:-)
A rather unfortunate analogy: Man can certainly start a forest fire just as he can start a Co2 problem, in both cases it's the effects that happen latter that he can't control.
The fire will burn itself out in time (although it may destroy many houses and even kill people before it does) just as Co2 will return to natural levels but it may take thousands of years, it seems only deniers have this fantasy that control is part of this. We have spent over 100 years releasing Co2 and the problem only came to wide attention in the last 40 or so, we can certainly reduce our emissions and slow the problem but we are reaching a point where we will trigger massive additions of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost once that starts to happen it won't matter what we do.
The fire near Yosemite is not "the largest fire in history." It is one of the largest fires in the history of California, but it is not the largest--the largest was the Cedar Fire, which burned through my yard in 2003. Only 4 years later there was another fire, the Witch Fire, that burned much of the same area. It had nothing to do with "Greenies" not being allowed to groom the forest, it was caused by very intense weather conditions (extreme winds, high temperatures, low humidities).
As for the premise of the question, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But think of it this way: it may be possible to "control" some fires by never starting them in the first place, just like global warming may be controlled by not putting the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the first place. The Cedar Fire was started by an idiot hunter that was lost, and set a signal fire! It would have been vastly better to not start that fire in the first place, rather than to try and fight it.
EDIT: Yes, the fire was close to me--about 10 feet from my house. I'm quite aware that there were decisions that made the Cedar Fire worse, although I don't think they had anything to do with the Clinton administration and "grooming" of the forest. Pretty much all the true "forest" that was consumed in the Cedar Fire was state park land . The national forest land that was consumed was chaparral, not forest, so nobody was going to buy any timber off of it anyway.
While it was frustrating that military aircraft sat idle, the military was untrained in fighting civilian fires and the fire bosses wanted to prevent fatal crashes from occurring--such crashes had occurred under similar circumstances in past operations.
Another EDIT: I've heard this before, but it just doesn't make sense when you consider that the Witch fire--just 4 years later--burned over much the same area
It is foolish for anyone to think they can control the atmosphere.But forest fires are something we have some control over.With the currant big fires in s cal and all the ones we have had in say the last 10 years I believe are government/ department of forestry.You know "only you can prevent forest fires".All those years of "preventing" have cause a huge amount of fuel in our forest.Leave the forest alone they will manage just fine.
No one is claiming that we can completely control the atmosphere. No one.
However, no one with sense thinks that we're *not* adding CO2 to the atmosphere, or that the CO2 we're adding has no effect.
A little analogy for you (keeping in mind that the only perfect analogy for a thing is the thing itself).
You're walking along, and you see a bear sleeping in the forest. You poke it with a stick. It starts to chase you.
Are you in control of the bear's actions at that point? No. But, did you, in a meaningful sense, *cause* the bear's actions? Yes.
And, well, I'd say we're getting fairly good at controlling forest fires, at least to some extent. And we're getting smarter about forest management to avoid those intense fires, as well, though it will take time to restore an appropriate fire regime in these heavily managed forests.
edit:
Lemme see if I can unpack the bear analogy for you.
We cannot, collectively, control climate, just like a lone hiker cannot control a bear. But, we can do things that can affect how the climate will act, just like we can poke a bear with a stick.
We do not suddenly and magically gain control over the climate by adding CO2 to the air, just like the hiker does not suddenly and magically gain control over the bear by poking it. But the climate will react differently if we don't add a bunch of CO2 to it, just like the bear will react differently if the hiker doesn't poke it with a stick.
If you read about someone poking a sleeping bear with a stick and getting mauled, would you think "Poor man, getting savaged by a wild beast, there's nothing he could have done to stop it", or would you think something more like "Why did that idiot poke a bear with a stick? What did he think would happen?"
I am beginning to question as if breathing should be an involuntary action. I am becoming convinced that some thought should be required.
Only conspiracy freaks think people can control climate - and that puts the ball in your court.
So, fire fighters can't control fires caused by a flame that is 0.01% the size of the fire.
No problem then because there is no fire. It's just a fake story made up by socialists so the government can raise taxes to buy more fire fighting equipment and hire more socialist fire fighters.
We cannot control huge wildfires because we cannot control how AGW is turning our forests into tinder boxes, because we cannot control the moron politicians, and their fossil fuel industry duped supporters, who are too brain-dead to grasp that the world has not been one giant Stalinist Gulag ever since the 1920s when gasoline taxes were introduced.
Edit: A high school education may be scarey to you. Hide under your bed until the grown-ups tell you it's safe to come out again.
We've been controlling fires for over half a century.
This has resulted in fuel buildup, which allows fires to get to uncontrollable size.
Please remember this as we continue to allow CO2 buildup, which will also allow uncontrollable consequences.
Man can start a forest fire.
Man cannot possibly cause forest fires since they occurred naturally a long time before people were around.
Deniers have all the logic :-)
Tell all the firefighters out in California that they might as well go home or find new homes because we can't control forest fires.
But we do control the atmosphere with our pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions which have fueled AGW to the point it will continue warming beyond 2100 IF we don't take control of our emissions.
We don't need to control the whole atmosphere; just controlling the 0.01% of it would do.
