I'm seeing it in a lot of younger tech people. We had a NASA presentation at work about air quality and that forest fires are one of our biggest problems in CA. TWO separate people (from maybe 20-25 attending) brought up "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric). It blows my mind how "intelligent" people can be this stupid.

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sam345 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Is that really what you're concerned about that somebody would ask a soft ball question about proposed solutions? Why is questioning the buildup of brush a crazy idea? It's been a mainstream concern for years. I really don't think it's healthy for any inquiry to propose a particular mindset and shut down alternative thinking. It doesn't seem very scientific or intelligent to me.

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gman83 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The issue is that the rhetorical game being played is that by saying the risk is all due to the buildup of combustible materials, it shifts the blame to California's Democratic politicians and away from Republican fossil fuel donors. Clearly in a good faith discussion we'd suggest better forest management, as well as doing everything possible to combat fossil fuel emissions. The problem is that it's not a good faith discussion.

	▲	Dylan16807 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Am I dumb to think that the main worry from fossil fuels right now is CO2, not air quality? (at least while environmental regulations are still mostly intact) It seems reasonable to me to ask about forest management for air quality. Maybe there was some other sign they didn't ask in good faith? But I have no idea what dumb thing trump said you're even talking about.

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pessimizer 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Notice how pro-free speech = pro-clearing brush buildup?

It's so weird how people join these partisan factions that have a full package of beliefs that you have to be evil not to share. Woe to your job if you say that you think brush buildup should be cleared; you're obviously racist.

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tokyobreakfast 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It blows my mind how "intelligent" people can be this stupid.

Intelligent people don't post condescending, shallow dismissals.

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ambicapter 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or maybe they're 20-25, aren't experts in forestry, and are asking generic questions b/c that's what you're told to do as a young scientist?

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kelnos 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric)

Were they clearly actually talking about that? If that was their question, word-for-word, it's a good question! We are not managing our forests all that well. No, we shouldn't be doing Trump's dumbass raking "idea", but we should be doing controlled burns, at minimum.

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snickerbockers 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric

Are you sure about that? I've been hearing for at least a decade that the solution to CA's forest fire problem is something along the lines of reducing the amount of potential fuel that is allowed to build up by either allowing smaller fires to run their course without intervention or alternatively aggressively executing controlled burns on a regular schedule.

Not sure how viable that is as a solution but I do know the idea didn't originate with Trump because it predates his entire political career.

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headsman771 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I remember hearing about forest mismanagement long before Trump's presidential runs. It's curious how many people complaining about right wing talking points associate it solely with Trump.

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vel0city 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While Trump's "raking the forest" take is clearly uninformed and unintelligent, there's a substantial kernel of truth to longstanding forest management policies making some of these wildfires worse than what they could have been. We've been artificially suppressing fires far too long in a lot of these places, for example.

Not that this is the only factor in play here on a lot of these fires, and once again I do agree Trump's take is idiotic and ultimately he's not helping but pouring gasoline on the issue. Just pointing out, we definitely aren't managing our forests well for a multitude of reasons.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confi...

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dmoy 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The federal vs state conflict over prescribed burns doesn't help much either. In states with a much lower % of national forest or blm land or whatever, you get a much larger amount of prescribed burns.

In the west coast, the state vs federal friction reduces how much of that happens, and there's more uncontrolled growth happening. And there's not always a lot that e.g. CA government can do about it if it's federal land.

For example, Minnesota (intentionally) burns like 50% more acreage than California on an annual basis, despite being like half the size. But CA also is like half federal land, MN is like 5% or something.

	▲	vel0city 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I totally agree with you there. I'm in no way trying to suggest it was specifically a failure of certain states or individual administrations; its a mixed bag of failures at a lot of different levels with the federal government having a lot of the blame across a wide range of administrations that did nothing to really address the growing problems.