Fire Season

[San Bernardhinault]

I'm going to come down a little bit on Linus's side here. The number of fires might be exacerbated by climate change, but California has always had shitloads of massive fires. As he said, there's no rain for half the year, a ton of dried out brush, and hot, powerful, super-dry winds blow offshore. It's perfect conditions for fires, and that has always been the case.

The biggest problem for California is the number of homes that are being built in the exurban fringes, right on the edge of fire zones, right next to the brush. These have gone up exponentially in recent years, meaning that massively more homes and lives are at risk than used to be the case.

I know it's wrong of me, but I feel so much less sympathy for the people with their $20m homes in Topanga Canyon than I do for the poor bastards in Paradise. Kim Kardashian and Guillermo del Toro are going to be fine to buy another house or rebuild. Malibu might be iconic, but the residents can largely afford to fix any problems that come from this fire provided they weren't idiots and actually did evacuate. That's not true of a town like Paradise.

[Incandenza]

Way back int he mid 90s, Mike Davis had a chapter in Ecology of Fear titled "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn."

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/TheDweck/status/1061319802302607360

[Sporting]

Trump would be capable of arguing in favour of deforestation on the grounds that trees cause terrible fires.

[Ginger Yellow]

He's argued precisely that on several occasions.

[Sporting]

You're kidding me?!

[Ginger Yellow]

eg, via Vox:

During an October cabinet meeting, Trump said that “California’s a mess. We’re giving billions and billions of dollars for forest fires in California,” after Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue briefed him on efforts to prevent the fires, according to the Hill.

The president claimed that California is leaving its old trees rotting and drying, returning repeatedly to the financial — not personal — costs: “It’s costing our country hundreds of billions of dollars because of incompetence in California. It’s hurting our budget.” As the Hill notes, California’s spent $773 million fighting fires in the 2017-2018 fiscal year, three times what it spent five years ago. The federal government chips in in the form of Interior Department and Forest Service firefighting and Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funding.

And in a now-deleted August tweet, Trump blamed “bad environmental laws” for the increase in damages, writing that “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!”

[San Bernardhinault]

Trump is - you'll be surprised to learn - being a complete ignoramus moron about this.

He thinks that the trees in California's forests are providing too much fire fuel, and the way to fix this is by having lots of logging companies come in an strip the forests. This is in part because he's a moron, and in part because logging interests tend to be even stronger supporters of the Republicans than oil companies, and in part because it pisses of eco-weenies.

He literally couldn't be more wrong, of course.

In the case of genuine forest firest, big, heavy wet tree trunks don't burn. All the under-brush is what burns, and that's what's left after logging, and that's what grows more when there's no canopy cover from big trees.

But these aren't forest fires. There aren't many trees in the hills between Thousand Oaks and Malibu, and certainly none that you could log. It's all just brush.

[adams house cat]

Trump is a complete buffoon about most things.

Meanwhile, any of you guys out in Cali be careful. Please. And good luck.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/davidbegnaud/status/1062179064860106757?s=21

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/kron4news/status/1062894304379625472?s=21

[adams house cat]

If it has not been said before a word of appreciation for the courage and dedication of the women and men fighting the fires out in California. My lexicon doesn't stretch to that.

[adams house cat]

Doesn't seem to be getting much better in Cali. Everybody OK out there?

[San Bernardhinault]

One of the blokes I cycle with is a retired fireman with all kinds of stories about days waiting to fight forest fires. Indeed, once he spent two weeks in Paradise (which gives an inappropriate Eddie Money earworm) and told me they were the nicest people who were incredibly welcoming and supportive of and helpful to the firefighters. Somehow it makes the deaths in Paradise seem worse because the citizens actually understood the problem and why they need to help the firefighters.

I have so much time and sympathy for the guys. I've met a surprising number of people who've worked the bush/forest fires.

[ursus arctos]

I wish they paid the inmates more than a dollar a day.

[adams house cat]

Seconded.

[Eggchaser]

1,000 unaccounted for. Christ on a bike.

[ursus arctos]

The annual college football match between Cal and Stanford (aka The Big Game) has been postponed until 1 December, as the air quality in Berkeley is "very unhealthy" (both universities and many other Bay Area schools cancelled classes yesterday).

The Camp Fire is about 250 km from Berkeley.

[S. aureus]

Yes, here on the Peninsula school was cancelled yesterday, and for the week before that my kids basically weren't allowed outside at school because of the air quality. Any outside sports have been cancelled (AYSO soccer for me) the past week and a half.
Frankly, the air here is very unpleasant, leaving aside the health risks.
Sadly, horrible as the air here has been the past week, going by the US government's website it is still better than that at most of their Indian subcontinent consulates.

[Sporting]

The annual college football match between Cal and Stanford (aka The Big Game) has been postponed until 1 December, as the air quality in Berkeley is "very unhealthy" (both universities and many other Bay Area schools cancelled classes yesterday).

The Play, yes?

[ursus arctos]

Very much so

[Amor de Cosmos]

I wish they paid the inmates more than a dollar a day.

And also allowed them to apply for firefighter jobs when they'd served their time.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/sethfinnegan1/status/1063842563138904064

[Eggchaser]

Trump's ordered mass logging on Federal lands to combat the fires.

Nothing to see here, please disperse.

[ursus arctos]

Very good deep dive from Bloomberg on PG&E's pathology.

They have a rap sheet much longer than any other utility.