What Are You Thinking About v.CC

[MWil23]

Some are weeping about the environment, whereas I'm weeping for the rising cost of lumber and woodworking projects I'm putting on the back burner. (Seriously though, stay safe out there everyone!)

[Dr LBC]

1 hour ago, MrDrew said:

Then you look at the trees in most of the state, and there's generally only two types, oak and pine. Pine burns really easy, and oak burns really hot. Perfect combo to keep things moving.

Yeah I mean, part of the reason we moved a year and a half ago - granted, we went further up the hill, but to the opposite side of the hill (i.e. southwest-facing versus northeast facing) was because we spent the previous Anaheim Hills/Corona fires on perpetual standby for evacuation (our old neighbors downhill in Anaheim Hills actually were evacuated).  I think the common misconception a lot of people end up with is that they don't realize how landscape-diverse California is.  For as much area as coastal metropolitan areas like San Diego, San Francisco, or even (not totally coastal, but climate-wise, fairly close enough) Los Angeles, there are just as many areas like Bakersfield, pretty much the entire San Fernando Valley, Santa Rosa, even Camarillo, among others that get a desert-level heat but still have (Bako-ville aside) plenty of flammable plantlife with next to nothing obstructing winds from blowing embers quite a distance.

[Dr LBC]

1 hour ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

This ladies and gentleman, is a man who gets it.

See my post just above this.  This is a man whose family was on alert for potential evacuation living less than 10 minutes from Angels Stadium in Anaheim not to long ago, so I got my butt informed real quick.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

17 minutes ago, The LBC said:

See my post just above this.  This is a man whose family was on alert for potential evacuation living less than 10 minutes from Angels Stadium in Anaheim not to long ago, so I got my butt informed real quick.

Yeah I’d imagine situations like that get your attention quickly.

[Shanedorf]

2 hours ago, The LBC said:

The "bad forest management" argument doesn't hold water either - only 3% of California's forests are managed by the state, the rest is under Federal agency management.

Agreed.
But forest management at the Federal level has been a real problem though. For nearly 100 years the mantra was to put out every single fire and the result of that was overly dense forests. So then the Feds let the timber companies in there under the guise of thinning the forests and taking out dead trees. But of course the timber companies weren't all that interested in dead trees, because the living ones were more commercially valuable. The sawmills are set up to handle green lumber and there's a huge loss of product due to rot & decay for the dead ones - trees that you just spent big cash to pull out of the woods.

Timber companies took the largest and most fire -resistant trees, leaving a forest of easily-combustible "sticks". Sierra Club played a role too and while their intentions were good, the combination of their efforts plus the crapola from the timber companies left a lot of forests primed for superhuge fires. And by suppressing all of the smaller, more manageable fires for decades - that created the perfect fire storm. So who's to blame ? Pretty much everybody

The tourists griped about burned forests when they visited CA so National Forests and Parks went 100% into fire suppression
The Forest Service needed cash, so they sold rights to timber companies who took advantage of the situation for their own benefit
Sierra Club for fighting all lumbering, not an ideal solution - but in their defense, they tired of seeing the timber companies raping our public forests
Fed Govt for crappy management and chronically underfunding the Parks & Forests, so they were dependent on and beholding to the timber companies
Power Companies- For damming up all the rivers, which added to the dryness of the foothill regions that were formerly kept wetter by those rivers. Rivers created an area with lush green growth that acted as a natural firebreak. Now, there's just dryness. And the overhead power lines are what sparked many of these fires in remote areas
Timber Companies - not only did they use deceit to steal hundreds of thousands of acres of our public forests, but their ongoing self-interest continues to have a negative impact on California's forests and the potential for these massive fires

Its a very complex issue and there isn't one best solution that we can magically deploy. Its going to take years to unwind all of this and that's only if we find a common ground. Otherwise, its more of the same

[titansNvolsR#1]

RIP America. True American legend in RBG. 

[Shady Slim]

as someone from a particularly bushfire prone area of australia, who evacuated during 2013's fire season and almost had to again last summer, i may have some insight here to add to what's been said. in light of those recent fires the right wing here was also pushing the (bush) management angle, saying that "the greenies" (who hold a whopping one seat in our house of representatives and about five or six in the australian senate [NB: here it's the opposite, the senate is less important than the lower house]), the greenies had caused the fires by stopping fuel management and hazard reduction burning during the winter. now, everyone from the scientists from the fire agencies debunked this but they continued to repeat it anyway, but here's why it didn't hold water as an argument.

the upshot of global warming and the steady rise in temperatures is not just the hotter summer. it's also a slightly hotter winter as well, naturally. but why is that important? well, to do a hazard reduction by burning you need ideal weather conditions because essentially it's very dangerous to start bushfires. to do so in non-perfect weather conditions is incredibly disastrous. so naturally when the winters are hotter by one degree, and if the range of temperatures for hazard reduction burns is, for example, no wind and temps below 24C, every day that was 23C twenty years ago is now a day you can't do hazard reduction burns.

last winter gave us all sorts of new winter heat records.

it wasn't just one degree hotter than normal it was significantly hotter than an average winter - as was the winter before it, as was the winter before it and so on.

the upshot of this is the window to hazard reduction burn is getting smaller, meaning less of it can be safely done. and simply, you can not do hazard reduction burns in unsafe conditions. to do so is utter clownery, and would put more lives at risk and make the bushfire season run all year long - because as i said before, it's dangerous to start bushfires!! and starting a burn to reduce leaflitter when the weather doesn't let you will inevitably lead to an out of control blaze.

the fire that nearly had us evacuate in the most recent summer, gospers mountain, started out of a backburn (when there's a fire about to come through, burning where it's predicted to go so when it gets there, it doesn't have anything to burn) that got out of control, because it was done on a scorching hot and windy day. because they did the backburn in unideal conditions, it went out of control completely and became australia's largest ever bush fire. those calling for more backburning and hazard reduction burns fail entirely to be aware of the synchronicity of weather you need to have the conditions to be able to do so safely.

[D82]

51 minutes ago, Shady Slim said:

as someone from a particularly bushfire prone area of australia, who evacuated during 2013's fire season and almost had to again last summer, i may have some insight here to add to what's been said. in light of those recent fires the right wing here was also pushing the (bush) management angle, saying that "the greenies" (who hold a whopping one seat in our house of representatives and about five or six in the australian senate [NB: here it's the opposite, the senate is less important than the lower house]), the greenies had caused the fires by stopping fuel management and hazard reduction burning during the winter. now, everyone from the scientists from the fire agencies debunked this but they continued to repeat it anyway, but here's why it didn't hold water as an argument.

the upshot of global warming and the steady rise in temperatures is not just the hotter summer. it's also a slightly hotter winter as well, naturally. but why is that important? well, to do a hazard reduction by burning you need ideal weather conditions because essentially it's very dangerous to start bushfires. to do so in non-perfect weather conditions is incredibly disastrous. so naturally when the winters are hotter by one degree, and if the range of temperatures for hazard reduction burns is, for example, no wind and temps below 24C, every day that was 23C twenty years ago is now a day you can't do hazard reduction burns.

last winter gave us all sorts of new winter heat records.

it wasn't just one degree hotter than normal it was significantly hotter than an average winter - as was the winter before it, as was the winter before it and so on.

the upshot of this is the window to hazard reduction burn is getting smaller, meaning less of it can be safely done. and simply, you can not do hazard reduction burns in unsafe conditions. to do so is utter clownery, and would put more lives at risk and make the bushfire season run all year long - because as i said before, it's dangerous to start bushfires!! and starting a burn to reduce leaflitter when the weather doesn't let you will inevitably lead to an out of control blaze.

the fire that nearly had us evacuate in the most recent summer, gospers mountain, started out of a backburn (when there's a fire about to come through, burning where it's predicted to go so when it gets there, it doesn't have anything to burn) that got out of control, because it was done on a scorching hot and windy day. because they did the backburn in unideal conditions, it went out of control completely and became australia's largest ever bush fire. those calling for more backburning and hazard reduction burns fail entirely to be aware of the synchronicity of weather you need to have the conditions to be able to do so safely.

Wild fires, rising tides, a pandemic, unstable political climates...what a great time to be alive. 

[vikesfan89]

Honestly I'm glad i live in the land of rocks and cows 

In other news its 50 degrees and there is a high school baseball game going on outside

[bucsfan333]

3 hours ago, vikesfan89 said:

Honestly I'm glad i live in the land of rocks and cows 

In other news its 50 degrees and there is a high school baseball game going on outside

It was 43° this morning and I still wore a t-shirt and shorts to work.

[ET80]

I've learned more about forest fires and brush fires in the last few pages than I ever learned anywhere else - I really appreciated this, thanks to those who chimed in. 😆

[D82]

Figures the week before I'm supposed to move down Galveston gets a hurricane...

[twslhs20]

anyone work in a CLIA laboratory?

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

On 9/19/2020 at 12:54 AM, bucsfan333 said:

It was 43° this morning and I still wore a t-shirt and shorts to work.

If there were any doubts you were a white Midwesterner before, this confirms it.

[MWil23]

3 hours ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

If there were any doubts you were a white Midwesterner before, this confirms it.

Shoulda led with “ope” tbh