Without human intervention how big would these fires get?

They would get so big that they would engulf the Rockies and spread to the Great Plains and race al the way to the Atlantic, burning down the entire continent of North America. All because we didn’t listen to Al Gore and his inconvenient truth

Do these fires count against California's Carbon Credits?

Too bad there isn’t a way to lessen the impact if properly implemented

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All because we didn’t listen to Al Gore and his inconvenient truth

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A lot, if not all, of these fires are the result of the govt banning locals and locales from properly clearing underbrush and other preventive work most states do.

You would have to really say no human intervention ever. That way fires year to year are able to consume tinder. Human intervention in previous years actually stockpiles flammables and then when a fire gets into these areas they are heavily fueled due to human intervention n the past decade or decades.

As of this moment... taking a snapshot... human intervention is probably helping a reasonable amount but it doesn't really look like it.

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A lot, if not all, of these fires are the result of the govt banning locals and locales from properly clearing underbrush and other preventive work most states do.

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Do you have a source for that? Having fought fires for years, I can tell you that most landowners won't clear brush even if you paid them to. We used to roll up for structure protection and just laugh - trees right next to houses, wood shingle roofs. I mean how stupid can you be. Oh and there's Literally NOTHING you can do to save a house when 300 foot tall flames from a crown fire are moving through.

The Forest Service DOES do prescribed burning, where possible, but again, every year people would bitch and moan about roads being shut down, the smoke in the air, etc., and we were highly limited due to weather and other factors as to what days we could burn, and there's always a risk that the fire escapes containment.

Fire is just a normal part of the ecosystem, and people have known if for hundreds if not thousands of years. The issue is now we've built cities right in prime burning territory, and for some reason are surprised when, shocking, they burn!

The buildup of fuel hasn't helped, but you can't even blame the enviros for this either. The major shift to suppressing wildfires vs letting them burn happened after the Great Fire of 1910. 3 million acres burned, nearly 80 firefighters killed.

In short, the issue is people.


from widipedia:

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The Great Fire of 1910 cemented and shaped the U.S. Forest Service,[16] which at the time was a newly established department on the verge of cancellation. Before the epic conflagration, there were many debates about the best way to handle forest fires—whether to let them burn because they were a part of nature and were expensive to fight, or to fight them in order to protect the forests.[20] One of the people who fought the fire, Ferdinand A. Silcox, went on to become the fifth chief of the fire service. Influenced by the devastation of the Big Blowup, Silcox promoted the "10 a.m." policy, with the goal of suppressing all fires by 10 a.m. of the day following their report.[21] It was decided that the Forest Service was to prevent and battle every wildfire.[20] More recently, this absolutist attitude to wildfires has been criticized for altering the natural disturbance mechanisms that drive forest ecosystem structure[21], which paradoxically increases the destructive potential of forest fires.

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I wonder how wide spread the fires would get with out human intervention. Do you think it could engulf an entire state?

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Hard to tell...prior intervention has allowed more growth/fuel to survive earlier fires.

The fires would hit natural barriers eventually, or wind directions would push the fire back towards the already burned areas.

The fires wouldn't continue to burn indefinitely. Living in Colorado and spending some time with Yosemite park rangers, you learn the reasons why these fires are getting so big. It was standard practice to squash out these fires as quickly as possible. That leads to overgrowth and massive build up of fuel sources.