Sustaining us is made possible by Fireheart Pictures and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello, and thanks for joining us for sustaining us here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.

California and wildfires what is commonly referred to as fire season now seems to be a much more persistent and current event.

So why are these massive wildfires increasing in severity happening more often?

More lives are being lost, more property destroyed, more acreage burned, and not just in California or other places in the U.S., particularly the Western U.S.. Is this climate change or in fact, could there be other reasons as well that some of the media, some politician and some scientists don't talk about?

We're going to find out later in the broadcast.

First, though, we take you to Orange County, California, as we join firefighters with the Orange County Fire Authority as they prepare for the intense wildfire season.

This special ops team is doing everything possible to save lives and homes, as well as all the wildland and surrounding urban sprawl.

Canada, known for its breathtaking natural landscapes, is currently facing grave challenges raging wildfires.

These destructive infernos have been sweeping across vast areas, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake with their increasing frequency, intensity and scope, these wildfires have become a pressing issue, demanding urgent attention.

Coast to coast, forest fires have scorched more than 9.1 million acres in Canada already this year, and federal data show more than 400 active fires across the country and Project Warm and dry conditions in June, putting land from B.C.

all the way to western Quebec at risk until the end of August.

Tonight, cityscapes unrecognizable in much of the country, an eerie glow disguising Manhattan, the Washington Monument practically hidden and a haze over Detroit.

California residents are no strangers to out-of-control wildfires.

On average, California experiences thousands of wildfires annually, according to data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Cal Fire.

Between 2011 and 2020, the state had an average of around 7860 wildfires each year.

On March 1st, 1995, the Orange County Fire Authority was founded.

It was established through a consolidation of the Orange County Fire Department and 20 other local fire agencies within Orange County, California.

This merger created a unified and efficient organization to provide comprehensive fire protection, emergency medical services and other critical services to the residents and communities of Orange County.

Since its inception, the CFA has been dedicated to ensuring the safety and well-being of the region it serves.

This is the Orange County Fire Authority Air Operations Division, a specialized division within the Orange County Fire Authority, responsible for providing aerial firefighting support services during emergency incidents in Orange County, California.

This unit consists of helicopter and fixed wing aircraft that are equipped to perform various critical tasks in firefighting, search and rescue, medical evacuations and other emergency operations.

These aircraft are operated by skilled pilots and crew members who are trained in aerial firefighting tactics and techniques.

The primary mission of ocean air operations is to enhance the overall effectiveness of ground firefighting operations by providing air support.

This includes conducting rapid water drops to suppress wildfires, conducting reconnaissance flights to gather information about fire behavior and spread and transporting personnel and equipment to remote or inaccessible locations.

Welcome to Station 41 Orange County Fire Authority.

This is our air operations facility located in Fullerton, California, at Fullerton Municipal Airport.

My name is Michael Ortiz.

I'm a fire captain, crew chief for the Orange County Fire Authority, assigned to the air operations section.

Our Air operations section operates like any other fire station.

We're here 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

We operate rain or shine, day or night.

Our start times 8 a.m.. We are on 24 hour shifts.

So it's 8 a.m. to 8 a.m.. My day consists of when I get here, I talk to the crews, the outgoing crew, see what's going on with the aircraft within the mechanics.

Just kind of get an idea of what happened, why we're gone.

So we work two days on, 48 hours on and then four days off.

So 96 hours off.

So in that time, you know, some stuff can happen while you're off.

So you kind of try to get caught up aircraft.

What happened in the county, rescues, fires, stuff like that.

And then I go down into our office and I'll start doing my risk assessment.

And that's what check whether I'm seeing if there's anything, any upcoming maintenance on my bird bird meaning helicopter, and just kind of get an overall feel of what we're doing.

And it could be training that day.

So that increases my risk.

High fire danger, high winds, that increases my risk.

And then we also track all of our training.

So if any one of the crew is coming up on currency, meaning they need additional training to stay current, then we'll go out and train.

So we're tracking pretty much everything you can think of as we shift out of the spring into the summer environment, we begin to heighten our awareness for the wildfire season.

We are coming out of a significant rainfall this year.

Our fuels still are holding a significant amount of moisture.

However, with that rainfall this year, we experienced a tremendous amount of growth.

I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize the maintenance staff that we have here at CFA.

Our operations helicopters are extremely complex machines and every time we take off in flight we're relying on the safety of these aircraft.

And and that's all attributed to our our maintainers here at our operation is they spend hours every day ensuring we're ready for flight as well as post-flight inspections.

And we couldn't do it without them.

And we owe a huge amount of gratitude to them for keeping us safe.

And as always, by category, click on it.

Shows that while they're.

Down there in the air and.

I can see why.

Didn't.

You have to trade off first in alerting system?

This is only a partial.

But we got a fire.

The circuit breaker.

The Orange County Fire Authority serves as a trusted guardian, diligently working to protect lives, property and the environment in Orange County through its comprehensive fire prevention programs, swift emergency response and community education efforts, The CFA has demonstrated its commitment to ensuring public safety and resilience.

The authorities collaboration with other agencies emphasis on training and remarkable achievements further solidify its role as a pillar of strength in the region.

Thank you so much.

The Orange County Fire Authority, with the help of that report.

Now we're going to delve further into this subject because obviously, in addition to the fires themselves, there's also public policy and there's the climate change connection, which, let's be honest, it gets politicized from both the left and the right.

For example, many progressive politicians far left news networks, environmentalists, climate scientists.

Why insists climate change is the reason to blame for all the wildfires?

And the story?

Consequently, many Republican politicians, the far right conservative media, well, they insist this is nonsense.

Many of them claim wildfires are a normal occurrence that have nothing to do with climate change.

So before we discuss both arguments, here's some context.

Over the years, I've reported on several wildfires.

I spoken with many firefighters boots on the ground battling these wildfires every day.

Some of them tell me off the record climate change is secondary.

First, they say there has to be things like more consistent brush clearing, better wildland management, better livestock, vegetation management, for example, more sheep and goats grazing in wildlife areas to help with brush and vegetation to rid some of those rapidly igniting fire fields.

And yes, some are critical of the state of California, the Bureau of Land Management, the feds, they say there must be more discussing, mowing, plowing, felling trees to reduce those fire risk.

They even suggest the state of California and the feds, well, they've been negligent with this for whatever reason.

And some even argue this lack of action and accountability is also why we're having an increased number of wildfires.

However, to be fair, I've also interviewed many well-respected expert climate scientists and researchers.

Their argument, in part, is no matter how much mitigation you have, no matter how many abatement measures you employ, no matter how much money government throws at the problem to try and lessen these massive wildfire as well.

Climate change is in fact the culprit and they say unless we take climate change seriously, it's just going to get worse.

So to give us some further perspective on all of this is Dr. Chad Hansen.

Dr. Chad Hansen is the author of Smokescreen Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate.

Chad is a research ecologist with the John Muir Project.

He's also the author of dozens of scientific studies on wildfires and climate.

And also joining the panel is Ronald Stein.

Ronald is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book Clean Energy Exploitations.

Ronald is an international energy consultant, and he worked for companies like Flor and Bechtel over the years as a project manager.

Thank you both for being here.

My pleasure.

Glad to be here.

Thank you.

So, Chad and Ronald, could there be a more, let's say, common sense approach to all this where obviously we don't minimize climate change, we take climate change seriously.

However, we acknowledge possibly there are other things going on here that could, in fact, lessen the wildfire situation.

And to be honest, you know, often the national media, they're all opining about all this.

And when these wildfires happen, and often in the more far left media, they don't tell you that, well, that wildfire was technically the result of homeless folks accidentally setting fire to a campsite or, hey, you know what?

They were damaged power lines that caused a fire.

It seems that it's often the climate change narrative and nothing else.

Chad, first, who am I overstating this or is there some accuracy in what I'm saying, Chad?

Well, climate change is definitely an influence on wildfires.

The science is, in my view, very, very clear on that.

It's not the only factor that's relevant in wildfires.

So one you already alluded to, which is, you know, unplanned human ignitions, just people doing things accidentally and sometimes on purpose and cause ignitions.

You know, you need two things for fires to occur and spread.

You need the right, you know, weather conditions, hot, dry, windy conditions, and you need an ignition source.

So a lot of these fires, especially in your population centers, typically are mostly from human causes.

We can do something about that if we put some resources into curbing those unplanned human ignitions.

And the other key factor that gets left out of the conversation oftentimes is, you know what people sort of euphemistically called vegetation management or thinning.

And basically this is just logging operations out in the forests, which typically, based on most of the science, makes fires burn faster and oftentimes more severely toward towns.

It's actually not fuel reduction, and that's really just a euphemism for logging.

And it's a key factor that's making communities, you know, under greater threat.

Ronald, your take on sort of this climate change connection, the narrative, or are there other things going on as well in your opinion?

Well, Chad's right.

It's it's got to be really management pure because if you don't clear the forest and clear the woods, you know, populations growing.

We're moving further out.

We're moving into the forest and we're building what houses in the forest.

So we're basically adding fuel to that area.

So if we don't keep the area clean and ignite based on cause, you're what else is going to go with it?

Chad, With what he's saying, could there be more done on the state level, the federal level, possibly to manage wildfire regions?

Obviously, there's a lot of state land, federal land which is at risk of a massive wildfire.

In theory or really in reality, some of these areas have gone years without brush clearing, tree clearing, wildlife management, even cutting those massive trees under all the decay.

Talk about that, although I know you have an issue with getting rid of some of those trees, correct?

Yeah.

So so what we're seeing is that our current policies where at the state and federal level, we're most of the money is going into backcountry logging operations under terms like thinning and fuel reduction.

And what's happening is, is that under hot, dry, windy conditions, the current climate conditions in summer fires are blowing right through those areas.

Thousands and thousands of acres of these areas where logging operations happened under the guise of thinning.

Fires are burning very rapidly and intensely through those areas and then they're burning down towns.

We saw that in 2018 in paradise with the campfire.

We saw it 20, 21 with the Dixie Fire in the town of Greenville.

We saw it in 2021 with the Calgary fire in the town of Grizzly Flats.

Many other examples.

So so this is a failed approach.

What we know works is what we call home hardening and defensible space pruning.

And that's really focused on the homes themselves and the immediate zone within 100 feet of their homes.

It's not about logging.

It's about dry grasses and seedlings and saplings.

And so right now we're putting the money in the wrong places, and that's putting communities at risk.

Ronald, there is the politicking issue to all of this.

I know you've been critical of the politics, so to speak.

What is your take on all the bickering from the far left and right, far right as they continue to argue over what the culprit is of wildfires, you know, climate change or not?

Yeah, obviously climate change, as I said earlier, it's serious.

We've got to take it seriously.

However, these days there are a lot of researchers, a lot of scientists out there who seemingly and I don't want to over embellish just because that's not fair, but seemingly often blame a lot of things on climate change.

And there's also a political narrative.

Can you talk about that narrative?

Well, you know, talk about climate change.

Know, if you look back in the thirties, we had more wildfires back in that area.

In fact, today we got about 10% of the fires we had back in the thirties.

You know, climate change, I think there's too much emphasis on that.

And it's really more.

On.

The fuel, kind of keep emphasizing the fuel because, you know, it used to be you could cut out a tree and blog it out.

Now you can't even log out on a dead tree and you got to get a permit to do that.

So it's making the you know, the utility companies used to have right away authority and they would keep their areas clean.

So it didn't like it did go down.

There wasn't that much fuel to burn now.

But can we keep that clear?

So it's a it's a again, I go back to the fuel management that that's going to be the key.

And as Chad mentioned, you can live in a house.

You know, you do as much as you can to protect it.

So keep the fuel away from the house.

And that that that's going to be number one.

But I'm sorry, get in the discussion.

I'm not too much of a thing on climate change as much climate challenges.

Chad, you've been critical of both the left and the right liberals, conservatives with the politicking of all this.

So what's your take?

You know, what we're seeing right now is that the logging companies are distributing a lot of campaign contributions to both Republicans and Democrats.

And so both parties are guilty of promoting this notion that the forests are overgrown.

There's too many trees, and therefore removing trees will somehow curb fires and stop fires from reaching the towns.

That notion has been utterly discredited scientifically by dozens and dozens of studies.

These fires are not stopping in these areas where logging happened.

Typically, they're burning faster and more intensely through those logged areas where trees were removed and then they're burning down towns.

The reason is simple It's about the microclimate.

When you remove trees from the forest, it reduces the cooling shade of the forest canopy and everything gets hotter and drier.

It reduces the windbreak effect that a denser forest has.

So the fire sweeps through faster and the gusts are faster.

So you know, it's really very, very different from what a lot of people think.

And what's what's happening is where we are spending most of our resources on backcountry logging when we should be spending them directly on community protection where we know it works.

Ronald, you made an interesting point earlier in this interview.

You were talking about the 1930s and how wildfires were possibly worse then than they are today.

Talk a little bit more about that because I hear so many people who constantly say, well, it's not climate change, it's Mother Nature doing her thing.

This is a normal common occurrence and this all goes in cycles.

Yet the other argument is that that's not true, that the Earth is warming, climate change is real, climate change is happening.

So how do you put that all in perspective?

Perspective you look at the Earth is warming.

The Earth has gone through numerous cycles, go through four ice ages, and all those ice ages have melted during a warming cycle.

Nobody lives here.

So what caused the warming cycle wasn't humanity.

Take a look at the Grand Canyon.

It was formed by melting glacier.

And when it melted, nobody lived here.

Some dinosaurs did.

You take a look at the Great Lakes.

I think the last ice age came down as far as Saint Louis, and winter melted.

It basically formed the Great Lakes.

And again, nobody lived here that time.

And so, you know, the climate is changing, but it's I don't think it's been caused by humanity.

You know, back in the Ice Age period, we had I think 30% of the Earth was covered by ice.

Today is 10%.

It's not caused by humanity.

You know, take a look at the world.

The world, the whole global.

87% of the world is uninhabitable.

You know, 70% is oceans, 17% of mountains and deserts.

The remaining 13% isn't habitable for, you know, whether humans, animals, plants, Mother nature or solar system is causing a lot of the changes.

But I think we have a lot of climate challenges.

But climate has been changing for 4 billion years, and it could continue to change with or without us.

Chad, you're in the trenches working on this issue with your research, with your publishing.

Talk more about that.

Elaborate on it.

What's your opinion?

Well, the thing that's different right now is the tremendously rapid rate at which temperature is rising and the tremendously high correlation with rising CO2 levels as a result of human activities, not just fossil fuel burning, but also logging.

And this is kind of the double whammy of the logging it's happening is it's not just failing to stop fires and making them actually burn faster and hotter towards towns oftentimes, but it's actually putting a huge amount of CO2 in the atmosphere because most of the carbon in a tree that's removed from the forest ends up in the atmosphere, not in a house somewhere.

And so, you know, I believe as a scientist that that's the science behind climate change is extremely compelling.

And I believe it's settled scientifically.

I don't think there's a credible argument that climate change is real.

I also think it's very clear that climate change influences fires.

That's not the end of the story.

There are other things that are factors that we need to pay attention to, and if we don't pay attention to them, communities pay the price and we can actually make climate change worse.

And that's the thing that concerns me the most is some of the things that both Democrats and Republicans are pushing out there are actually going to put communities at greater risk and make climate change worse in the process.

One final question for you, Chad, because talking about community safety, Paradise, California, that horrific fire that devastated that town, I mean, realistically speaking, why are people even living in these places that they know are a fire risk?

And then why are even worst case scenario builders building in these areas?

I mean, that's insane.

Well, we definitely need to have a conversation about curbing and stopping building of new communities in places that are inherently risky.

And I made that comment in a number of cases before.

With regard to existing communities, there's a lot that we can do to protect those communities.

The science is really clear that home hardening, defensible space pruning within 100 feet of homes and evacuation assistance are extraordinarily effective.

If that's where our resources are going, which they're not.

And the town of Paradise is like the prime example, because in the years preceding the tragic campfire of 2018, thousands and thousands of acres had been logged on public and private lands in the in that area between the point of origin and the town of Paradise.

And and that's the area the fire blew through fastest and most intensely.

It only took about 6 hours to go through those thousands of acres and it reached the town faster than it otherwise would have.

People had very little time to evacuate and 86 people lost their lives.

14,000 homes were destroyed.

And that was preventable.

We know that we can save over 99% of homes if we focus more resources on home hardening, defensible space.

And we can get everyone out safely if we spend resources, resources on evacuation assistance.

So we just need to shift our focus.

And, Ronald, in our final 30 seconds, you get the final word.

Final word.

Well, I take a look at perspective.

You know, when you take a look at the green country, with all the countries want to go green, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Austria, they represent about 6% of the world.

And technically, you could wipe them off, eliminate every person, manufacture animal, plant everything.

What about face of the earth?

What's going to happen to emissions?

They get that they're going to explode.

Africa, China, India.

They've got coal fired power plants, 80%.

The world's got 8 billion people and 80% of humanity 80%.

That's more than 6 billion people.

They're living on less than $10 a day.

They can't subsidize and tell us out of a paper bag.

And so, you know, they're going to keep doing their thing and, you know, like I say, we represent such a small piece of the puzzle that, you know, it's the other 94% that's going to control the emissions to the world.

Ronald Sign, Dr. Chad Hansen, thank you both so much for really a great interview.

So greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Have a great day.

Now for more information about our program, just click on KLCS.org and then click Contact us to send us your questions, your comments, your story ideas so we can hear from you or contact me.

And @DavidNazarNews Twitter.

Just go to DavidNazarNews on YouTube.

Contact me there.

You know, I'll get back with you and be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on the PBS app for All Things Sustainable.

Thank you so much for joining us for this edition of Sustaining US here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.

I am David Nazar, host of Sustaining US.

Thank you so much for watching KLCS, if you enjoy our program as well as all the other programs here on KLCS, please consider supporting this station.

Your support helps keep all your favorite programs available.

You can support KLCS by calling 888998 KLCS or simply visit KLCS.org.

Again, thank you so much for watching KLCS PBS.