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    So, I'm guessing that you believe that the fine of USD 3.5 million is derisory . . .

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      If it was that for each shareholder, along with locking the criminal organisation up for a few years, then it might be OK.

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        That fine is worse than an insult. That’s a rounding error for an organisation like that.

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          It's not often I expect to be able to post on this thread, but here we are in mid-April experiencing a long dry spell in Glasgow...


          https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-sco...lpatrick-hills

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            The gale force winds won't help with that - there was a big grass fire on the dunes near me last night that seems to have been started by some careless bell end.

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              12% of Oregon's population have fled from their homes.

              https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oregon-...lity-incident/

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                That’s horrendous. This is like Oz, which began around the same time last year. What a fucking twelve months.

                I hope no OTFers are close,to this.

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                  The photos are tragic. Areas of Medford look like a WW2 city after a bombing raid.

                  The smoke here seems a bit better than yesterday. The air quality level hasn't been reduced, but there's definitely more moisture in the air which helps.

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                    Our air quality has gone from around 200 to just above 100 over the last 48 hours, which makes a hell of a difference. We had four kids for a sleepover yesterday (we're podded with my wife's brother's family) and everybody having to be inside was a bit gnarly.

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                      Relevant to an earlier discussion

                      https://twitter.com/khayhoe/status/1305567922992095232

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                        Hasn't really been safe for us to be outside since last Wednesday. Air isn't forecast to be anything better than hazardous to sensitive groups until Thursday.

                        Some cities in the Bay Area have opened libraries and other city buildings as places where people who can't be inside can get respite and breathe in better air. Los Angeles hasn't done anything like that, and during the awful heat wave two weeks ago the cooling centers that LA had made available could hold about 200 people tops.

                        Whenever you see someone saying "this is why it's important to vote," keep in mind that this is the response from a liberal city.

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                          https://twitter.com/PlashingVole/status/1305599809659777032?s=20

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                            This is interesting, though perhaps there are counter arguments not mentioned in the article:

                            https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ests-tinderbox

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                              I don't think there are many counter-arguments to that. I think it's widely accepted now. Basically everyone I talked to about fires in California, including ex-firemen, were of the opinion that forest management is a primary cause of the massive fires, and that we need more small controlled burns to get through the fuel in the underbrush.

                              There's the famous case of the giant sequoias - nobody could work out why there were no new sequoia striplings all through the first decades of the 20th century. Then some time in the 60s, I think, they spotted a few next to recently paved roads. And slowly they realised that the sequoia seed cones only open up when it's hot - they evolved to open up in and after fires because that meant that there was thin undergrowth and the seedlings had room and air to grow. They actually needed fire to function and because the forest services had put an end to fires there was nothing new growing.

                              There's a magnificent long-form piece by Mark Arax that Ursus posted on this thread a year or so ago which - if I remember right - covers quite a lot of the land management problems.

                              https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-paradise-fire

                              One obvious thing about more frequent fires, and letting the fires burn when they're going, is that firstly we still have to control them when they get close to human settlement - that is the whole point of the process - and secondly we have to accept that they're burning the forests in places we think are pristine, and we have to accept the smoke that comes with it.

                              A second, sometimes less obvious thing, is that many of California's wildfires aren't really forest fires. They're really brushfires, scrubland fires. A lot of the areas described as "National Forest" in California wouldn't look like forest to someone who grew up in, say, Finland.

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                                Those zany Europeans with their forest cities and more explosive trees, eh?


                                And yes, another twitter link, but you shouldn't need to log in to read it?



                                https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1305844978543988736

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                                  Air quality has improved to "unhealthy for sensitive groups" here for the first time in a week. The bay area air quality map is actually showing some yellow (moderate) in places!

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                                    While it appears to have gotten worse to the north

                                    The A's games in Seattle yesterday looked as if they really shouldn't have been played and a fried sent a photo from Saskatchewan that had the sun obscured by haze.

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                                      It's still very grey and hazy here. Canada Post stopped deliveries yesterday to protect their carriers.

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                                        Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                        I don't think there are many counter-arguments to that. I think it's widely accepted now. Basically everyone I talked to about fires in California, including ex-firemen, were of the opinion that forest management is a primary cause of the massive fires, and that we need more small controlled burns to get through the fuel in the underbrush.

                                        There's the famous case of the giant sequoias - nobody could work out why there were no new sequoia striplings all through the first decades of the 20th century. Then some time in the 60s, I think, they spotted a few next to recently paved roads. And slowly they realised that the sequoia seed cones only open up when it's hot - they evolved to open up in and after fires because that meant that there was thin undergrowth and the seedlings had room and air to grow. They actually needed fire to function and because the forest services had put an end to fires there was nothing new growing.

                                        There's a magnificent long-form piece by Mark Arax that Ursus posted on this thread a year or so ago which - if I remember right - covers quite a lot of the land management problems.

                                        https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-paradise-fire

                                        One obvious thing about more frequent fires, and letting the fires burn when they're going, is that firstly we still have to control them when they get close to human settlement - that is the whole point of the process - and secondly we have to accept that they're burning the forests in places we think are pristine, and we have to accept the smoke that comes with it.

                                        A second, sometimes less obvious thing, is that many of California's wildfires aren't really forest fires. They're really brushfires, scrubland fires. A lot of the areas described as "National Forest" in California wouldn't look like forest to someone who grew up in, say, Finland.
                                        It’s the grass.
                                        https://www.thenation.com/article/en...ought-climate/


                                        This is also interesting.
                                        https://grist.org/article/why-califo...ire-with-fire/

                                        The need for controlled burns and so forth isn’t very new or controversial in the abstract. The problem is that these areas now have a lot more people and, it’s so damn dry that it’s hard to control the fires. As that article mentions, the scientists in Oregon and Washington are much more in favor of letting shit burn while the ones in California and Arizona aren’t confident it can be managed.

                                        They do controlled burns in Pennsylvania. It’s no big deal, as I understand it.

                                        But it’s a lot easier to control in a wet climate.

                                        A lot has been made about these fucking “gender reveal” pyrotechnics. While all of that is astoundingly stupid and transphobic, these fires would have probably happened one way or another.



                                        I helped my friend in Colorado core trees and look at old fire scars over 20 years ago. Now he teaches geography and ecology at CSU. I haven’t heard from him in a while, but I’m sure he has thoughts on this. He studies forests over thousands of years.

                                        One thing I do recall him telling me about five years ago was that climate change in Colorado was enough to allow some bug - the bark beetles I think - to have two life cycles a year instead of their usual one. That was enough to tip the balance for them to kill millions of trees. So now there are all these dead trees ready to burn. As I recall, the governor wanted to turn that all into lumber. He advised against that, but I can’t recall why, exactly.

                                        But don’t trust Republicans with this. Their answer is to let loggers cut it all down.

                                        The west is fucked up.
                                        Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 17-09-2020, 04:11.

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                                          Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                                          One thing I do recall him telling me about five years ago was that climate change in Colorado was enough to allow some bug - the bark beetles I think - to have two life cycles a year instead of their usual one. That was enough to tip the balance for them to kill millions of trees. So now there are all these dead trees ready to burn.

                                          The Mountain Pine Beetle. It's been devastating all over Western forests.

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                                            Controlled burning (“back burning” as it’s called here) is an essential part of fire control and undergrowth management. In pre-occupation times the aboriginal people used to burn selected areas in sequence as they moved around.

                                            Have the RW media blamed the “greenies” yet for supposedly preventing controlled burns? We had that here. As if anyone in power would do anything based on what the “greenies” say.

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                                              Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post


                                              The Mountain Pine Beetle. It's been devastating all over Western forests.
                                              That's it. Thanks

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                                                Originally posted by Sits View Post
                                                Controlled burning (“back burning” as it’s called here) is an essential part of fire control and undergrowth management. In pre-occupation times the aboriginal people used to burn selected areas in sequence as they moved around.

                                                Have the RW media blamed the “greenies” yet for supposedly preventing controlled burns? We had that here. As if anyone in power would do anything based on what the “greenies” say.
                                                Trump is blaming California's fire management, as if he knows fuck all about it and as if most of the land in question weren't FEDERAL.

                                                It's a diverse movement, of course, but as far as I'm aware, no environmentalists who really know anything about it have ever objected to controlled burns that are legitimately attempting to mimic the natural fire cycle. At least, not in the last 25 years. Perhaps in the more distant past when the science wasn't very good they may have done that just out of a reflexive cry for preservation and there are no doubt some people who anthropomorphize plants a bit too much who may still do that, but if any environmental scientists think that, it's a fringe view.

                                                And, like you said, it's not as if their voice ever held any sway anywhere. Even in California, the building of suburbs and fire-trap golf courses has gone on apace despite the warnings of environmentalists.

                                                What the right is trying to do is confuse people and claim that clear cutting, which environmentalists and anyone trying to make money on tourism in the forests object to, is somehow the solution to the problem and they've got the Forest Service on their side now, of course.

                                                https://www.statesmanjournal.com/sto...es/2240504002/

                                                I've given up all hope. I'm glad I got to see some wilderness before it's gone. The planet is doomed.

                                                It's going to look like Blade Runner 2049*, if not by 2049, then certainly by the end of the century. It takes generations, maybe centuries, for an ecosystem to recover. It takes a few days for capitalists to destroy it. Apparently, about half or two-thirds of the world's wildlife have been wiped out in the last 50 years and it's not slowing down. Soon it will just be us, cockroaches, deer and rats.

                                                Humanity's chances of surviving another 200 years are far from certain and I'm ok with that. Civilization was a mistake.


                                                * Recall that in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the lack of real animals is a major part of the story. It's sort of referenced in Blade Runner, but not really explored.

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                                                  Yeah. That's two big things there:

                                                  The suburbs, or more often, the exurbs, have been expanding and expanding, particularly in California. There's a kind of person who wants a house a little away from the melee of modern life, and that means building homes up dirt roads in the forests and hills, surrounded by trees, generally inland where it's dryer and hotter. These properties are much more at risk than cities generally are (although Paradise and the Oregon fires this year tell you that's not always the case). There are ways to manage this - what California always advertises is that you should create lots of "defensible space" around your property: basically clear out all the trees and scrub and brush and deadwood within 50 or 100ft of your house, so that even if the forest burns, it's less likely to jump to your property itself.

                                                  The second thing is the Trump idiocy. Trump keeps talking about raking the forests clean of leaves as the way to remove the fuel and stop the fires. This doesn't work and he's obviously an idiot. But what he's really trying to do is to free up logging. There aren't many Republicans on the left coast, but a big chunk of those who are are loggers, or are descendants of loggers, and they're upset that the eco-warriors stopped them chopping down all the trees and ruined their livelihoods. Although there aren't many jobs left in logging (any more than there are in coal), talking it up and talking their language appeals to his base who mostly just want to do whatever the hippies told them not to do 50 years ago. It's dumb, it's useless, it's got little actually to do with forest fires (although clear cutting and replanting does create a problem of having the entire canopy the same height). But it is an electoral pitch.

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                                                    If there were some way to rake all of the forests, that would help, but it's not possible.

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