The big, open question right now is how much of the California wildfires is due to climate change and how much is due to aggressive fire suppression over the pas 50+ years.
Climate change is a distracting question because it can't be answered with any accuracy. Are you expecting an answer like "52% of the blame can be assigned to climate change"... how does that help?
The super-dry brush needs controlled burning. California will need to put up with polluted air during the controlled burns. We have to in Australia at times. People complain and the authorities say "sorry but we need to do this, please stay indoors during the burnoff".
Strategic placement of water tanks in the hills and around properties. Building codes, roof-top sprinklers with backup power so people can leave their house to fend for itself with better odds of survival. All of these measures matter. Bickering about climate change helps nobody.
The Santiago Canyon Fire in 1889 burned 10x what's currently burning in Pacific Palisades. Whether the fires are a coin-flip or a two-thirds probability, they're just going to happen.
is that really that relevant? according to the climate change people this is just going to keep happening, and not just in California but in Washington and Oregon and across Canada and who knows how many other places. This on top of larger storm surges, heat waves, flooding, drought, heating and acidification of the seas, loss of sea ice, etc. All things that we have empirical evidence for.
It only makes sense to stress this question if you reject that premise entirely, and think that if we just get California to to better managing its underbrush, then this whole thing goes away.
otherwise the causality is a bit moot? except maybe it opens the discussion about how much we can afford to spend to clear brush given that this is going to keep being a problem.
They'll need to manage the underbrush better, regardless of how much of an effect was due to climate change. People are going to live there and need to take protective measures. Climate change only increases the amount of management required.
Is it an open question? This is an article from 1995 about how massive city-razing fires are endemic to the region and have been for decades. Decades later, it continues to be right. What does it matter whether the fires are monocausal?
