An ancient American Indian practice can reduce the risk of wildfires | Hacker News Reader

An ancient American Indian practice can reduce the risk of wildfires

vox.com

7 pointscryptoz5 comments

Controlled burns prevent big fires??! Surely not.

So, you're telling me, that if they don't do controlled burns, you could end up with a huge inferno?! Impossible.

Next you'll be saying that the huge infernos are orchestrated, in order to promote the idea that climate change is out of control!

Not sure where you are going with this... Controlled burns have been known to prevent wide scale fires for centuries. And climate change IS out of control, quite literally to the word. I'm not sure where you are pulling from regarding the orchestrated fire conspiracy, but I'm confident enormous fields of exceedingly dry brush don't need our help bursting into flame.

Of course controlled burns have been known about for centuries - these are not mysteries! But why in the modern age do we NOT control burn - that is the question.

Putting aside the climate change being out of control, can we try to consider this from a 'perception management' perspective.

If there are lots of huge fires that would create the impression in the news of huge climate change issues, would it not? But, would that be a fair assessment, if the huge fires have been orchestrated by a failure to do what we have known about for centuries?

I don't think so.

But using this issue to create the impression of climate is what is happening - eg the fires last year is Australia. These were framed as another massive climate change issue, not as a governmental failure (to undertake controlled burns). The effect is that we wring our hands over another massive climate change issue going unaddressed, whereas what is going on is a contrived situation that is framed on climate change.

TLDR: These fires are *not* climate change - its only *portrayed* as climate change.

You can be as sarcastic as you want but the traditional fire practice of the native people has been ignored until very recently.

I feel like so many articles today are written like they are presenting a new idea, even when referring to 'old practices'.

I remember being taught that this is a common practice in use because of the benefits to nature...I definitely know this was 20+ years ago that I had that presentation.

I guess this is the downside of people no longer having books in their house, we now need to republish old information every few months to get the clicks and ad revenue...soon we will be discovering that water and soap actually cleans things more than just just gasps water.

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