This is why we need actual intellectuals in this country's government; not CEO's or people who have studied pure politics, we need a mixed bag of people who can see situations from multiple angles instead of the same political goggles.
jeff4justice no...that's the biggest problem. People think that studying politics make you the most qualified to be in a position of leadership, but politics didn't make this country. Intellectuals that cared about their countrymen and its resources created this country and that idea died a long time ago.
As a rural Fire fighter myself, I can agree with what's being stated in this video. Fuel loads are higher in areas that haven't been burned by wild fire, and otherwise need to be thinned out by Forest staff.
@@ElitheScienceGuy416 selective logging thins out the forests to prevent wildfires. Additionally it gives new space for new trees to grow, which will absorb CO2.
The little town my dad grew up in would annually have a controlled burn around the outside of the town so wild fires wouldn't catch houses on fire and houses on fire would not catch the forest on fire.
+James, I don't know if weather is part of environmental as you mean the term, or a different thing all its own, but there is this danger, as reported by BBC, "Tornadoes hit Wales and Midlands 17 November 2016A number of tornadoes have struck parts of Wales and the Midlands, causing damage to buildings and cars.Winds of up to 94mph have been recorded in parts of Wales, with the seaside town of Aberystwyth bearing the brunt. Police said no injuries had been reported, though a caravan park in the area has been evacuated after up to 20 caravans were overturned.The Met Office has issued a yellow severe weather warning of very strong winds moving eastwards across the UK." And several sources have said variations of the following, "The United Kingdom is believed to lead the pack in non-Russia Europe, with over 30 tornadoes per year, again largely of the weak variety. "Here's one local source, "Although most people think of tornadoes striking in the US, the team from the University of Manchester said the UK has more tornadoes per area than any other country. The newly-updated map shows where they are most likely to occur. The study team used eye-witness reports of twisters to put together the map, which covers the UK from 1980 up to 2012. There have been 38 tornado strikes in the north west over the period. "www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchester-named-tornado-hot-spot-new-9455709
+LazerLord10 I disagree, controlled logging does. That way you at least get to use the wood and thin out the forest, rather than wasting it all in the form of ashes.
+Eugene Khutoryansky For a long time. Why? Because you probably see too much retarded anti-human greenpeace propaganda. Humans are incapable of destroying all of the forest.
+Eve Edena The point is to save forests when it helps us and to burn them when it helps us. Remember: it's not about protecting nature in order to save the planet or anything silly like that; it's about protecting nature so that it helps us in the long run. In this case, it's not about burning forests down to burn them down, but because it can help us in the long run.
+Eve Edena Fire is actually a really important part of a lot of forest ecological processes. For example, sequoias release their seeds after a fire. Google 'fire ecology' for more info. The unnatural thing is to prevent fires so that forests get too dense and full of dead wood, as explained in the video.
This actually is sound science. Forests have always had wildfires periodically, they help control the underbrush, amounts of dead wood, and even lead to healthier trees. Where I live there are periodic controlled burns of prarie grasses for similar reasons, they're done during years that are wetter and prevent fast moving fires in years of drought.
When I was in Yosemite some years ago I remember finding out about this. The fire services were sent to completely stamp out all fires which worked for a time, but then eventually resulted in worse fires through the park as there was a lot of kindling around to easily burn. Also, they found that the giant sequoia trees rely on fire to open their acorns so they can reproduce. Now they have scheduled prescribed burns throughout the park.
+Mandragara Yes, though in fairness many places in the US are more heavily populated than in Aus so it is less practical to implement controlled burns.
+Mandragara You would think we (as Australians) get it, but in reality, we dont. The govn. dont fund prescribed burns nearly enough, in some areas here in WA they have less than 1/3 of the required budget, and so do far far fewer burns than is needed. The public also does not understand, and frequently cry out and moan about the smoke from prescribed burns... Its really dumb.
+iamihop Those simple stats are misleading, as it would only really make sense if it was an even distribution. In reality, Australians really only live in a tiny portion of Australia (along the coast lines), and almost all our forest and bushland (bushland is just as important here as forest land, again, not really covered by those simplistic stats) is int he same areas, along the coastlines, or in the few other habital places. So to say that our burnoffs do not threaten, people, houses or infrastructure is wildly incorrect. Remember, careful with stats! They can paint a good picture, but maybe not the correct picture.
+Satheo Depends on the area, my fire brigade is in a town of 20k and the surrounding towns are around 6k, we're all connected by a national park but we actively do burn offs there even through the population density is relatively high. Its pretty safe and there's a lot of planning to it.
This is super easy to fix. WTF would you burn a valuable resource?! Sell a permit for people to go in and cut them down. How many homes could be built or heated? Value shoppers would gobble it up.
+shadfurman I know it's from Wikipedia, but here is an explanation: "Controlled burning stimulates the germination of some desirable forest trees, thus renewing the forest. Some cones, such as those of Lodgepole Pine and Sequoia, are serotinous, meaning they require heat from fire to open cones to disperse seeds."
+bybyblue Controlled burning stimulates the germination of some desirable forest trees, thus renewing the forest. Some cones, such as those of Lodgepole Pine and Sequoia, are serotinous, meaning they require heat from fire to open cones to disperse seeds."
The problem with logging and not allowing controlled burn is that it completely wrecks the ecological balance of the forest. Forest fires are a natural process, and they actually benefit the trees and plants that grow there. When a forest is burned down, the ashes provide an incredible amount of fertilization to the ground. If we deprive the forest of these nutrients, we risk losing the forest itself.
i live in pestigo, and the pictures of the firestorm is amazing. it litterally melted steel, and the survivors lived by hiding under blankets in the pestigo river. amazing
Thanks for this concise explanation - I often struggle to explain the history of wildland firefighting in my home state of Washington to friends from other places, and I think this video will be helpful.
+TheManOfRash I'm sorry our oppressive suppression has repressed your regression of conflagrations' long term impression. We'll learn our lesson next congressional session. Or not.
You also have to add in to fire management with letting fires burn is that some trees need the heat of fires to release their seeds from the cones that have or will drop to the ground during the fire.( I've heard of 1500°F temps to open up some pinecones.)
supported by +TodayIFoundOut ?! I love that channel, its sister channel Top Tenz, and their narrator Simon Whistler! Nice way to get the word out there, guys! Been with you since practically the beginnings.
+Micah Philson Thanks! MinuteEarth was very kind to us on this one. We've been a huge fan of theirs (and before that MinutePhysics) for a long time. It was actually MinutePhysics that first got us thinking several years ago, "We should really make a TH-cam channel." Just took a lot of time to get together the money and carve out some time to actually do it. :-)
Today I Found Out Well I for one am incredibly glad it finally worked out that well! And your growing fanbase shows I'm not the only one. I've been watching Minute Physics videos as well since they first started being made, but had no idea they were that good or inspiring! ;)
This video was like a breath of fresh air! Finally some people who can look past the stereotypical image of the evil logger and realize that irresponcability, lazyness, and greed destroy the environment; not logging!
+Nilguiri the concentration of smoke can be used to push an axis that will rotate around a coil with thus creates electricity. (I think this is how its done, may be wrong.)
+Hakkı Oktay they dont generate as much power as would offset the cost of producing ones that large, Thermoelectrics are still very expensive. They most efficient way would be to log the trees first then burn them all in controlled high efficiency facilities. This way we can use steam and turbines just like coal power plants do getting the most out of the produced heat. Unfortunately the energy density is much lower than coal so we couldn't switch all power plants over to this method there is just not enough energy. It could certainly help though.
Here in Spain, especially in the quite dry centre, you can occasionally see "lines" of unforested areas (kinda like the US-Canada border, but wider), which are created to prevent fires from spreading to other areas. It's killing some trees, but benefitting the whole ecosystem. Also, the "empty" spaces can be used for electricity posts, radio towers, etc.
+historical-oracle you do realise that all the CO2 being "thrown" into the air came from the air right? Burning organic hydrocarbons is a carbon neutral process.
No One yes i realize that, but since we are burnign so much oil already, and throwing up co2 into the air, burning forests on purpose so that there arent bad forest fires is not the best option. if we werent burning so much oil then it would be the best option to burn wood, as it would return much of the nutrients back into the ground, but burning forests while we are burning tons of carbon that has been sitting in the crust for thousands of years isnt a good idea.
+Giggstow How much CO2 would get released in the process of cutting and transporting the wood compared to how much was locked up in the wood in the first place, anyway?
I don't understand what you think would happen to the carbon if it wasn't burnt. It's still going to be released anyway as the tree dies and breaks down...
That depends what you do with the wood after you've finished using it. If you burn it or let it decompose the carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere, if you lock it away somewhere it can't decompose it works as a carbon sink.
junoguten they did mention selective logging as one way to help but controlled burning is actually beneficial as it helps reinvigorate the soil as well as removing dense and dry areas of trees that could make an actual wildfire more hazardous
junoguten generally it is combination of efforts that happens. This is why if you have ever been in a Forrest where there are piles of cut logs, that is what they are for. thus when the area is proscribed burned it is easier to control, has less smoke, and extends the benefits. burning get is important aspect to because many plants need a good purging burn to reinvigorate growth, biodiversity, and help the life cycles of many pinetrees.
+junoguten A lot of the useful wood IS often hauled away 1st. Also, it's important to remember that most of what is burned during "control burns" isn't useful to humans anyway -- excess underbrush, dead limbs, fallen trees, rotting stumps & so on -- & any useful wood that does end up burned still provides nutrient-rich ash for the area. Finally, the heat from those fires allows certain trees to reproduce, so it's all still "useful," even if it gets burned up.
+derLPMaxe Most of the time making money on it depends on the location, if its not near a truckable road than you have to make your own roads, and that slowly cuts into any profits.
derLPMaxe Theres not a big market for wood anymore, its mostly taken care of by farms and the already set up loging industry (which is declining a bit as demand goes down).
***** Well. We really do need wood here in Europe. €100/m³ is pretty common (at least in Germany). Start an export, make lots of money and lower the bloody prices here! ;)
I worked Forest Survey up in Okanogan for the past 2 weeks and I can confirm they are doing a lot of thinning and controlled burns. It all makes sense to me now.
In Western Australia it is policy to burn off the bushland every few years. This has been an active measure going back tens of thousands of years by the Aboriginals and now continued by European settlement. In the Eastern States of Australia the fires are much worse because they do not do as regular or as thoroughly as the West... despite the West being drier and hotter.
+Joel Reid That's awesome! Makes sense too, Australia's getting so dry, one big fire could take out so much bushland... How do you think it compares to chopping it down? Or would that just be too labour-intensive?
some person cutting down trees only targets a couple of species and there is no protection by trees to stop clearfelling. Australian plants grow faster after fire to outcompete for nutrients and are often growing from their stumps or central core (Australian trees have the hardest wood in the world and so resist fire better). Plants do not grow faster after being cut down, especially since their stumps are usually also torn up for wood chipping.
+illyounotme LOL, you really know your hippies don't you! I'd say you're about spot on with that analysis. I'm an old hippie who has been pro-fire for almost 40 years. My Plant Ecology professor wrote his dissertation on fire ecology and he drilled that subject into us.
Being employed with the Forest Service as a Forestry Technician (Fire) and having first hand knowledge of this, it's true. We need forest fires lol The Native Americans knew this all too well.
Expecting congress to fund such a program is the most counter-intuitive idea in this video. Correcting ANY economic, social, or environmental issue is up to us and the money in your bank account. True we all have to pay taxes, but we don't all have to buy a new car, new iphone, or lavish vacation. Reallocate 10% percent of your budget towards something you care about and really watch things change.
+S7one_47 You're suggesting we allow congress to continue to be dysfunctional and side step them by paying for forest management ourselves? Sorry, but thats pretty half baked. I agree with your sentiment but it's not reasonable. We could solve this a quite a few other problems by reforming government.
Tyler Hamilton how would you go about changing the house and the senate? Limit terms, force representation without compensation, or what? They're detached from the American people and that is why they don't get anything done. They goons suckling at the teat of lobbyists. We spend so much money on military weather necessary or not. Militarization and defense is deeply ingrained in the American physique so how would we go about reallocating those funds.? You want to feed a man, teach him to fish, don't ask Caesar to help he's too busy sprinkling lead into his wine. All I'm saying is be that catalyst of change, donate your time and resources, your representative is pulled by too many strings in too many directions to invest any time, energy, or man power into supporting what you care about.
S7one_47 It's just not that easy. There would need to be massive reform to do even what you're suggesting. Head out into a NF with a chainsaw and torch can, start doing some forest management and see what happens. Even if we took stewardship into our own hands it would need to be organized by the NFS, and there's still no funding, even to oversee volunteers. This is coming from someone who has done a lot of volunteer trail work and worked with the NFS. There are trails out there that can't even be managed with purely volunteer forces because there is no money to pay 2 or 3 rangers to oversee them. Massive government reform is the only way for a federal service to manage this issue. The only alternative would be to allow state organizations to manage federal land. CA has several state park areas dedicated to experimenting with forest management like Mountain Home. Congress is populated with special interest ass hats because we keep putting them in there, this is our fault. Like it or not we need government money to manage our forests or the Feds have to be more compromising about letting 3rd party organizations manage the land. Either way you are dealing with Federal Law which is controlled by.... Congress. This is the country we live in.
Tyler Hamilton I'm not advocating going out on your own without permission and burning and chopping down trees. It sounds hopeless when you say we have to go through the federal government to do this but with federal lands you may be right. Sort of. I can't imagine a park ranger being so selfish and all consumed that he or she couldn't or wouldn't volunteer some of their time to "supervise" a public project. Even so, don't you think that if enough people rallied behind a cause and donated whatever funds they could, that a project like the one in the video could be funded by common folk? Consider public radio, they solely rely on membership to stay afloat. At least the couple in my area do.
S7one_47 I didn't think you were and I was being a little obtuse just to prove my point. Most forest land is under some kind of Fed control and like it or not we have to work with them if there is to be some kind of trained volunteer program for management. As it stands it isn't even legal for you and me to go in there and cut down a tree in many of these places, even if we are trained. Only USFS employees can do it and under certain circumstances like trail management, those under their supervision can. There is also massive logistics involved, man power being a very small cost in the grand scheme. What I do know from research made available from places like Mountain Home is that fire prevention is more cost effective than fire suppression in every case. Nearly all forest management research is being done by state agencies, mostly in the West. The USFS needs to work with state agencies to implement programs and allow trained volunteers in to work when necessary but Federal money still needs to be allocated and spent, there is no avoiding this. If I was going to donate 10% of my money to something it would be much better spent on a lobby or PR campaign showing that prevention is cheaper than suppression and Congress is wasting money AND lives as many hotshots die every year in increasing numbers. You have to make people care so much that there is some kind of reason for Congress to give two shits. Otherwise they will just copy and paste the same budget year after year because they resist change, even if it saves money. Thats bureaucracy and we have to work with it or remove it and the latter never really works out very well.
I feel like the creators of this video do not understand that controlled burns have been going on for a long time. Additionally, fires are only put out if they threaten structures. If a fire is just burning and not a threat, you make a fire line around it and you let it burn out the area.
Australia has used controlled burning, or backburning, for years as a preventative measure. I honestly cannot remember a single spring where I haven't smelt the burning being done.
Agreed, however people have been saying things about some ash helping trees. I don't know where that is coming from, but I won't argue against it because I'm uninformed.
Larry Frakous ash makes the ground more fertile, but the ecosystem sustains itself. Burning it down totally destroys the ecosystem in place and reverts it to earlier stages of succession. The argument refutes itself. After burning, the trees are gone so there being ash is pointless.
Controlled fires allow new and stronger trees to grow. Pine trees can only spread seeds in fires. Just cutting them down means no new trees and the old trees eventually die.
Brent'sCardsAnd Coins ok so if a pine tree is set on fire, its pine cones dont get fried up? Its not that hard to extract the pinecones (after chopping the trees down) and spread them over the forest floor. It is an extremely simple procedure which is easy to implement if what u say really is the case. Burning forests is such a stupid idea given all the shit about global warming and the rates of species extinction.
A lot of plants in the Mediterranean biomes actually have evolved to be somewhat fire resistant and also some are even stimulated by smoke. Pine trees rely on fires to spread their seeds, it is because their seeds get burned that new ones can grow. Fires have been and still are a natural part of the earth, its just that human presence has made it bad.
start fires, don't give the industry more of a reason to log. if you start fires in less dry and windy conditions it also helps fertilize the soil which is better since logging (most of the time) damages soil
I work in forest conservation. I appreciate this video's emphasis on prescribed, low-intensity fires to reduce fuel. Many economic interests, including the Forest Service, like to promote logging as a tool for fuel reduction, but it has serious trade-offs that are rarely acknowledged. Unlike prescribed fire which tends to reduce the most hazardous small fuels and does so without building roads or removing important habitat structures, commercial logging tends to remove larger trees with commercial value. The larger trees are not a fire hazard. They have thick bark and they hold most of their fuel high above the ground and out of the way of surface fires. Removing large trees also removes the canopy attached to those trees which makes the forest hotter, dryer, and windier (making the fire microclimate more hazardous). Removing the canopy also produces a lot of hazardous slash that must be dealt with, and extra light and moisture reaches the ground stimulating the growth of small fuels that can form "ladder fuels" allowing fire to climb from the surface to the canopy. If only small trees are removed, and if the canopy density is maintained, then the fire microclimate remains more cool and moist and the growth of ladder fuels is suppressed. tl;dr - logging is not the solution to fire hazard. it's best to manually remove fuels within 100 feet of homes and reintroduce fire in the backcountry.
The moment you realize that they don't do as much as they should because they are too stupid to hire logging firms who can make a profit off it, and instead quarrel about the cost of cutting trees. Like seriously, you can just systemize logging and give the firms a compensation for the reduction of profits and for helping prevent catastrophies. Everybody's happy.
Like some others have already explained, logging is not as effective as actually burning it. A lot of natural processes take place when a forest burns that help it out in the future. Read up on fire ecology.
+RedTriangle53 Question: If there was a profit to be made, why are they not doing it currently? Answer: There is not profit to be made. Either the forest is not suitable for logging, less profitable than other logging areas or a great plethora of other reasons why logging firms dont do this in most areas. Also Reydrield was correct, logging is not as cost-effective, and there are other benefits from burning. Not only did she not miss the point, she countered your argument in the first sentence.
Giggle Gasm The point. If you feel inclined to have a flashback to reading my comment, please note how I claimed that it would be cheaper to *compensate* any logging firm following the system than to make an individual project of it. If being sensible is less profitable than being destructive or counterproductive, it's the duty of any capitalistic government to maximize the safety and sustainability of their system by making the sensible alternative profitable to private concerns. That way, market interests will do the work for them. Not that the states is the definition of a functional capitalism or anything...
+RedTriangle53 You seem to be the only person who gets it :P Privatization can be extremely beneficial with just the right amount of government intervention.
Wasn't there a video similar to this? Describing some kind of forest fire paradox where you should let some fires burn because otherwise there'll be too much dead wood laying around?
+Rudy_Eila Adblock is complicated: if you donate to support the channels you like most, then that mostly makes up for using adblocker (much more money going to one place, no money going elsewhere) But, if you don't support anything, then you're actually hurting the content creators that you enjoy.
Nukes are bad. 3 or 10 of them, isn't world ending. But if we engage in nuclear war, no one will win. Nukes need to be limited, to where Nations can only have up to 12. Military drones are cool I guess.
This is why land management agencies have prescribed burns. They help eliminate the dead and down that has fallen on the forest floor and minimize the risk of massive fires. Yet the very real effects of global warming don't help. Many parts of the nation have been in long periods of drought and no matter how many Rx burns they do, there will still be a high risk of fire.
Meanwhile in Australia Late Spring-Summer-Early Autumn(Fall): Bushfire Season Winter-Early Spring: Back-burning Season Had an German exchange student working with me, and she noticed a pillar of smoke, probably a couple of kilometres away (suburbs in Australia kinda just turn into bush with no warning) and asked if we should call the fire brigade. She was shocked to learn that not only were the firies onto it, they'd started it.
specktre _ To keep the Canadians out of course. They come to the USA with their little eyes, and try to force their disgusting language on us. I don't want to learn the Canadian alphabet! So "Fuck them all to death" it is.
I hope you guys have got on top of this since this was posted. This is common knowledge in Australia (not to mention some species of trees here require burns for their lifecycle). NSW screwed this up once recently and payed dearly within a couple years.
That's what Australia is doing for a while now, right? There they even found many plants needed the fire for their reproduction, as many only flower after fires, or the seedpods need the fire to open. And, as damaged those controlled burned areas look right after a fire, the year after? Beautiful!
What happened to save the trees? I thought this channel was tree-hugger channel. But now they tell us to log and burn trees? It has now earned my subscription.
Worth noting that control burns only work as a policy to start with, as it ends changing the distribution of flora species, those which favor fire come back stronger whilst those that don't die off, the end result is a forest that all favors burning, meaning bigger hotter and more frequent fires. Similar problem arises with controlled logging unless all species are removed equally.
I really like the idea of using Mediterranean Cypress trees as barriers for fires. Of course introducing a new species (especially a water retaining one during a drought) could cause other issues but I still find it fascinating.
The Forest Service lets a lot of fires in wilderness areas burn naturally. We also do a lot more prescribed burning than we used to. In a lot of places, specifically in California, letting fires outside of wilderness areas burn naturally isn't possible because of human encroachment into the forests.
Very good video. It's incredible this is 8 years old. In recent years, enormous and costly wildfires have been almost exclusively attributed to global warming, which is an exaggeration to say the least. By far, the most important thing we're NOT doing is controlled burns and similar brush removal.
a big problem is that an area with a controlled burned looks bad afterwards to many people, and people don't realize that it's healthy and natural, and tend to not want burns.
I livein New Mexico, and we have been doing controlled burns for (what seems like) my whole life. I thought it was weird to find out that it was not the norm in other places.
I'm 0:02 seconds into the video but I think I have a pretty good idea what it's gonna talk about. They're gonna say that you should let wild fires burn (sometimes) because when the plants die it creates a new healthy layer of soil and allows a fresh new forest grow back. (Edited: ehhh didn't talk bout that but my teacher told me that so yeah)
+Yosef Estill wait till July then light a branch of last years Christmas Tree. You'll see how fast fire travels and how a 5 foot tree can turn into 15 feet of blowtorch.
+Yosef Estill Because the heat rises, there are strong winds that rush to the base of the fire. When that fire is thousands of square acres, the updraft can start generating it's own weather. It's a trip to see lightning coursing through a pillar of smoke.
There's controlled burns and selective logging where I live. Seeing scorched ground while driving freaked me out at first as a teen until I educated myself on it.
Where i live, people are allowed into the woods by legal right where they start campfires and collect all the dead trees and branches to fuel these campfires. Hence, when there is a forest fire it's usually not so bad because every branch that ever hits the ground is burned in a campfire and most branches that are dead at the lower portion of the tree are also harvested by every visitor to the forest. Total cost? Zero!
Northern New Mexico, 2000. The Cerro Grande Fire. A controlled burn that went out of control. It was then put out. It hadn't covered the controlled burn area so was started again. It then went WAY out of control and ran through the near by town of Los Alamos (Home of the Manhattan Project).
While the main topic does seems messed up I do understand it. My FIL burns his yard every year after his harvest. The several acres around his home are already burned down. If the fires do come around, already having burned land, he has saved his home about 4 times in the last 20 years from wild fires.
I play Smokey Bear for a State Park. Our message has changed from one of preventing forest fires to preventing wildfires. A subtly different terminology but a critically important one. Fire management benefits the environment and will help save the homes and communities that have foolishly been built in fire zones. A fire zone is as bad as a flood zone in the level of danger to the inhabitants. It is probably natural that humans gain understanding much more slowly than the people who are studying an issue but after so many disastrous floods governments started preventing development in flood prone areas. The same must happen in fire prone areas. Much of the Western US is such a zone. Fires are a natural and consistently occurring part of the environment and must be taken into consideration before building communities.
Logging seems like the plan to me, stops crazy wildfires and also gets wood from forests we actually want to cut down, instead of rainforests and whatnot.
Here in Australia I heard they're finding the little twigs and dead stuff in the forests so that they can make a controlled fire instead of waiting til the fires start, it seem to be doing well.
This is why we need actual intellectuals in this country's government; not CEO's or people who have studied pure politics, we need a mixed bag of people who can see situations from multiple angles instead of the same political goggles.
jeff4justice no...that's the biggest problem. People think that studying politics make you the most qualified to be in a position of leadership, but politics didn't make this country. Intellectuals that cared about their countrymen and its resources created this country and that idea died a long time ago.
it'll never be managed through force of government. it doesn't matter who is at the helm.
+spartan1010101
well you need no democracy then. it'll be meritocracy you need.
Fathin Luqman Tantowi I mean it doesn't have to be full of them, but we need actual intellectuals in general.
*****
i just pointed out that democracy have a big exploit by putting politics people there. not expert
_"The opposite of progress, is Congress."_
- Joe Swanson
Fight Fire With Fire
+David Learmonth They missed their one opportunity.
FIGHT FIRE WITH ANTI-FIRE
+David Learmonth Dun du-du-dun du-du-dun du-du-dun
The end is near
+David Learmonth "We didn't start the fire!"
+David Learmonth Catch a Fire.
As a rural Fire fighter myself, I can agree with what's being stated in this video. Fuel loads are higher in areas that haven't been burned by wild fire, and otherwise need to be thinned out by Forest staff.
selective logging seems like a good idea because it gives us resources to use.
I like your thinking
@@almaster666😮💨Even environmentalists are ignorant.
logging is bad for the planet
@@ElitheScienceGuy416 selective logging thins out the forests to prevent wildfires. Additionally it gives new space for new trees to grow, which will absorb CO2.
@@ElitheScienceGuy416 selective logging is just what wildfires would do if human intervention wasn’t a thing
The little town my dad grew up in would annually have a controlled burn around the outside of the town so wild fires wouldn't catch houses on fire and houses on fire would not catch the forest on fire.
Now I don't feel so bad about living in the UK where the most dangerous environmental hazard is being attacked by an angry mother swan
And here in the Netherlands our most dangerous hazard is falling in a pond!
It's probably a car crash
a car crash is not exactly the type of environmental hazard people were talking about :-P
Yeah, it's hard to have "environmental hazards" once the environment's been removed, as it has throughout most of the EU.
+James, I don't know if weather is part of environmental as you mean the term, or a different thing all its own, but there is this danger, as reported by BBC, "Tornadoes hit Wales and Midlands 17 November 2016A number of tornadoes have struck parts of Wales and the Midlands, causing damage to buildings and cars.Winds of up to 94mph have been recorded in parts of Wales, with the seaside town of Aberystwyth bearing the brunt. Police said no injuries had been reported, though a caravan park in the area
has been evacuated after up to 20 caravans were overturned.The Met Office has issued a yellow severe weather warning of very strong winds moving eastwards across the UK."
And several sources have said variations of the following,
"The United Kingdom is believed to lead the pack in non-Russia Europe,
with over 30 tornadoes per year, again largely of the weak variety. "Here's one local source,
"Although most people think of tornadoes striking in the US, the team
from the University of Manchester said the UK has more tornadoes per
area than any other country. The newly-updated map shows where they are
most likely to occur. The study team used eye-witness reports of
twisters to put together the map, which covers the UK from 1980 up to
2012. There have been 38 tornado strikes in the north west over the
period. "www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchester-named-tornado-hot-spot-new-9455709
Controlled burns seem like the best option.
+LazerLord10 I disagree, controlled logging does. That way you at least get to use the wood and thin out the forest, rather than wasting it all in the form of ashes.
Joshua Dunbar
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Although it could help with low-lying vegetation and debris.
+Joshua Dunbar mixture of both, go in and log a few trees down, then controlled burning. No debris and free wood :D
+Joshua Dunbar Log, then burn it to produce coal for our barbecues!
+Joshua Dunbar But a fire is the most natural way a forest is cleaned and renewed. Some trees even rely on fire to sprout.
Just another example of what I call: "Playing it dangerously safe."
Only *YOU* can prevent forest fires.
+JustOneAsbesto Me?
+Merthan E. (M. E.) no.. YOU.
Udit Guptaa
Yes, exactly.
Playing with matches is fun, kids.
+kirumo8 *forest
+MdR1328 You said "you", referring to me. That is incorrect. The correct answer is you.
Forests survived for millions of years without human intervention. With humans now around, it is no longer clear how much longer they will survive.
+Eugene Khutoryansky Forests will exist long after humans are dead.
Not even true.
+Eugene Khutoryansky For a long time. Why? Because you probably see too much retarded anti-human greenpeace propaganda. Humans are incapable of destroying all of the forest.
+God Omg!! God! I need a new job after Christmas, maybe you could swing something for me?
+drew2pac I don't just do random favours. Get off your ass and do something good.
MinuteEarth: _Save the Forest, but don't Save the Forest._
I'm getting mixed signals from this channel...
+Eve Edena The point is to save forests when it helps us and to burn them when it helps us. Remember: it's not about protecting nature in order to save the planet or anything silly like that; it's about protecting nature so that it helps us in the long run. In this case, it's not about burning forests down to burn them down, but because it can help us in the long run.
+Eve Edena Fire is actually a really important part of a lot of forest ecological processes. For example, sequoias release their seeds after a fire. Google 'fire ecology' for more info. The unnatural thing is to prevent fires so that forests get too dense and full of dead wood, as explained in the video.
CGP Grey style.
+Eve Edena save the WET forrests
This actually is sound science. Forests have always had wildfires periodically, they help control the underbrush, amounts of dead wood, and even lead to healthier trees. Where I live there are periodic controlled burns of prarie grasses for similar reasons, they're done during years that are wetter and prevent fast moving fires in years of drought.
When I was in Yosemite some years ago I remember finding out about this. The fire services were sent to completely stamp out all fires which worked for a time, but then eventually resulted in worse fires through the park as there was a lot of kindling around to easily burn. Also, they found that the giant sequoia trees rely on fire to open their acorns so they can reproduce. Now they have scheduled prescribed burns throughout the park.
Yeah last time i went they had a bunch of the trees completely burned
Had no idea about any of this
DavidParody
A youtuber with only 8 likes? damn!
wat?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Government? Are you listening?
Nope
NEVER!
Nooo... maybe...
Your profile picture fits perfectly.
Nathan Wise
HAH! No...
Look at Australia, we get it :P
+Mandragara Yes, though in fairness many places in the US are more heavily populated than in Aus so it is less practical to implement controlled burns.
+Satheo And there are thousands more acres of forestland to watch over.
+Mandragara You would think we (as Australians) get it, but in reality, we dont. The govn. dont fund prescribed burns nearly enough, in some areas here in WA they have less than 1/3 of the required budget, and so do far far fewer burns than is needed. The public also does not understand, and frequently cry out and moan about the smoke from prescribed burns... Its really dumb.
+iamihop Those simple stats are misleading, as it would only really make sense if it was an even distribution. In reality, Australians really only live in a tiny portion of Australia (along the coast lines), and almost all our forest and bushland (bushland is just as important here as forest land, again, not really covered by those simplistic stats) is int he same areas, along the coastlines, or in the few other habital places.
So to say that our burnoffs do not threaten, people, houses or infrastructure is wildly incorrect. Remember, careful with stats! They can paint a good picture, but maybe not the correct picture.
+Satheo Depends on the area, my fire brigade is in a town of 20k and the surrounding towns are around 6k, we're all connected by a national park but we actively do burn offs there even through the population density is relatively high. Its pretty safe and there's a lot of planning to it.
This is super easy to fix. WTF would you burn a valuable resource?! Sell a permit for people to go in and cut them down. How many homes could be built or heated? Value shoppers would gobble it up.
I agree
+shadfurman I know it's from Wikipedia, but here is an explanation: "Controlled burning stimulates the germination of some desirable forest trees, thus renewing the forest. Some cones, such as those of Lodgepole Pine and Sequoia, are serotinous, meaning they require heat from fire to open cones to disperse seeds."
+shadfurman Yea that sounds a lot better than burning it.
+bybyblue Controlled burning stimulates the germination of some desirable forest trees, thus renewing the forest. Some cones, such as those of Lodgepole Pine and Sequoia, are serotinous, meaning they require heat from fire to open cones to disperse seeds."
The problem with logging and not allowing controlled burn is that it completely wrecks the ecological balance of the forest. Forest fires are a natural process, and they actually benefit the trees and plants that grow there. When a forest is burned down, the ashes provide an incredible amount of fertilization to the ground. If we deprive the forest of these nutrients, we risk losing the forest itself.
i live in pestigo, and the pictures of the firestorm is amazing. it litterally melted steel, and the survivors lived by hiding under blankets in the pestigo river. amazing
Thanks for this concise explanation - I often struggle to explain the history of wildland firefighting in my home state of Washington to friends from other places, and I think this video will be helpful.
Minute Earth!!! Y'all do awesome work. The informativeness, tempo, and beautiful visuals makes understanding so simple. Keep it up!
but preventing damage isnt good for winning public opinion, only fixing apparent problems with instant gratification
This was very interesting, thank you for putting this out there!
I identify as a wildfire, and your non oppression offends me
+TheManOfRash Wildfire can't melt steel beams
culwin what about Valyrian steel beams?
+TheManOfRash I identify as a non oppression, and your offend wildfires me.
+TheManOfRash I'm sorry our oppressive suppression has repressed your regression of conflagrations' long term impression. We'll learn our lesson next congressional session. Or not.
+GelidGanef what?
You also have to add in to fire management with letting fires burn is that some trees need the heat of fires to release their seeds from the cones that have or will drop to the ground during the fire.( I've heard of 1500°F temps to open up some pinecones.)
supported by +TodayIFoundOut ?! I love that channel, its sister channel Top Tenz, and their narrator Simon Whistler! Nice way to get the word out there, guys! Been with you since practically the beginnings.
+Micah Philson Thanks! MinuteEarth was very kind to us on this one. We've been a huge fan of theirs (and before that MinutePhysics) for a long time. It was actually MinutePhysics that first got us thinking several years ago, "We should really make a TH-cam channel." Just took a lot of time to get together the money and carve out some time to actually do it. :-)
Today I Found Out Well I for one am incredibly glad it finally worked out that well! And your growing fanbase shows I'm not the only one. I've been watching Minute Physics videos as well since they first started being made, but had no idea they were that good or inspiring! ;)
This video was like a breath of fresh air! Finally some people who can look past the stereotypical image of the evil logger and realize that irresponcability, lazyness, and greed destroy the environment; not logging!
"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
- Mark Twain.
Thank you for all these videos! :) these are really educational and are appreciated!
Generate electricity from the controlled fires while you're at it!
+NukeML How?
+Nilguiri the concentration of smoke can be used to push an axis that will rotate around a coil with thus creates electricity.
(I think this is how its done, may be wrong.)
+Geheimnis 名前 CMXI Yeah, but where would you put the turbine...
+CUB3M4ST3R what about thermoelectric generators?
+Hakkı Oktay they dont generate as much power as would offset the cost of producing ones that large, Thermoelectrics are still very expensive. They most efficient way would be to log the trees first then burn them all in controlled high efficiency facilities. This way we can use steam and turbines just like coal power plants do getting the most out of the produced heat. Unfortunately the energy density is much lower than coal so we couldn't switch all power plants over to this method there is just not enough energy. It could certainly help though.
There is no situation on Earth that humans can't make worse.
2:23 probably because high emergency spending is making huge profit for someones.
Here in Spain, especially in the quite dry centre, you can occasionally see "lines" of unforested areas (kinda like the US-Canada border, but wider), which are created to prevent fires from spreading to other areas. It's killing some trees, but benefitting the whole ecosystem. Also, the "empty" spaces can be used for electricity posts, radio towers, etc.
why burn it and throw heaps of co2 into the air why not log it which is profitable and doesnt throw co2 into the air
+historical-oracle you do realise that all the CO2 being "thrown" into the air came from the air right? Burning organic hydrocarbons is a carbon neutral process.
No One yes i realize that, but since we are burnign so much oil already, and throwing up co2 into the air, burning forests on purpose so that there arent bad forest fires is not the best option.
if we werent burning so much oil then it would be the best option to burn wood, as it would return much of the nutrients back into the ground, but burning forests while we are burning tons of carbon that has been sitting in the crust for thousands of years isnt a good idea.
+Giggstow How much CO2 would get released in the process of cutting and transporting the wood compared to how much was locked up in the wood in the first place, anyway?
I don't understand what you think would happen to the carbon if it wasn't burnt. It's still going to be released anyway as the tree dies and breaks down...
That depends what you do with the wood after you've finished using it. If you burn it or let it decompose the carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere, if you lock it away somewhere it can't decompose it works as a carbon sink.
this video is 100% correct. I was a wild land firefighter in Oregon and most of our forest are unhealthy due to there fire cycles being broken.
Shouldn't we log it instead though, so it doesn't go to waste? Saying they should burn it instead of log it seems kinda wasteful..
junoguten they did mention selective logging as one way to help but controlled burning is actually beneficial as it helps reinvigorate the soil as well as removing dense and dry areas of trees that could make an actual wildfire more hazardous
junoguten generally it is combination of efforts that happens. This is why if you have ever been in a Forrest where there are piles of cut logs, that is what they are for. thus when the area is proscribed burned it is easier to control, has less smoke, and extends the benefits. burning get is important aspect to because many plants need a good purging burn to reinvigorate growth, biodiversity, and help the life cycles of many pinetrees.
+junoguten A lot of the useful wood IS often hauled away 1st. Also, it's important to remember that most of what is burned during "control burns" isn't useful to humans anyway -- excess underbrush, dead limbs, fallen trees, rotting stumps & so on -- & any useful wood that does end up burned still provides nutrient-rich ash for the area. Finally, the heat from those fires allows certain trees to reproduce, so it's all still "useful," even if it gets burned up.
Great video! I like how at the end of the video some of the money started to burn. That really sums it up.
Controlled logging sounds and is great. You can even make profit out of the woods this way.
+derLPMaxe Most of the time making money on it depends on the location, if its not near a truckable road than you have to make your own roads, and that slowly cuts into any profits.
***** Yeah, propably nothing for US predatory capitalism.
derLPMaxe Theres not a big market for wood anymore, its mostly taken care of by farms and the already set up loging industry (which is declining a bit as demand goes down).
***** Well. We really do need wood here in Europe. €100/m³ is pretty common (at least in Germany).
Start an export, make lots of money and lower the bloody prices here! ;)
I worked Forest Survey up in Okanogan for the past 2 weeks and I can confirm they are doing a lot of thinning and controlled burns. It all makes sense to me now.
Of course it all comes back to congress.
OMG, the picture of the capital building packed with cash on it's sides is so adorable! I love it!
Deal with the haze indonesia.
~Sincerely,your friendly neighbours
feel u. dang the psi
+Joseph Cheng (CM Lynx) LoL! indonesia burn the forest before they watched this video!
+Joseph Lynx at least there's no school for a day!
Shum Jie Hui Go 300 over psi~
yup hahaha
Thanks for making this video. Hopefully this will spread awareness.
In Western Australia it is policy to burn off the bushland every few years. This has been an active measure going back tens of thousands of years by the Aboriginals and now continued by European settlement.
In the Eastern States of Australia the fires are much worse because they do not do as regular or as thoroughly as the West... despite the West being drier and hotter.
Regular bushfires also means Western Australian bush has some of the largest biodiversity in the world.
+Joel Reid
That's awesome! Makes sense too, Australia's getting so dry, one big fire could take out so much bushland...
How do you think it compares to chopping it down? Or would that just be too labour-intensive?
some person cutting down trees only targets a couple of species and there is no protection by trees to stop clearfelling. Australian plants grow faster after fire to outcompete for nutrients and are often growing from their stumps or central core (Australian trees have the hardest wood in the world and so resist fire better). Plants do not grow faster after being cut down, especially since their stumps are usually also torn up for wood chipping.
+Joel Reid
Didn't know all that. Thanks :)
This is the BEST KIND of channel and videos I ever saw but I kinda wish they could add some myths and history a bit
another thing the government decides to cut spending on, then put it all in military
How about all the prison money vs schools
Alexc99xd yea we pay more money per prisoner in the us than per student
Omg my eyes are so open now to this topic. Thank you, MinuteEarth :')
this is such an anti hippy thing to do
And...
Deadpixelator the hippies will be mad lol
+illyounotme LOL, you really know your hippies don't you! I'd say you're about spot on with that analysis. I'm an old hippie who has been pro-fire for almost 40 years. My Plant Ecology professor wrote his dissertation on fire ecology and he drilled that subject into us.
+shay campbell So it will be a win-win.
Being employed with the Forest Service as a Forestry Technician (Fire) and having first hand knowledge of this, it's true. We need forest fires lol
The Native Americans knew this all too well.
2:44 It was so satisfying to see that annoying bully who always gets in the way's money BURN.
Expecting congress to fund such a program is the most counter-intuitive idea in this video. Correcting ANY economic, social, or environmental issue is up to us and the money in your bank account. True we all have to pay taxes, but we don't all have to buy a new car, new iphone, or lavish vacation. Reallocate 10% percent of your budget towards something you care about and really watch things change.
+S7one_47 You're suggesting we allow congress to continue to be dysfunctional and side step them by paying for forest management ourselves? Sorry, but thats pretty half baked. I agree with your sentiment but it's not reasonable. We could solve this a quite a few other problems by reforming government.
Tyler Hamilton how would you go about changing the house and the senate? Limit terms, force representation without compensation, or what? They're detached from the American people and that is why they don't get anything done. They goons suckling at the teat of lobbyists. We spend so much money on military weather necessary or not. Militarization and defense is deeply ingrained in the American physique so how would we go about reallocating those funds.? You want to feed a man, teach him to fish, don't ask Caesar to help he's too busy sprinkling lead into his wine. All I'm saying is be that catalyst of change, donate your time and resources, your representative is pulled by too many strings in too many directions to invest any time, energy, or man power into supporting what you care about.
S7one_47 It's just not that easy. There would need to be massive reform to do even what you're suggesting. Head out into a NF with a chainsaw and torch can, start doing some forest management and see what happens. Even if we took stewardship into our own hands it would need to be organized by the NFS, and there's still no funding, even to oversee volunteers. This is coming from someone who has done a lot of volunteer trail work and worked with the NFS. There are trails out there that can't even be managed with purely volunteer forces because there is no money to pay 2 or 3 rangers to oversee them. Massive government reform is the only way for a federal service to manage this issue. The only alternative would be to allow state organizations to manage federal land. CA has several state park areas dedicated to experimenting with forest management like Mountain Home. Congress is populated with special interest ass hats because we keep putting them in there, this is our fault. Like it or not we need government money to manage our forests or the Feds have to be more compromising about letting 3rd party organizations manage the land. Either way you are dealing with Federal Law which is controlled by.... Congress. This is the country we live in.
Tyler Hamilton I'm not advocating going out on your own without permission and burning and chopping down trees. It sounds hopeless when you say we have to go through the federal government to do this but with federal lands you may be right. Sort of. I can't imagine a park ranger being so selfish and all consumed that he or she couldn't or wouldn't volunteer some of their time to "supervise" a public project. Even so, don't you think that if enough people rallied behind a cause and donated whatever funds they could, that a project like the one in the video could be funded by common folk? Consider public radio, they solely rely on membership to stay afloat. At least the couple in my area do.
S7one_47 I didn't think you were and I was being a little obtuse just to prove my point. Most forest land is under some kind of Fed control and like it or not we have to work with them if there is to be some kind of trained volunteer program for management. As it stands it isn't even legal for you and me to go in there and cut down a tree in many of these places, even if we are trained. Only USFS employees can do it and under certain circumstances like trail management, those under their supervision can. There is also massive logistics involved, man power being a very small cost in the grand scheme. What I do know from research made available from places like Mountain Home is that fire prevention is more cost effective than fire suppression in every case. Nearly all forest management research is being done by state agencies, mostly in the West. The USFS needs to work with state agencies to implement programs and allow trained volunteers in to work when necessary but Federal money still needs to be allocated and spent, there is no avoiding this. If I was going to donate 10% of my money to something it would be much better spent on a lobby or PR campaign showing that prevention is cheaper than suppression and Congress is wasting money AND lives as many hotshots die every year in increasing numbers. You have to make people care so much that there is some kind of reason for Congress to give two shits. Otherwise they will just copy and paste the same budget year after year because they resist change, even if it saves money. Thats bureaucracy and we have to work with it or remove it and the latter never really works out very well.
I feel like the creators of this video do not understand that controlled burns have been going on for a long time. Additionally, fires are only put out if they threaten structures. If a fire is just burning and not a threat, you make a fire line around it and you let it burn out the area.
a three minute video takes me 20 minutes to watch
god damn my internet
rip in pepperonis
Australia has used controlled burning, or backburning, for years as a preventative measure. I honestly cannot remember a single spring where I haven't smelt the burning being done.
its stupid to burn forests. it just makes more sense to allow logging. this way people can actually make money while preventing potential fires.
Agreed, however people have been saying things about some ash helping trees. I don't know where that is coming from, but I won't argue against it because I'm uninformed.
Larry Frakous ash makes the ground more fertile, but the ecosystem sustains itself. Burning it down totally destroys the ecosystem in place and reverts it to earlier stages of succession. The argument refutes itself. After burning, the trees are gone so there being ash is pointless.
Controlled fires allow new and stronger trees to grow. Pine trees can only spread seeds in fires. Just cutting them down means no new trees and the old trees eventually die.
Brent'sCardsAnd Coins ok so if a pine tree is set on fire, its pine cones dont get fried up?
Its not that hard to extract the pinecones (after chopping the trees down) and spread them over the forest floor. It is an extremely simple procedure which is easy to implement if what u say really is the case. Burning forests is such a stupid idea given all the shit about global warming and the rates of species extinction.
A lot of plants in the Mediterranean biomes actually have evolved to be somewhat fire resistant and also some are even stimulated by smoke. Pine trees rely on fires to spread their seeds, it is because their seeds get burned that new ones can grow. Fires have been and still are a natural part of the earth, its just that human presence has made it bad.
Straight to the facts in an entertaining way that's also easy to understand.
start fires, don't give the industry more of a reason to log. if you start fires in less dry and windy conditions it also helps fertilize the soil which is better since logging (most of the time) damages soil
I work in forest conservation. I appreciate this video's emphasis on prescribed, low-intensity fires to reduce fuel. Many economic interests, including the Forest Service, like to promote logging as a tool for fuel reduction, but it has serious trade-offs that are rarely acknowledged. Unlike prescribed fire which tends to reduce the most hazardous small fuels and does so without building roads or removing important habitat structures, commercial logging tends to remove larger trees with commercial value. The larger trees are not a fire hazard. They have thick bark and they hold most of their fuel high above the ground and out of the way of surface fires. Removing large trees also removes the canopy attached to those trees which makes the forest hotter, dryer, and windier (making the fire microclimate more hazardous). Removing the canopy also produces a lot of hazardous slash that must be dealt with, and extra light and moisture reaches the ground stimulating the growth of small fuels that can form "ladder fuels" allowing fire to climb from the surface to the canopy. If only small trees are removed, and if the canopy density is maintained, then the fire microclimate remains more cool and moist and the growth of ladder fuels is suppressed. tl;dr - logging is not the solution to fire hazard. it's best to manually remove fuels within 100 feet of homes and reintroduce fire in the backcountry.
The moment you realize that they don't do as much as they should because they are too stupid to hire logging firms who can make a profit off it, and instead quarrel about the cost of cutting trees.
Like seriously, you can just systemize logging and give the firms a compensation for the reduction of profits and for helping prevent catastrophies. Everybody's happy.
Like some others have already explained, logging is not as effective as actually burning it. A lot of natural processes take place when a forest burns that help it out in the future. Read up on fire ecology.
***** Your comment is an amazingly efficient exercise in how to completely miss the point.
+RedTriangle53 Question: If there was a profit to be made, why are they not doing it currently? Answer: There is not profit to be made. Either the forest is not suitable for logging, less profitable than other logging areas or a great plethora of other reasons why logging firms dont do this in most areas.
Also Reydrield was correct, logging is not as cost-effective, and there are other benefits from burning. Not only did she not miss the point, she countered your argument in the first sentence.
Giggle Gasm The point.
If you feel inclined to have a flashback to reading my comment, please note how I claimed that it would be cheaper to *compensate* any logging firm following the system than to make an individual project of it.
If being sensible is less profitable than being destructive or counterproductive, it's the duty of any capitalistic government to maximize the safety and sustainability of their system by making the sensible alternative profitable to private concerns. That way, market interests will do the work for them.
Not that the states is the definition of a functional capitalism or anything...
+RedTriangle53 You seem to be the only person who gets it :P Privatization can be extremely beneficial with just the right amount of government intervention.
Wasn't there a video similar to this? Describing some kind of forest fire paradox where you should let some fires burn because otherwise there'll be too much dead wood laying around?
61 Unskippable ads until I could watch this
+RaksadaRX Where they hell do u live?! I have 1 ad then 1 banner on everything under 20 minutes
+Merik Malhads He's lying.
+RaksadaRX Adblock my friend.
Rudy_Eila Yea Adblock ftw.
+Rudy_Eila Adblock is complicated: if you donate to support the channels you like most, then that mostly makes up for using adblocker (much more money going to one place, no money going elsewhere) But, if you don't support anything, then you're actually hurting the content creators that you enjoy.
There is a fire going on in Colorado rn, the air quality is so bad, but hopefully it stops soon.
But... but America really needs more military drones and advanced nukes!
Nukes are bad.
3 or 10 of them, isn't world ending.
But if we engage in nuclear war, no one will win.
Nukes need to be limited, to where Nations can only have up to 12.
Military drones are cool I guess.
MURICA!
Don't worry, remember these controled fires? They are created by military drones dropping advanced nukes. No need ti worry.
Piotr Domagalski
Have u ever heard of diplomatic solution ?
This is why land management agencies have prescribed burns. They help eliminate the dead and down that has fallen on the forest floor and minimize the risk of massive fires. Yet the very real effects of global warming don't help. Many parts of the nation have been in long periods of drought and no matter how many Rx burns they do, there will still be a high risk of fire.
Get the republicans out of Congress so we can get some progress.
superfinevids
I agree
Meanwhile in Australia
Late Spring-Summer-Early Autumn(Fall): Bushfire Season
Winter-Early Spring: Back-burning Season
Had an German exchange student working with me, and she noticed a pillar of smoke, probably a couple of kilometres away (suburbs in Australia kinda just turn into bush with no warning) and asked if we should call the fire brigade. She was shocked to learn that not only were the firies onto it, they'd started it.
lol 420 viewer
I watched it 2 days ago on Vessel. :)
+Cookie Builder k
+Cookie Builder HAX
+The Lunatic Fridge 420 BLAZE it
+Cookie Builder That thing still exists? I completely forgot about it, lol.
I got an ad for fire prevention before this video. OOOOH THE IRONY!
Donald Trump will solve this problem!
Please do not
Wildfires will not grow to Canada because he will build that wall!!!! Vote and love Trump forever!
+Ang Li "Fuck them all to death!"
+Ang Li will he build a great wall to keep the fires out?
specktre _ To keep the Canadians out of course. They come to the USA with their little eyes, and try to force their disgusting language on us. I don't want to learn the Canadian alphabet! So "Fuck them all to death" it is.
I hope you guys have got on top of this since this was posted. This is common knowledge in Australia (not to mention some species of trees here require burns for their lifecycle).
NSW screwed this up once recently and payed dearly within a couple years.
Bonus points for taking back the proper use of epic
That's what Australia is doing for a while now, right? There they even found many plants needed the fire for their reproduction, as many only flower after fires, or the seedpods need the fire to open.
And, as damaged those controlled burned areas look right after a fire, the year after? Beautiful!
What happened to save the trees? I thought this channel was tree-hugger channel. But now they tell us to log and burn trees? It has now earned my subscription.
Who woulda thunk.
Can we take some money out of military to put into this instead? :/
No.
+PogieJoe I don't think we're that smart.
+PogieJoe
Too many congressional districts would lose their military bases and military industrial complex jobs.
+PogieJoe lol 'thunk'
Worth noting that control burns only work as a policy to start with, as it ends changing the distribution of flora species, those which favor fire come back stronger whilst those that don't die off, the end result is a forest that all favors burning, meaning bigger hotter and more frequent fires. Similar problem arises with controlled logging unless all species are removed equally.
Thanks for teaching us!
I really like the idea of using Mediterranean Cypress trees as barriers for fires. Of course introducing a new species (especially a water retaining one during a drought) could cause other issues but I still find it fascinating.
The Forest Service lets a lot of fires in wilderness areas burn naturally. We also do a lot more prescribed burning than we used to. In a lot of places, specifically in California, letting fires outside of wilderness areas burn naturally isn't possible because of human encroachment into the forests.
Very good video. It's incredible this is 8 years old. In recent years, enormous and costly wildfires have been almost exclusively attributed to global warming, which is an exaggeration to say the least. By far, the most important thing we're NOT doing is controlled burns and similar brush removal.
Looks very logical like Minecraft more coal more stuff burned no coal no more stuff getting burned
a big problem is that an area with a controlled burned looks bad afterwards to many people, and people don't realize that it's healthy and natural, and tend to not want burns.
I livein New Mexico, and we have been doing controlled burns for (what seems like) my whole life. I thought it was weird to find out that it was not the norm in other places.
I'm 0:02 seconds into the video but I think I have a pretty good idea what it's gonna talk about. They're gonna say that you should let wild fires burn (sometimes) because when the plants die it creates a new healthy layer of soil and allows a fresh new forest grow back.
(Edited: ehhh didn't talk bout that but my teacher told me that so yeah)
The moment I realized that even my bike can't save me from that fire spread...
Holy shit, I had no idea that the fires traveled that fast.
+Yosef Estill wait till July then light a branch of last years Christmas Tree. You'll see how fast fire travels and how a 5 foot tree can turn into 15 feet of blowtorch.
+Yosef Estill Because the heat rises, there are strong winds that rush to the base of the fire. When that fire is thousands of square acres, the updraft can start generating it's own weather. It's a trip to see lightning coursing through a pillar of smoke.
I love those drawings/animations.
There's controlled burns and selective logging where I live. Seeing scorched ground while driving freaked me out at first as a teen until I educated myself on it.
this puts a whole new meaning to fight fire with fire
Where i live, people are allowed into the woods by legal right where they start campfires and collect all the dead trees and branches to fuel these campfires. Hence, when there is a forest fire it's usually not so bad because every branch that ever hits the ground is burned in a campfire and most branches that are dead at the lower portion of the tree are also harvested by every visitor to the forest.
Total cost? Zero!
Northern New Mexico, 2000. The Cerro Grande Fire.
A controlled burn that went out of control. It was then put out. It hadn't covered the controlled burn area so was started again. It then went WAY out of control and ran through the near by town of Los Alamos (Home of the Manhattan Project).
Great episode, thanks
I wonder who draws all this stuff, it's amazing!
Ever Salazar. He has a channel but is dormant.
The ad at the beginning of this vid was the "Smokey just gave me a bear hug" ad.
While the main topic does seems messed up I do understand it. My FIL burns his yard every year after his harvest. The several acres around his home are already burned down. If the fires do come around, already having burned land, he has saved his home about 4 times in the last 20 years from wild fires.
In Australia, we start little controlled fires to further prevent really ban wildfires.
I never had a fire ruin with my house
I play Smokey Bear for a State Park. Our message has changed from one of preventing forest fires to preventing wildfires. A subtly different terminology but a critically important one. Fire management benefits the environment and will help save the homes and communities that have foolishly been built in fire zones. A fire zone is as bad as a flood zone in the level of danger to the inhabitants. It is probably natural that humans gain understanding much more slowly than the people who are studying an issue but after so many disastrous floods governments started preventing development in flood prone areas. The same must happen in fire prone areas. Much of the Western US is such a zone. Fires are a natural and consistently occurring part of the environment and must be taken into consideration before building communities.
MinuteEarth: They are playing with fire.
Me: ...
OHOH!! OHOH!! MY LOVE IS *ON FIREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*
So basically we have to fight fire with fire. Now i finally understand that one Firebat quote.
In New Zealand we often burn off fire prone gorse scrub both to kill the weed and prevent hot summer flair ups
Logging seems like the plan to me, stops crazy wildfires and also gets wood from forests we actually want to cut down, instead of rainforests and whatnot.
Here in Australia I heard they're finding the little twigs and dead stuff in the forests so that they can make a controlled fire instead of waiting til the fires start, it seem to be doing well.