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| Redwoods, Smoke - Marin County 2018 |
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| Road, Smoke - Marin County 2018 |
There was an incredible amount of smoke from the Camp Fire in the Bay Area last November. I drove out to the San Geronimo Valley to check out the visual effects. Interesting.
There were a number of newspaper articles describing the bad health consequences of smoke inhalation and there were also a number of articles putting forth the need for more controlled burns. Possibly a little contradictory? I've experienced quite a bit of smoke in controlled burn areas!
2 comments:
Mike:
My thoughts: The danger from smoke inhalation is inconsequential, except in the most extreme cases of lung disease.
I grew up in a house where we burned logs in the fire place about 100 days a year. In addition, both my parents were heavy smokers. My lungs are still amazing at this late age. I think it became chi-chi to complain about the smoke, and to wear the masks.
The lumber companies want us to think the only way to control forest fires is to cut down the trees. In Japan, where they cut down their forests long ago, they replant them in neat rows, and regularly clear the brush and understory. They're not forests, they're farms.
If global warming is a thing, then there may not be much we CAN do about these fires.
Gary Snyder says there were great forests around the Mediterranean in ancient times, which were all cut down, and never grew back. fIndiscriminate clear cutting tends to have that effect. Take a plane sometime over Oregon and Washington, and you'll see the checkerboard of clear cuts all the way up into Canada. It's frightening.
I noticed that in Oregon they'd leave a narrow fringe of uncut trees alongside the highways in order to screen the clearcut areas.
And now in California we have extensive areas of dead pine trees. "Ultimately, the magnitude of tree mortality may signal a wholesale transformation of the forest."
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