Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiraeth.
Can you provide evidence of devastating fires before the Industrial Revolution? 
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There were definitely fires before the industrial revolution. Due to Cali not being a state until the mid 1800s, the human costs were much lower and they also wouldnt have been called "California fires". Population (locally and globally) was much much lower so less of a human toll. Has nothing to do with climate change though.
No idea why you put that "you are wrong" smirky face when you clearly don't know what you are talking about. I find it crazy that you think there were no large wildfires pre-industrial revolution. That's like saying there were no major hurricane landfalls along the Gulf Coast until recent centuries. It is commonly used to make a person look wrong on social media because they know most readers wont bother fact checking. Very common on reddit especially.
Here is a paper discussing results of analyses of pre-historic wildfires along the N American west coast using soil samples.
If anything, humans have decreased the frequency of fires.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1112839109
Here is the abstract:
Understanding the causes and consequences of wildfires in forests of the western United States requires integrated information about fire, climate changes, and human activity on multiple temporal scales. We use sedimentary charcoal accumulation rates to construct long-term variations in fire during the past 3,000 y in the American West and compare this record to independent fire-history data from historical records and fire scars.
There has been a slight decline in burning over the past 3,000 y, with the lowest levels attained during the 20th century and during the Little Ice Age (LIA, ca. 1400–1700 CE [Common Era]). Prominent peaks in forest fires occurred during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (ca. 950–1250 CE) and during the 1800s. Analysis of climate reconstructions beginning from 500 CE and population data show that temperature and drought predict changes in biomass burning up to the late 1800s CE.
Since the late 1800s, human activities and the ecological effects of recent high fire activity caused a large, abrupt decline in burning similar to the LIA fire decline. Consequently, there is now a forest “fire deficit” in the western United States attributable to the combined effects of human activities, ecological, and climate changes. Large fires in the late 20th and 21st century fires have begun to address the fire deficit, but it is continuing to grow."
Reduction in fires due to humans likely has something to do with the typical "taming of nature" and deforestation that often comes with settlement.
We also have evidence of large fires in other locations going back hundreds of millions of years.
Let me know if you need me to provide even more evidence.