I read your link and, frankly, I find their science shoddy at best. They seem to simultaneously dismiss and indirectly state that forest management is important.

For instance, they state dismissively: "While forest management practices, specifically fire suppression, have increased the fuel load, scientific evidence... [it don't matter cause climate change]"

The question that's not answered is whether or not we would have these fires had the forest management been done aggressively as it has in the past.

This guy (http://www.excelhero.com/blog/2010/04/california-climate.htm...) analyzed NASA weather station data for the last 120 years in California only (https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v4_globe/). The average temperature has increased by 1 degree over that time. He then filtered only to stations that have been in service for 100 years to produce stability in the dataset. That reduced the temperature increase to half a degree.

He then further filtered the set to rural weather stations only to remove the Urban Heat Island Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island). That reduced the number of stations from 114 to 26, but the temperature change actually showed slight cooling.

So given that forests in CA are largely in the rural regions where temperature hasn't changed much, wouldn't it stand to reason that the other change (reduced forest management) is largely responsible?