Fires

[BilliJo Aldrin]

4 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

The state is already on fire and this idiot goes around setting more. It has nothing to do with the off topic discussion yet everything to do with the OP topic. Go figure.

Thank you for helping prove my contention that wild fires have nothing to do with global warming.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

6 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

I thought it was using the energy faster than it gets replenished is an unsustainable plan. My bad. They're both bad though.

That's the entire idea: it is not sustainable.

And it is foolish to think that we can burn several earth-years of biomass every year without consequences.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Federal Regulations Have Made Western Wildfires Worse

Controlled, prescribed burns can stop wildfires from spreading. Too bad they are effectively prohibited by rules like the Clean Air Act.

SAM RUTZICK | 9.14.2020 3:30 PM

Parts of the western United States look like scenes from an apocalyptic movie—a red-orange tinge across everything, literally blotting out the sun, as more than three million acres burn.

The fires are running rampant, despite firefighters' best efforts, across California, Oregon, and Washington state. The human cost is huge: 35 people have already died, and more than 4,000 homes have burned. Yet these fires could have been stopped before they got this big, were it not for over-restrictive regulations that have made necessary forest management techniques impossible.

Take controlled burns: fires that are lit on purpose, intentionally burning tinder to keep potentially larger, unintentional wildfires from finding fuel. Especially since the 1960s, efforts to extinguish all fires—even natural, low-impact forest fires that serve as nature's equivalent of a controlled burn—have made forests more susceptible to larger fires and have made controlled burns more and more necessary.

But the regulatory requirements one must meet before starting a controlled burn are complex and lengthy. According to Jonathan Wood, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation and an adjunct fellow with the Property and Environment Research Center, the National Environmental Policy Act requires "a couple-thousand-page document analyzing every single conceivable impact to the environment that the plan might have." This is a public process, Wood adds, that "often results in litigation." There's even more paperwork when the controlled burn might overlap with areas designated as critical habitat for an endangered species.

"What you'll often find," Wood says, "is that there are projects which have been extremely well-vetted, which have been years in the work, there will be a 5,000-page document, which no one could conceivably ever read because it's so long and complicated, but then the project will still get put on hold for an indefinite period of time, because some special interest group filed a lawsuit." So much time is spent considering the ramifications of an action; little is spent considering the impact of doing nothing.

From 1999 to 2017, an average of 13,000 acres of California were subjected to controlled burns each year. In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published a report arguing that California needs to burn 20 million acres of forest in order to restore forest health.

The Clean Air Act of 1990 creates another obstacle. The law treat the smoke from a controlled, prescribed burn as a pollutant that must be analyzed and permitted before the burn can be done. The smoke from a wildfire is not similarly scrutinized. But needless to say, the environmental impact of a multi-state wildfire is much larger than that of a smaller controlled burn.

There is no magic bullet when it comes to the issue of preventing wildfires. But if we want to stop disasters of the scale, state and federal governments need to rethink forest management. They could start by easing the regulatory burden upon proven techniques.

https://reason.com/2020/09/14/western-wildfires-can-be-prevented-if-burdens-on-forest-management-are-eased/?utm_medium=email

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Thank you for helping prove my contention that wild fires have nothing to do with global warming.

I said/did nothing of the sort. It wasn't implied either so don't even try that. You're barking up the wrong tree.

[Aethelwine]

6 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Federal Regulations Have Made Western Wildfires Worse

Controlled, prescribed burns can stop wildfires from spreading. Too bad they are effectively prohibited by rules like the Clean Air Act.

SAM RUTZICK | 9.14.2020 3:30 PM

https://reason.com/2020/09/14/western-wildfires-can-be-prevented-if-burdens-on-forest-management-are-eased/?utm_medium=email

Your article lacks some of the nuance of its propublica source.

But the main thing I would highlight is that the articles source material is explicit that you won't find climate deniers on the fire line. 

Your article therefore doesn't support your contention that wildfires have nothing to do with climate change. 

[Arielle Popstar]

12 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

The problem with that graph is that it shows neither the high temperatures prevalent in the 1930's nor the .3C cooling period in the 60's and 70's when we had the great coming Ice age scare that was the scientific consensus at the time.

I suppose it pretty easy to fudge data points when the political will is to rewrite history, the only downside being when there are still people alive who remember those time periods.

[Arielle Popstar]

7 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

That's the entire idea: it is not sustainable.

And it is foolish to think that we can burn several earth-years of biomass every year without consequences.

Well maybe that is because oil does not take millions of years but rather decades. Old wells which were pumped dry a few decades ago are now found to have refilled to some degree: https://rense.com/general63/refil.htm

Quote

 

Deep underwater, and deeper underground, scientists see surprising hints that gas and oil deposits can be replenished, filling up again, sometimes rapidly.

 

Although it sounds too good to be true, increasing evidence from the Gulf of Mexico suggests that some old oil fields are being refilled by petroleum surging up from deep below, scientists report. That may mean that current estimates of oil and gas abundance are far too low.

 

[Qie Niangao]

26 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The problem with that graph is that it shows neither the high temperatures prevalent in the 1930's nor the .3C cooling period in the 60's and 70's when we had the great coming Ice age scare that was the scientific consensus at the time.

The brief temperature rise that some elderly still remember from the 30s was limited to North America. The "ice age scare" was the result of the then absurdly simplistic model of atmospheric effects trying to understand a small cooling effect resulting from "a post-World War II surge in the emissions of aerosols from dirty fossil fuel burning and the cool phase of a Pacific Ocean cycle related to the strength of the trade winds." (arsTechnica)

[Qie Niangao]

34 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well maybe that is because oil does not take millions of years but rather decades. Old wells which were pumped dry a few decades ago are now found to have refilled to some degree: https://rense.com/general63/refil.htm

I think the argument was about the total available supply of fossil carbon, not just what's oozed up within range of current extraction. That said, it's pretty certain that the planet would warm beyond habitability if all the already known oil reserves (including tar sands, shale, etc) were to be consumed, unless offset by some carbon sequestration mechanism orders of magnitude more effective than any process currently known, natural or yet invented.

[Maryanne Solo]

Global warming...
Bovine bottom burps...
Mc Burgers...
Gluttony....
Fat arse greed.....

I suggest we take Ronald McGoldenArches out the back and pummell the idjit.
We know who caused all this. 🤬😈👿👹
 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Aethelwine said:

Your article lacks some of the nuance of its propublica source.

But the main thing I would highlight is that the articles source material is explicit that you won't find climate deniers on the fire line. 

Your article therefore doesn't support your contention that wildfires have nothing to do with climate change. 

A wildfire is the result of the condition of the forest when the fire starts. If there isn't 100 years of accumulated debris on the forest floor, you probably won't get a wildfire.

Climate change doesn't start wildfires, each fire has an identifiable source, You will never find that the cause of a wild fire is listed as global warming.

Except of course by global warming alarmists and do nothing politicians like the governor of Cali who wishes to shift the blame for their ineptitude.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 minute ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

A wildfire is the result of the condition of the forest when the fire starts. If there isn't 100 years of accumulated debris on the forest floor, you probably won't get a wildfire.

Climate change doesn't start wildfires, each fire has an identifiable source, You will never find that the cause of a wild fire is listed as global warming.

Except of course by global warming alarmists and do nothing politicians like the governor of Cali who wishes to shift the blame for their ineptitude.

And in the article that the post you linked to refers to:

"Now climate change has made it hotter and drier than ever before, and the fire we’ve been forestalling is going to happen, fast, whether we plan for it or not."

https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-megafires-why-wont-anybody-listen

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well maybe that is because oil does not take millions of years but rather decades. Old wells which were pumped dry a few decades ago are now found to have refilled to some degree: https://rense.com/general63/refil.htm

 

There is a totally discredited theory that oil is not biological in origin (ie dead sea creatures) but is in fact a product of natural processes deep in the mantle.

If its true, oil is renewable and we have an infinite supply.

😁

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 minute ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

And in the article that the post you linked to refers to:

"Now climate change has made it hotter and drier than ever before, and the fire we’ve been forestalling is going to happen, fast, whether we plan for it or not."

https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-megafires-why-wont-anybody-listen

I didn't link to the propublica article.

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just now, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I didn't link to the propublica article.

The article you linked to did though. You wouldn't have taken it at face value without checking what it based itself on, would you?

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Just now, Theresa Tennyson said:

The article you linked to did though. You wouldn't have taken it at face value without checking what it based itself on, would you?

The entire article supports my contention except for a throw away line about global warming.

And how does the writer know there are no global warming deniers on the fire line?

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

The entire article supports my contention except for a throw away line about global warming.

 

You mean where you say there's "100 years of accumulated debris" while the article says they've been doing controlled burns for years and there were laws passed to do more?

Between 1982 and 1998, California’s agency land managers burned, on average, about 30,000 acres a year. Between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres. The state passed a few new laws in 2018 designed to facilitate more intentional burning.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

10 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

You mean where you say there's "100 years of accumulated debris" while the article says they've been doing controlled burns for years and there were laws passed to do more?

Between 1982 and 1998, California’s agency land managers burned, on average, about 30,000 acres a year. Between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres. The state passed a few new laws in 2018 designed to facilitate more intentional burning.

I believe the article said they needed to burn closer to a million acres a year to maintain the forests. The controlled burns they do are too little too late.

I leave you to this because once again it seems your whole purpose here is to belittle and denigrate everything I post.

[Pixieplumb Flanagan]

14 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Dear God

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/sep/14/donald-trump-california-wildfires-coronavirus-covid-19-joe-biden-kamala-harris-us-election-politics-live-updates

He's SO stupid, SO wilfully ignorant - it's just astonishing to watch.  And astonishing that this is so hilariously funny to anyone who has to share a continent with that doofus.  Extraordinary that people - the not as stupid ones - must look at this and say to themselves, yeah, he's dreadful, he's a racist, an abuser, a moron and dumb as a box of rocks, but at least he doesn't want us to have clean air and health care and homes.  Think how awful THAT would be.  To be so hate filled that you're eager to suffer horribly just so long as the ones you hate suffer too.  Very strange.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

3 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The problem with that graph is that it shows neither the high temperatures prevalent in the 1930's nor the .3C cooling period in the 60's and 70's when we had the great coming Ice age scare that was the scientific consensus at the time.

I suppose it pretty easy to fudge data points when the political will is to rewrite history, the only downside being when there are still people alive who remember those time periods.

The graph isn’t wrong, you are.

[Qie Niangao]

I seem to remember a protracted drought in California in recent years, severe enough that reservoirs were seriously depleted. It may have been difficult to do prescribed burns when the fuel was so dry and water scarce for controlling those burns.

We might expect those conditions to recur more frequently with accelerating climate change, so prescribed burns need to happen with dispatch on those happy occasions when it's actually safe to start them.

Somewhere I heard that California has only a comparatively small area of forest under state management compared to its vast federal lands managed by the US Forestry Service. Nothing stopping Ivanka's brood from raking the Sierras.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

3 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well maybe that is because oil does not take millions of years but rather decades. Old wells which were pumped dry a few decades ago are now found to have refilled to some degree: https://rense.com/general63/refil.htm

Rense.com is like Infowars for people who think Infowars is the mainstream media. I'll bet that paper is even more compelling when you see the original manuscript written in crayon.

[Luna Bliss]

4 hours ago, Pixieplumb Flanagan said:

19 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Dear God

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/sep/14/donald-trump-california-wildfires-coronavirus-covid-19-joe-biden-kamala-harris-us-election-politics-live-updates

He's SO stupid, SO wilfully ignorant - it's just astonishing to watch.  And astonishing that this is so hilariously funny to anyone who has to share a continent with that doofus.  Extraordinary that people - the not as stupid ones - must look at this and say to themselves, yeah, he's dreadful, he's a racist, an abuser, a moron and dumb as a box of rocks, but at least he doesn't want us to have clean air and health care and homes.  Think how awful THAT would be.  To be so hate filled that you're eager to suffer horribly just so long as the ones you hate suffer too.  Very strange.

I keep trying to understand it, believe me. Sometimes the crazy gets to be so much that it impels me to search for meaning as some sort of defense     Starting this book now named 'Union' by Collin Woodard which points to the reasons for 'two America's' and the intense polarization we see today that keeps us from solving major problems such as these fires:

Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge, for the first time, an American nationhood. It tells the dramatic tale of how the story of our national origins, identity, and purpose was intentionally created and fought over in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On one hand, a small group of individuals--historians, political leaders, and novelists--fashioned and promoted a history that attempted to transcend and erase the fundamental differences and profound tensions between the nation's regional cultures. America had a God-given mission to lead humanity toward freedom, equality, and self-government and was held together by fealty to these ideals.

This emerging nationalist story was immediately and powerfully contested by another set of intellectuals and firebrands who argued that the United States was instead an ethno-state, the homeland of the allegedly superior "Anglo-Saxon" race, upon whom Divine and Darwinian favor shined. Their vision helped create a new federation--the Confederacy--prompting the bloody Civil War. While defeated on the battlefield, their vision later managed to win the war of ideas, capturing the White House in the early twentieth century, and achieving the first consensus, pan-regional vision of U.S. nationhood in the years before the outbreak of the first World War. This narrower, more exclusive vision of America would be overthrown in mid-century, but it was never fully vanquished. Woodard tells the story of the genesis and epic confrontations between these visions of our nation's path and purpose through the lives of the key figures who created them, a cast of characters whose personal quirks and virtues, gifts and demons shaped the destiny of millions.

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Somewhere I heard that California has only a comparatively small area of forest under state management compared to its vast federal lands managed by the US Forestry Service. Nothing stopping Ivanka's brood from raking the Sierras.

lol, yes.  57% of CA is federal lands.

[Madelaine McMasters]

7 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well maybe that is because oil does not take millions of years but rather decades. Old wells which were pumped dry a few decades ago are now found to have refilled to some degree: https://rense.com/general63/refil.htm

You have misunderstood that article Arielle. The oil that seems to be refilling the reservoirs is not being created over decades. It is moving up from deeper in the ground, where it has been for millions of years.

I you the believe the new oil in those reservoirs is being created in just decades and is therefore some kind of renewable resource, I have a simple question for you. Created from what?

ETA: You apparently didn't read the article at all. Here's a quote from it...

Analysis of the oil being driven into the reservoirs suggests they were created during the so-called Jurassic and Early Cretaceous periods (100 million to 150 million years ago), even before the existing basin itself was formed. This means the source rock is buried and remains invisible to seismic imaging beneath layers of salt.

In studying so-called biomarkers in the oil, Whelan said, it was concluded that the oil is closely related to other very old oils, implying that it "was probably generated very early and then remained trapped at depth until recently." And, she added, other analyses "show that this oil must have remained trapped at depths and temperatures much greater than those of the present-day producing reservoirs."

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters