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This thread is for discussing and possibly ranting about the fires on the west coast of the USA. As I look outside the swirling color changing smoke reminds me of a lovecraft novel featuring the King in Yellow. Dogs and children are upset and my neighbors are now driving two states away. My grandparents might lose the home my dad grew up in and the smoke makes it hard to sleep. Meanwhile I get to hear other neighbors talk about how climate change is a hoax on Facebook. If you haven’t I suggest installing the FEMA app on your phone because emergency alerts don’t seem to be going through to all cell phones. I am sick of these goddamn fires.
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Sep 11, 2020 01:42
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A mentally unstable salamander claiming they don't like fire? I'm not buying it.
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Sep 11, 2020 01:48
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It really seems to me that the state of California hasn't done anything to prepare for or prevent these fires. The state has a new record for acres burned this year. I think it's evident that something needs to change in this state's fire management policy because if not climate change is going to make every year more and more destructive.
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Sep 11, 2020 01:56
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It's like a little game trying to figure out if my sore throat and chest cough is from breathing in so much smoke or if I'm coming down with COVID. A fun, wholesome game for the whole family.
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Sep 11, 2020 01:58
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adoration for none posted:It really seems to me that the state of California hasn't done anything to prepare for or prevent these fires. The state has a new record for acres burned this year. Most of California forests are about half federal and half state managed. They've done some stuff but not enough to keep up with catastrophic climate change, which is the real driver here.
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Sep 11, 2020 02:00
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This is supposed to be the easy part of climate change, too. 2020 is still fairly early when you consider how much warming has yet to kick in from our actions. Imagine how lovely 2025 will be. Imagine 2030. 2040. So yeah, humanity has really, really hosed up.
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Sep 11, 2020 02:10
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adoration for none posted:It really seems to me that the state of California hasn't done anything to prepare for or prevent these fires. The state has a new record for acres burned this year. Yeah I guess they should have raked more, huh?
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Sep 11, 2020 02:55
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VH4Ever posted:Yeah I guess they should have raked more, huh? Just look, the Finns are doing so well with their fires! 
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Sep 11, 2020 03:11
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Well that's what you get for not adequately raking the forests and letting all that water from the north just go into the ocean. 
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Sep 11, 2020 03:20
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Jaxyon posted:Most of California forests are about half federal and half state managed. They've done some stuff but not enough to keep up with catastrophic climate change, which is the real driver here. No, bad. (I kid,but I have been on a crazy tear through the forums saying this is explicitly not the case). Main driver is something like 250+ years of dedicated fire supression meaning that 250+ years of fuel builds up and is never really dealt with sufficiently. You add in people constantly building and expanding the WUI, and global warming you get the these firestorms. But global warming only really increases ignition probability, its not really loving with how intense this poo poo is. At least at this junction. California basically throttled the natural fire cycle in the state in the 1700s when the Spanish took over and never really addressed it. Turns out that wasn't a good idea. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 04:23
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adoration for none posted:It really seems to me that the state of California hasn't done anything to prepare for or prevent these fires. The state has a new record for acres burned this year. Is it more or less embarrassing that it was started by a gender reveal party, as opposed to a private corporation who initially tried to blame it on a customer?
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Sep 11, 2020 04:31
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Far less embarrassing. PG&E is a festering malignant blight whose continued survival as a company is an unconscionable embarrassment in and of itself. They are lousy and despicable, worthy only of contempt and mockery. They are the very personification of Dril’s budgeting tweet.
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Sep 11, 2020 05:19
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The wild thing about fires in the PNW vs California is how irresponsible Fire Wise and the WUI has been treated. What's standard operating procedure in Washington and Oregon is treated as a natural occurrence, with little sympathy for losses, since the science is already understood. California, either suffers from a regulatory disfunction or a massive case of lack of personal responsibility. Fire resistant materials and defensible space will severely limit the risk to wildfire risk. Building overly dense suburbs is shockingly dumb as well as people insistance on pushing the WUI. Eastern Washington burns every year, it's been nice because we have been smoke free up until Monday. Stop building in the forests, and if you do just follow the science.
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Sep 11, 2020 05:36
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adoration for none posted:It really seems to me that the state of California hasn't done anything to prepare for or prevent these fires. The state has a new record for acres burned this year. I think any time you talk about how much California's fire response sucks this year, you should be legally required to mention that California's entire firefighting strategy hinges on the availability of slave labor and this year the slaves all have COVID and can't work.
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Sep 11, 2020 07:34
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Some article claimed, that before European settlers invaded California, huge land areas burned regularly every year. After settling and industrialization people didn't allow such large yearly burns so they were extinguished. Now biomass has continued to grow year after year, and at this point you get huge hellfires instead of smaller, more manageable fires, because there is so much stuff to burn? If the yearly fires are something unavoidable and which happens every year, why so much effort is put to stop the fires until some year like in 2020 they grow so huge they can't be stopped? Wouldn't it be better to do yearly controlled burns instead, if the fires are unavoidable...?
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Sep 11, 2020 11:45
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I don't "get" how wildfires expand. I'm in Fresno, CA. Is my house gonna burn down because of this poo poo?
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Sep 11, 2020 12:52
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Gen. Ripper posted:I don't "get" how wildfires expand. I'm in Fresno, CA. Is my house gonna burn down because of this poo poo? Do you have a wood shake roof, cedar shingle siding, trees and flammable shrubs against your house? If yes do everything you can to rid your self of that hell trap. If no you are still at more risk from a regular home fire. Cities are burning because of overly dense building where homes at the outer city limits ignite homes which then spread to their neighbors primarily through close proximity, either direct abutment or suburb like adjacency. Spot fires within city limits are being sparked by flying embers that ignite, flammable siding, roofing or enter into attics through improperly protected attic venting. https://www.dnr.wa.gov/firewise Their is very little excuse for many homes outside of cities burning, but within city limits many poor regulatory choices by state government has led to increased risk. Follow these firewise documents to best prepare no matter how close a fire may be to you.
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Sep 11, 2020 15:02
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Ihmemies posted:If the yearly fires are something unavoidable and which happens every year, why so much effort is put to stop the fires until some year like in 2020 they grow so huge they can't be stopped? Wouldn't it be better to do yearly controlled burns instead, if the fires are unavoidable...? Regarding the issue of managed burns, the USFS is chronically underfunded, let alone the push back that communities express due to smoke from these activities. Firefighting efforts exist to save the homes and communities of millionaires who insist on building in the wilderness urban interface which are then threatened by wildfires. Proper precautions around rural homes and communities would allow minimal firefighting intervention and allow wildfires to simply bypass human habitated land. Since the rich have an outsized influence on local and state politics they can demand an outsized firefighting response to wildfires. If you were to discount public firefighters protecting the homes of the rich, their is still an army of private firefighters that are hired by insurance companies that would still roll out to protect vulnerable homes for those that can afford those policies. A direct comparison regarding natural disasters would be that of Earthquakes. No amount of technology can prevent this type of event, all we can do is prepare. Building codes have allowed Japan to survive apocalyptic earthquakes while places like china and india suffer magnitudes smaller earthquake intensities but represent larger fatality events. Fire code and fire science is not new. So much can be done to prepare and limit fires that threaten homes and communities. At least in the current economic model, insurance companies represent the biggest driver of compliance with fire protection. They won't sell a policy to a home at risk, and actively encourage home owners to participate in firewise to reduce wildfire risk. Again to stress, catastrophic wildfires only represent a risk to arrogant humans who try to dominate nature rather than coexist within it.
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Sep 11, 2020 15:18
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Ihmemies posted:Some article claimed, that before European settlers invaded California, huge land areas burned regularly every year. After settling and industrialization people didn't allow such large yearly burns so they were extinguished. Now biomass has continued to grow year after year, and at this point you get huge hellfires instead of smaller, more manageable fires, because there is so much stuff to burn? To be clear, there is one article that actually has numbers for the size but theres a whole lot of articles whose conclusion and/or general theme is "Pre-settlement Californa saw a whoooole bunch of fires, likely more than we are allowing to spread today, and we can likely benefit from more fire rather than less if properly used".
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Sep 11, 2020 16:23
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Telsa Cola posted:No, bad. (I kid,but I have been on a crazy tear through the forums saying this is explicitly not the case). We used to have people just setting fire to the forest like it was no big deal in the 70's, just tons of arson. But in the past decade or two it's become much worse, despite much fewer people starting fires. Has forestry changed so much since the 70's, or has the fuel become much dryer because droughts, IE climate change?  
Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 18:41
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Youd need to look at all sources for human caused ignition, not just arson. Smoking and vehicle use come to mind, not to mention fires caused by infrastructure (hello PG&E) Also yes, forestry has changed. One thing that comes to mind with huge impact is that lumbering decreased dramatically in the past few decades and no one really adjusted anything. Forests are much more dense (2-10 times) than natural which means increased fuel, trees are super crowded and stressed, overcompeting for limited resources, and are more likely to die from drought, disease, or insects because of the above. Climate change definitely exacerbates the problem, though. Again, I'm not arguing it doesn't have an impact, just that its overstated. Funnily enough, timber harvesting was somewhat helpful in all this. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 21:16
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Telsa Cola posted:Youd need to look at all sources for human caused ignition, not just arson. Smoking and vehicle use come to mind, not to mention fires caused by infrastructure (hello PG&E) I'll grant you PG&E infrastructure, but smoking has dropped in that period and vehicles are safer. What is the scale we'd have to do forest management to be able to counter the effects of climate change?
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Sep 11, 2020 21:23
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Gen. Ripper posted:I don't "get" how wildfires expand. I'm in Fresno, CA. Is my house gonna burn down because of this poo poo? Could. Fires work like Frontlines and insurgencies at the same time. A ttree exploded after a transformer blew, pieces of the bark get caught in the wind and blow potentially miles away from where the transformer blew and start fires. And not like a 2 inch piece of bark, like a loving 3 or 4 ft piece of smoldering material landing near your home is enough to burn down a town.
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Sep 11, 2020 21:29
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Jaxyon posted:I'll grant you PG&E infrastructure, but smoking has dropped in that period and vehicles are safer. Yeah I checked after posting and infrastructure ones and related has gone up or theorized to go up when they aren't certain (fires near roadways and such) others have gone down besides maybe one other. Theres also camp related, loving around with fire related (often for kids but I guess the gender reveal parties would count too). To answer your question it would need to be massive. The goal for prescribed burns in California each year is 1 million acres and if we started doing that now that would be great (well not now but you know). Unfortunately between funding and timing thats been hard to do (theres also a bunch of politics involved) and we are at a something like 20 million acres deficit since they set that goal, so like South Carolina sized. Between that and mechanical treatment ( a hypothetical, this would be impossibly expensive on this scale) you could deal with built up fuels and such. This would probably need to repeated in the same area every so often, otherwise you are just starting this all over again. You would also need to thin the forests way more, and on that front you are going to get heavy pushback until people realize how overly dense the forests are over whats actually natural Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 21:36
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How do we know our density now vs what's "natural"? Serious question. It feels like just letting poo poo grow is natural, unless you mean invasive grasses and brush.
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Sep 11, 2020 21:40
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Could. Fires work like Frontlines and insurgencies at the same time. A ttree exploded after a transformer blew, pieces of the bark get caught in the wind and blow potentially miles away from where the transformer blew and start fires. And not like a 2 inch piece of bark, like a loving 3 or 4 ft piece of smoldering material landing near your home is enough to burn down a town. Winds are a nightmare to deal with and the fuel reduction strategies are very hit or miss once strong wind's are involved because they pull that poo poo and the like. Obviously less fuel is still ideal in situations like that though, but it only really helps.
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Sep 11, 2020 21:44
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Jaxyon posted:How do we know our density now vs what's "natural"? Serious question. We actually have photos in a lot of cases of what forest and such look like before logging and fire supression started in some areas. In the west its pretty sparse (it various by species) but what we are seeing now is like 100-400 trees per acre when it used to be 40 trees an acres. I imagine logging and survey records also have that. You aren't really wrong, what happens is that when the natural occurring fires roll through they weed out a few saplings and bushes and whatever every so often, maybe taking down a old or diseased tree. This reduces the numbers and they are more spread out and healthy as a population. Think of it like wolves and deer. The fire is the wolves and now that it's gone the deer overpopulate the area and there are a bunch of issues associated with that. Except for in this case, no one is really hunting the deer (thinning or lumbering) so now you just have waaay too many. Edit: Found one! 
Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 21:46
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Welp, fabled triple post.
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Sep 11, 2020 21:57
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it's also worth pointing out that "natural" is a meaningless term here since humans have been setting forests on fire since ancient times. it's a great, low cost way to cultivate forests into being excellent places to hunt game. we've really got no idea at all what a "natural" landscape looks like since even lithic levels of technology allow you to modify the landscape through burning
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Sep 11, 2020 22:19
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luxury handset posted:it's also worth pointing out that "natural" is a meaningless term here since humans have been setting forests on fire since ancient times. it's a great, low cost way to cultivate forests into being excellent places to hunt game. we've really got no idea at all what a "natural" landscape looks like since even lithic levels of technology allow you to modify the landscape through burning Yeah I had a section of the post written up pointing just that out, but it was already somewhat disjointed so it didn't quite fit in. We know they did burns to expand and create more oak savannahs and similar open spaces because hunting was easier and so was gathering resources. There is a theory that low intensity burns in forests also helped with acorn production and gathering. That all being said fire supression hits lighting caused fires too, and removed something from the landscape that had been a constant presence. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 22:24
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Telsa Cola posted:Yeah I had a section of the post written up pointing just that out, but it was already somewhat disjointed so it didn't quite fit in. We know they did burns to expand and create more oak savannahs and similar open spaces because hunting was easier and so was gathering resources. There is a theory that low intensity burns in forests also helped with acorn production and gathering. This is kinda why I was asking that. I know folks don't really talk about the extent to which people in the Americas did forestry prior to colonization.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:55
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Jaxyon posted:This is kinda why I was asking that. I know folks don't really talk about the extent to which people in the Americas did forestry prior to colonization. A good amount but its somewhat unknowable, as really anything is archaeology wise. We know they did it, and where and when and why, but I don't know if theres any paper that has a breakdown of what was natural and what wasn't. We do also know there were changes once the spanish came in and severely curtailed/forbid burns and started the beginings of fire supression. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 23:06
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