The Fires go on

[_Dr Exiled]

[_Chap]

'Pleasure, what a name': Trump confused over fire-hit town Paradise – video

Yuck. He can't enough be bothered to read the briefing paper carefully enough to remember the name of the town he is visiting. Maybe it didn't have his name on it enough times to grab his attention?

Look at the faces of the guys with him as he says 'Pleasure' instead of 'Paradise', twice ...

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Anyone else feel caught between the psychotics that inhabit both the Left and the Right?

Columbiana County Republican Party Chairman Dave Johnson told Cleveland.com on Monday that he posted the image to his Facebook page after reading an article about the fires. While he said that he believes Democrats have poorly managed California's forests, he added that he did not mean to insult anyone by sharing the image.

“Look, that’s a meme," Johnson told the news outlet. "And it’s how I feel about liberals, but did I mean that God is going to punish everyone who lives in California? No. It’s a figure of speech, and I probably shouldn’t have done it.

"But I did, and it doesn’t change how I feel about what’s happened in California.”

And yet, if I have to choose, I'll go with the Left because their purple-haired screeching nutjobs, in my opinion, are less dangerous than these religious fanatics psychopaths who believe California is being punished for Gay sins, or whatever. “F”. Stuck between an ideological rock and a hard place. :/

- Doc

[_canpakes]

Well, Doc - there you go. All of that whining by subs about how Democrats caused the town of Paradise to incinerate by not picking the perfect place to do a controlled burn at some optimal point in time was all for naught. Turns out that Gawd would have burned the town down regardless, for the Liberal sin of thinking that a transgendered person should be able to use a non-gender-specific bathroom, or somesuch.

Republican Party Chairman dude - and the folks that pass along his Facebook shite - are bitter, petty snowflakes.

[_Res Ipsa]

Climate change is perhaps the most spectacular market failure the world has ever seen. So far, the US has resisted taxes that would shift the cost of global warming into the price of fossil fuels. At this point, we’re starting to see some of that happen through lawsuits. Four communities have filed lawsuits against fossil fuel industry members for damage to Dungeness Crab fisheries. At least some of the oil companies were fully aware of the dangers of global warming, but funded think tanks and individuals who published information denying the risks. They are in a similar position to the tobacco companies decades ago. That’s not surprising, as they funded many of the same individuals and organizations that the tobacco companies used to deny the health risks of smoking. I would not be at all surprised to see California and its residents file similar suits to recover for fire damage (although a suit against PG&E may be a more effective option for the Camp Fire.)

It’s an inefficient way to price the costs of climate change into fossil fuels. It requires letting damage occur first and the lawyers get to siphon off a bunch of the recovery. But it’s started, and I’m expecting these kind of suits to be a growth industry for lawyers.

[_MeDotOrg]

“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

― Anne Lamott

[_Jersey Girl]

Here comes the rain. Mudslides and flash floods. Yep.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/21/us/calif ... index.html

[_subgenius]

https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/ ... e=5CAB87D3

for those of you keeping score, note that in January of this year the NY Times wrote an article saying “A group of scientists warned in the journal BioScience that [100 million] dead trees could produce wildfires on a scale and of an intensity that California has never seen,” and that “scientists say they cannot even calculate the damage the dead-tree fires might cause; it exceeds what their current fire behavior modeling can simulate.”
...
California forests are much more vulnerable now because, paradoxically, they have been better protected. In their natural state, forests were regularly thinned by fire but the billions of dollars that the state spends aggressively fighting wildfires and restrictions on logging have allowed forests to accumulate an overload of vegetation… That’s a scenario that could nudge the state into rethinking its forest management.“

which is a conclusion echoed by Trump is November when he stated that California management was the cause...but when Trump said that, suddenly the NY Times contradicts their earlier notion and decides that the fires are clearly Trump's and the Republicans' fault for their support of logging.

[_canpakes]

which is a conclusion echoed by Trump is November when he stated that California management was the cause...

Sorry to disappoint you, but California management isn’t the cause of any wildfires, unless (and ironically) a controlled burn gets out of control.

The case can certainly be made that not grooming a particular patch of forest will allow combustible debris to increase, but forest fires are going to happen regardless. And without a way to predict where fires will start, controlled burns will never be an effective way of protecting all habitation encroachments into forested areas.

Until homes are built and maintained in such a way as to reduce this risk, the danger of catching fire from embers blowing in from even miles away will always exist.

A home’s vulnerability to fire largely comes down to the roof. If you live in a wildfire zone and your roof is made of wood shingles, you need a new roof made of composite shingles. End of story. With billions and billions of embers flying ahead of a wildfire, it’s almost inevitable that one will land on your roof and start a blaze.

The danger is compounded in a forested city, because trees are constantly shedding needles and leaves, which gather on roofs. “I would be willing to guess that one of the principle igniters of homes in Paradise was needle and leaf debris,” says Cohen. “Maybe years of needle and leaf debris that hadn't been cleaned up on the roof, on the decks, next to the wood siding at the base of the walls.”

Why would Cohen venture that guess? Because plenty of trees are still standing in Paradise, unharmed amid the near total destruction of homes. The fire didn’t leap from tree to tree, taking homes along with it. Instead, the fire sent out scouts in the form of embers, which landed on clusters of debris on top of and around homes.

This shower of embers can simultaneously ignite structures all over town, overwhelming firefighters. “And then we of course have evacuation going,” says Cohen. “So these houses are not being attended to as they're burning, which means that they just free-burn to total destruction.”

The alternative is to have every homeowner meticulously groom their homes and yards, creating a perimeter of 100 feet. You have to constantly remove pine needles and leaves from roofs and decks. You can keep flower beds near the house, so long as they aren’t loaded with mulch, which is very flammable. You don’t need to cut down trees per se, but you have to be willing to clean up after them.

These measures create a defensible space where embers may still land, but are less likely to start a conflagration. If embers do land on your manicured home, they will take far longer—perhaps hours—to start a fire sizable enough to cause significant damage. “If we have very ignition-resistant homes that won't be involving rapidly in fire, the house is the absolute safest place to be during one of these events, as opposed to running for your life in an evacuation,” says Cohen.

Read: https://www.wired.com/story/cities-have ... -fix-them/

But perhaps you and Trump have a magic ball that can tell you exactly where your next controlled burn needs to be to remove this sort of threat. And without addressing the issue of encroachment. Right? ; )

[_subgenius]

which is a conclusion echoed by Trump is November when he stated that California management was the cause...

Sorry to disappoint you, but California management isn’t the cause of any wildfires, unless (and ironically) a controlled burn gets out of control.

The case can certainly be made that not grooming a particular patch of forest will allow combustible debris to increase, but forest fires are going to happen regardless.

Yes, they are a natural necessity...which is the point, CA management has reduced the "regardless", which is not the "cause" of fire but is the "cause" of the increased devastation.....read up on the subject, it will help.

And without a way to predict where fires will start, controlled burns will never be an effective way of protecting all habitation encroachments into forested areas.

But we can predict that good management, controlled burns, and better policies are a more effective way of protection than what is being done in CA...but that is just good science and that needs to be dismissed when the condemn "Trump!" fire is blazing.

Until homes are built and maintained in such a way as to reduce this risk, the danger of catching fire from embers blowing in from even miles away will always exist.

Cool how you are ignorant of CA building and fire codes....and how you think a neighborhood could be destroyed by a magic ember floating for miles on the Santa Ana.

But perhaps you and Trump have a magic ball that can tell you exactly where your next controlled burn needs to be to remove this sort of threat. And without addressing the issue of encroachment. Right? ; )

Don't need a magic ball because intelligence tells you everything you need to know on the matter. Controlled burns reduce the fuel which reduces the intensity, and yeah also reduces the likelihood in any given area...ergo the whole reason for the practice.
As for the issue of encroachment, I addressed that directly up-thread and even provided the overwhelming stat that accents how poorly CA manages resources (see also disproportionate amount of CA homes in high risk as compared to other States' forests).
But i get that ya need to hold the line on the whole "Trump!" thing, lest ye be forsaken.