The CO2 Coalition recently posted a video interview with Oregon-based forest scientist Dr. Robert Zybach discussing the role of big stupid government in making forest fires worse than they need to be, and recovery longer and slower than it ought to be. And speaking of actual climate scientists, Zybach did his Ph.D. on historical aboriginal use of fire in Western North America (yes they burned a lot of area when it suited them) so he knows the subject in real-world terms not just computer models. Moreover, he has written many times about the way that modern environmentalist-driven restrictions have created the risk of catastrophic forest fires, by making it harder for land managers to clear the remnants of storms, remove deadwood after beetle infestations etc. And, like a good scientist, he doesn’t simply claim to be able to explain past events, he makes a specific prediction about where a future catastrophic fire is bound to happen. If it does, will they acknowledge it?

Specifically, Zybach presents data on timber harvest rates in Oregon’s Elliott State Forest since 1950:

The orange line marks the year that the Clinton Administration listed the Snowy Owl as an endangered species, a highly controversial and tendentious decision from before the carbon obsession became a mania and a decision on the basis of which green groups managed to drastically reduce logging. The various lettered flags on the chart mark court decisions that deepened the restrictions on logging activity, the green line shows average annual wood growth in the Elliott State Forest and the yellow line represents the allowable cutback set back in 1988. Whereas the white line shows the planned modern allowable cut, other than salvage of dead trees.

The actual cut is indicated in red. And so thus the growing vertical gap between what was accumulating, the green line, and what was being removed, represents the fuel buildup in that forest each year. By now it is massive and therefore one day in the not-so-distant future, it will burn, explosively and catastrophically.

At that point the usual suspects will blame climate change and shout “Gotcha!”. But the real culprit will be big stupid government and their environmentalist allies.

In the video, Zybach also describes episodes, from his own direct experience of living and working in Oregon forests all his life, in which entrepreneurs recovered from storm or wildfire events rapidly and effectively. For instance, he recounts a town in Oregon burning down due to a fire on a private forest site, after which the company rebuilt the town better than before in 90 days. He also describes a massive Columbus Day windstorm stretching from northern California to south Washington that blew down 11 billion cubic feet of timber on a Friday. By Monday landowners were salvaging the wood and had the roads cleared. And of course he compares these episodes to the LA wildfires in California and other similar calamities in the US west, in which the landowners and property managers are sidelined and prevented from responding and rebuilding while government um uh well that is to say…

And yet conventional wisdom keeps chanting about how lucky we are to live in an age of scientific progress with government close at hand to make our lives better.