Re: OT: Typical Globlist

On 16/01/2025 2:47 am, john larkin wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jan 2025 13:01:30 +0000, liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid
(Liz Tuddenham) wrote:
 

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:
>

... Los Angles has a perfectly competent fire department,
which did all that was humanly possible. Sadly, they can't do anything
about anthropogenic global warming

>
Part of the problem was too many trees and other plants close together -
I don't notice anyone campaigning about that.
>
Trees don't destroy CO2, they simply store it and release it later,
either as CO2 or as methane.

 Things that grow in California must get harvested or will burn. It's
been that way for millenia; the natives warned the Spanish about that.
When people put out small fires, as we have done for over a century
now, we add to the fuel load for giant firestorms. Blame Smokey The
Bear.

In Australia we have fuel reduction burns every winter, when the weather is suitable - dry enough that the scrub will burn, but not so dry that the fires they set are likely to run away (though it has been known to happen).
I doubt if the people responsible for monitoring this in California don't know about Australian practice - American fire control aircraft come over here to work on our fires during the American off season.
John Larkin might be less well-informed.

Not only are unnaturally dense forests great fuel, houses are even
better. That was obvious in the Oakland and Paradise and Lahaina
fires; rows of houses set one another on fire and the trees survived.

Modern houses are built to be hard to ignite. Older houses are often less carefully constructed. California's earthquakes favour flexible timber frames, but you should cover the frame with something that isn't inflamable.

Pics show forests in California that are six times denser than they
were naturally, a century ago.

Individual pictures can show individual idiosyncrsies. Surveying a whole forest is a rather larger job.

And why do people build insanely flammible houses, right next to other
insanely flammible houses?

Housing regulations are designed to avoid this. Some Americans think that this in government interference in their freedom of action.

Our cabin in the mountains won't burn,
because it would be very hard to ignite, and because we keep the
landscape free of stuff that would burn a lot.
 Let the insurance free market work.

It's less helpful than it might be. Insurance companies set rates based on historical records, and if anthropogenic global warming is changing the environment, the historical a record is less helpful than it used to be.
The atlantic multidecadal oscillation produces some long term cycles that people weren't aware of -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillation
It wasn't even named until 2000.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney