating the situation but from what I’ve read these areas are also historically acclimated to burning https://www.coastal.ca.gov/fire/ucsbfire.html

[–] silence7 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, there's a history of lower-intensity fire, of the sort which doesn't threaten structures at scale.

[–] reallykindasorta 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Right but if the low intensity ones are repressed that leads to higher intensity ones plus climate change exacerbates the situation making former low intensity ones higher intensity due to increased drying and erosion cycles. Makes the most sense not to allow development imo.

[–] silence7 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Chaparral and grasslands (what that area has) regrow pretty quickly. This isn't problem of fuel accumulating over decades as has happened in the Sierras. You'd need to be removing vegetation every year, which would also kill off the native plants.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago

The frequent burns are what’s killing the native plants. Burns aren’t supposed to happen this frequently, and invasives are crowding out the drought resistant natives.