cross your fingers for grand lake and granby
May God be with those who are in its path and those fighting to contain it.
Slipshot & Wytex are on it... grasses will be there shortly; everything else will come along in nature’s timing. It’ll be good for the Elk that make it through this winter, but it’s going to make for interesting hunting once the doghair gets to be about head high.
Hoping a lot of north-facing slopes will be moist enough to prove fire-resistant, but there’s just SO much fuel up there right now....
One good thing in our drainage is that the aspens have really come along in the past 20 years, and live aspens don’t burn much.
PECO's Link
as far as elk and game returning.
There is plenty of evidence out there that shows elk like post burn areas(and hate beetle kill areas). They feel secure/like they are in cover even though they are easy to see. And there is abundant new growth on the years after....
HOWEVER...
due to climate change and the fact that these fires are burning "hotter" than fires in the past, there are new studies that are showing forests are taking much longer to recover than they normally should. This is due to the heat of the fire just kills too much, even nutrients in the soil. And the increase in temp from climate change and lack of water does not encourage native growth of what was originally there. IE... forests that were Ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, Douglas-fir, Rocky Mountain juniper etc may end up gowning back as something else, thus impacting the animals there on top of taking longer to grow back.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/13/911935457/as-wildfires-grow-more-intense-iconic-western-forests-may-not-come-back
@rt... fires from human ammunation happen often enough I believe it's how one of colorado's started last yea... a skip off a rock can do it, it's that dry. But normally from tracer rounds. https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/colorado-agency-to-reopen-gun-range-where-fire-was-started/73-594538994
Also as far as this area is concerned, I hunted near denver creek campground this year. Lots of idiots, yes IDIOTS had their wood/coal heating stoves going in their outfitter tents. Simply not allowed. Don't know what caused this fire. But there are usually fairly good reasons why certain bans exist. Yes the bans suck, but ravaging wild fires suck even more. It literally only takes 1 spark.
I wonder what a chart of annual acres burned by wildfire would show, say from 1900 forward to today.....
The trend line would be some kind of a U-shape. First we had fires on a regular basis. Then we got real good at putting them out. Then we had a long period of fuel accumulation. Now that fuel is drier than a popcorn fart and the whole thing is ready to blow.
Hang onto your earlobes!
I mean there is no denying "climate change"(earth getting warmer) just like there's no denying that Trump is our president.
The numbers are in black and white.
What is up for debate is the cause of the climate change... earth naturally getting warmer vs humans making it warmer. And what will happen because of climate change.
Literally the numbers are in black and white that show our planet(and state of Colorado) getting warmer and warmer year after year, decade after decade. The ONLY thing up for debate is why, and what will happen as a result of it.
"more fires" seems like are reasonable outcome if a place is warmer and has less water. It's not rocket science. Sure humans play a part. But less water more heat would lead to more fires.(also warmer temps and not getting as cold as long helps the bark beetle spread since cold kills it/makes it go dormant). Compounding factor after compounding factor.
I guess it’s headed east… So I don’t need to worry about my mom too much, but boy, it’s right there in the neighborhood!
Why were wildfires burning 900% more acres per year in the early 1900's and even more pre-colonization? Was that due to climate change?
Many people require some learnin' in perspective, especially when promoting alarms of climate change is causing this and that....
But hey, climate change (recall GLOBAL WARMING had to be tabled because it made it too hard to blame ice and snowstorms on humans) is all our fault...
Hope like hell the Divide halts the fire and west winds for a couple more days keep the fire "up against a wall" to allow some containment.
First off, climate changer IS real. Doesn't matter what the reason is for it. It's happening. And it's a global warming trend over an unprecedented short period of time. There may or may not be much we can do about it, but the less we can do, the more we should be preparing for the effects. Also, historical data is not relevant for the type of devastation from all types of more violent events that WILL result since our population is so much higher. Doing nothing but claiming "climate is always changing, just get used to it", is irresponsible and just plane stupid, or at least short-sighted and defeatist.
As to winds being the same, or even similar in this entire fire area, it just ain't so in the mountains. We were (and still are) under the smoke plume from the East Troublesome Fire yesterday, about half way between the Cameron Peak Fire to the north and the Calwood Fire to the south, and there was not even a breeze here. Judging from the small plume from Calwood, it was very light there.
As to the National Forest closures, shooting is just one of the concerns, and that concern is not so much from the bullet but from the muzzle blast. A greater concern is from smokers, illegal campfires, and any number of careless, or actual accidental ignition sources. We a re SO dry right now that NO ONE has ever seen this type of extremely rapid, large scale fire escalations. I saw the Calwood fire's first hint of smoke, to burning a couple of dozen homes to the ground miles away in just a couple hours. Those folks only had about 20 minutes warning to evacuate.
Also, as dry as it's been for months, it really doesn't make any difference whether its live standing trees or beetle kill trees, they ALL burn like dry wood. The best hope for saving property and homes is to have already done extensive fire mitigation. But of course, that is expensive and labor intensive, and there is no financial incentive to protect our forests and properties ahead of time. They evidently would rather spend the money fighting fires instead.
How quickly the landscape recovers, and how wildlife fares is still an open question. We certainly won't see any forest recovery in our lifetimes. It will be a very different landscape for a long time, and with climate change, maybe forever. Even when grass and shrubs start to regenerate, it will be a miserable place to hike/hunt due to all the ash for many years.
You are aware the Cameron Peak fire is also on the east side of the divide?
As a former commercial pilot, and long time resident of Colorado I was witness constantly to extremely variable winds at different altitudes and locations near each other from orographic effects, frontal passages, and many other variables. As a hunter, you should have experienced many of these in macro and micro events. Just turn your back to a strong wind and take a leak. Then tell which way the important wind was blowing. ;-)
He was saying that the beetle kill trees weren’t providing much of the fuel for these fires.
He really should leave the city limits and look around
Pre-settlement, the natives set fires deliberately on a regular basis. Then when they became “wildfires”, we put them out.
All you’ve proven is a profound gap in your knowledge of the history.
So… ONE more time!
CO2-enriched air stores more heat. Proven in a lab many times.
In a few, short centuries, we humans have burned millions of years worth of carbon that was stored deep in the earth as fossil fuel, and now it’s in the air. That too, has been measured, in PPM.
If that doesn’t add up to more heat stored in the atmosphere for you, you obviously have a bright future in politics, where spending more money and lowering everyone’s taxes always adds up to a smaller deficit.
Like Ed Koch said: I can explain it to you. I can’t understand it for you.
I’ve driven thru many mtn subdivisions and there is hardly any fire mitigation in these neighborhoods. And people wonder why their house burns up.
Because wind isn't the only factor, and likely the wind on the ground wasn't exactly the same due to orographic differences.
Cnelk, I made similar comments about forest and residential property management as it pertains to fire mitigation above. But I would rather see forests managed with at least some concern for fire mitigation rather than primarily for commercial gain. The clear cutting I see is far from ideal for forest management.
Sure the earth might be in a drying trend right now. But I think the earth cycles. There have been drought times and cold periods in history. But our Governor Polis wants to ban gas powered vehicles. Because they are the attribute to these fires.
Logging and forest management can help a lot. Our forests were Choked full and with fire suppression made them sick. Pine beetles came in and did the work that fires were supposed to do.
Unfortunately these areas need to burn. People homes No...but all the beetle kill and mess needs to be cleaned Up.
Our neighbor's cabin was taken by the Cameron fire last week. Another friend owned a beautiful home in Grand Lake that he sold a couple years ago. Map shows about 1/2 that neighborhood is gone.
I believe climate change is cyclical. It's happened in the past. The damage done today is more evident because of populations and development. I do not believe it is caused by too much CO2
To say all climate change is anthropogenic is nonsensical at best.
Ucsdryder's Link
As far as "burning millions of years of hydrocarbons in a few hundred years" has caused heat to be trapped by CO2, that must explain why ice core samples have shown that CO2 lags temperature increase. And a lab ain't an ever changing environment. It's a controled experiment, meant to produce a given result.
Trade deals that killed American mills and people who think heart strings determine what is best is the problem. And people living in these areas are suffering for it. Somebody is going to pay the piper. And, as usual it’s the people that are affected by political games that is paying the price.
CO2 levels were way higher in the past. Before there were any machines. Plant and animal diversity and abundance was also very high in those periods.
We are still on the tail end of the last ice age. It was far warmer in the interim period between the last two ice ages.
Funny how the big scare in the 70’s was “Global Cooling”. Along with “Peak Oil”...
Those that attribute “Global Warming” primary to human influence have not researched very deeply.
Also interesting that the rhetoric has devolved in recent years to “Climate Change”. Mostly because the real climate data did not support “Global Warming”.
Typically, those who pray to the altar of cataclysmic “Global Climate Change” are after one thing - expansion of their power over people through fear.
What's your frame of reference for "unprecedented"? Last 50 years, 150, 1000 years. 1,000,000 years?
"It's real and it's happening, just open your eyes."
And it's happened before. Thousands of times. Long before man ever walked on the scene. History doesn't begin 150 years ago.
As far as coastal areas being destroyed, landscape is not a constant. Never was. But let's build homes, right on the beach, at or below sea level, and then complain when mother nature takes it back.
JohnMC's Link
Before you say this: "We are SO dry right now that NO ONE has ever seen this type of extremely rapid, large scale fire escalations" You might want to read "The Big Burn" it's a story about the largest recorded fire in US History and it happened in 1910 in the Northwest well before it was a well populated area. That fire was 3 million acres across Washington, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia.
You are correct that given the current nature of our landscapes, natural disasters can have a much bigger impact. Decades of fire suppression, buildup of beetle kill-largely due to said fire suppression, rampant buildout of suburbs, cabins etc onto rangelands combined with a climate that has been warming of late and a particularly dry summer makes for a terrible combination.
One of the problems we humans have is that we are terrible at assessing real risk, as opposed to perceived risk, and of predicting the future. We take what's in front of us and extrapolate it out into the future and it's almost always wrong. That's why the best scientists predicted another ice age in the 1970's and that's why today's climate scientists and their models all have a steep upward sloping trendline.
If you had taken the climate warming from the 1930's (dust bowl) and projected it forward like we've done with the last twenty years nobody would have predicted the cooling trend in the 1960's and 1970's.
I don't know if you've ever dealt with any modeling in your career or not, but I've dealt with some of the smartest analysts in the country on things such as predictions of future fuel consumption, GDP growth and pro forma financial models and they ALL get it wrong. Climate modeling is orders of magnitude more complex and full of unknowns. For us to put any faith in these models is folly.
The reason we all have ethanol in our gasoline now is that back in 2005 Oil was well over $100/bbl and all of the best models predicted that we were at peak oil production and the world was running out. The corn lobby jumped all over this and pushed the Renewable Fuel Standard through congress. They predicted a straightline growth in fuel consumption and baked in a mandated amount of ethanol and biodiesel be used. Those numbers (and their projections of oil production volume and price) were all completely wrong, but we are stuck with the consequences of legislation passed 15 years ago based on flawed models.
Bottom line, it's OK not to know everything. Nobody does, but we need to continue to be flexible and adapt to change because that's one thing we can be guaranteed about.
As to predictions, science improves all the time. But if they are correct, do we wait until they are proven right and then react, or do we prepare for it now. All of these warming/cooling events being given to prove global warming false, do not account for what we are seeing on a global scale now. It's similar to some that t want to revive/expand deplete-able fossil fuels, at any cost. I don't want to see the ANWR exploited that we. Sooner or later we WILL extract the last drop of oil from the ground. Do we wait until that day to address the ramifications, or should we be more responsible and start to transition to renewable energy now, and slow down the need for fossil fuels until technology can provide suitable alternatives? I know, I know, that's for future generation to worry about. Just kick the can down the road. Just remember, it wasn't all that long ago that no one thought many of our wildlife could be depleted, or that the ocean was so vast we couldn't possibly screw it up, or that we could keep sending things into orbit without regard for possible consequences.
And the main reason we have ethanol in our gas was because of the agriculture lobby as you said. They used it as an excuse to get subsidies. We haven't "needed" it since about when it went into effect. But I still find it hard to find non-ethanol gas.
My point about ethanol was that Governments are inherently bad at predicting the future. Markets do a much better job because they adjust constantly based on the latest information. Ten years ago the government could have said that they were wrong and backpeddled on ethanol but political realities don't allow for that, passing a bill encouraged billions of dollars of investment in the space and now you have jobs and investment on the line and now every corn belt politician has to be pro ethanol even though it's lauded as a bad idea except those in the industry (I used to be an ethanol trader...I know these guys).
So what happens if we build out this massive renewable platform. Everything in the midwest is covered in windmills and the entire southwest is covered in solar panels. You've destroyed a few hundred thousand jobs in the oil patch and raised energy prices for everyone on planet earth and then find out that the risks were overblown? Who's going to be responsible then? The reality is that nobody will be because we will all be dead before we know the outcome. Governments don't often suffer the consequences for their poor decisions they just place blame on the opposition party and move on to the next shiny object.