California Burning

Death toll now over 60, with over 600 people reported as missing. It's horrible!
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/16/us/ca...res/index.html

So bad it can be tracked from space.
https://www.space.com/41403-californ...rom-space.html


It's shameful that Trump's first response (on Twitter, of course) was to blame poor forest management and threaten to cut off federal funds. Not one word of sympathy for the victims. But now he's going to visit the ravaged areas, read from a script thanking first responders and fire fighters (contrary to an interview to be aired this weekend where he apparently chides them for "raking bushes"), and maybe throw some paper towels or sandwiches to the public, making thumbs-up gestures.

But only where the air quality is good enough. It wouldn't be a very good photo-op if he has to wear a mask.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...ing-the-planet

How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet

(Ironically, the photo shows a swimming pool up against dry hills and fire)

It paints a pretty grim picture, but it's a good article with lots of data. I put it here because of the thousands of Californians who've become homeless, living in pop-up tent cities next to Walmart wondering what comes next.....rebuild, relocate? The same questions people ask after floods and hurricanes, which are more extreme, destructive, and occur with greater frequency.

I'm always amazed when the immediate reaction is "We will rebuild! And be stronger than ever!" as if all the problems can be solved (or "managed") with building/engineering improvements, better zoning requirements or smarter town planning, or Insurance and FEMA reform. That's still relatively short-term thinking for long-term, chronic problems that will only get worse as the population grows and the planet shrinks. :bulb:

Has there been a natural disaster that liberals haven't blamed on global warming?

"Forest fires... yup global warming"

"Hurricane... yup global warming"

"Record rainfall... yup global warming"

"Record cord front... yup global warming"

Lewk, you're in the group that thinks science has been manipulated for political purposes, but only by teh librul tree huggers. That was mentioned in the article but you probably didn't read it, huh. :bored:

You're also in the group that says Freee Markets can solve everything. Maximum liberty and all that. Yet you support the distortion of private insurance and eschew any insurance that's public or federal. Using your 'libertarian' model, only rich people would have homes or businesses on the beach, below sea level, in a flood plain, or in a wooded area (even next to state or national forests) but they'll still expect public roads and utilities *paid with tax dollars*

Some people will eventually HAVE to move/relocate and some communities will HAVE to be abandoned. It's already happening but on a small scale, and to people who can least afford it. What's your liburtarian solution?

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Originally Posted by GGT

You're also in the group that says Freee Markets can solve everything. Maximum liberty and all that. Yet you support the distortion of private insurance and eschew any insurance that's public or federal. Using your 'libertarian' model, only rich people would have homes or businesses on the beach, below sea level, in a flood plain, or in a wooded area (even next to state or national forests) but they'll still expect public roads and utilities *paid with tax dollars*

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Let's talk about this for a moment. If the natural cost of living in an area is expensive due to the high likelihood of a hurricane or flooding, why the fuck should we subsidize it? Just because you want to live on the beach doesn't mean you get to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Just because you want to live on the beach doesn't mean you get to.

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When has this ever been enough to warrant something? You act like the government is run by wish granting genies.


Edit:

Totally missed his even more retarded dismissal of climate change effects. God damn what a fucking moron.

Next thing you know, liberals will be blaming the rising global average temperature on climate change.

When he visited the damaged area he expressed sympathy. I watched the news. I also saw forest management discussion some weeks before, as well as water management, with county representatives because a water act or executive order was going to be in place. Water is sent from water abundant areas to the ocean and the rest is dry. Bad forest management makes wildfire to spread quickly. Also, urban planning with 2 lanes only trapped the residents of Paradise. So it seems a man problem that was created during several decades created this mess.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GGT

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...ing-the-planet

How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet

(Ironically, the photo shows a swimming pool up against dry hills and fire)

It paints a pretty grim picture, but it's a good article with lots of data. I put it here because of the thousands of Californians who've become homeless, living in pop-up tent cities next to Walmart wondering what comes next.....rebuild, relocate? The same questions people ask after floods and hurricanes, which are more extreme, destructive, and occur with greater frequency.

I'm always amazed when the immediate reaction is "We will rebuild! And be stronger than ever!" as if all the problems can be solved (or "managed") with building/engineering improvements, better zoning requirements or smarter town planning, or Insurance and FEMA reform. That's still relatively short-term thinking for long-term, chronic problems that will only get worse as the population grows and the planet shrinks. :bulb:

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In recent days we had very big sun spots pointing at Earth about the same time when the fires took place. I wonder if the increase of incoming energy played a role. If you see climate change documentaries, they say more CO2 cause more acid seas that kill fish. But real chemistry says water becomes LESS acid (not more) when CO2 concentration increases. I wonder how much of a human contribution is in this climate change.

Net heating = Incoming energy - Dissipated energy
Incoming energy = Sun solar wind + Underground heat going to surface + Cosmic rays (depend on how much energy penetrates heliopause)
Dissipated energy = Hurricanes and tornados (heat to kinetic) + Reflected energy + Absortion by plants + Absortion by other chemical reactions + Other (anything that absorbs or reflects)?

Today we have not modelled the dissipated energy properly, so obviously, Earth looks like it may overheat. During early Earth years before photosynthesis, atmosphere was at some balmy 90 celsius with 100% CO2 atmosphere and 0% oxygen, so it will never be as hot as Venus, no matter how much CO2 we produce. And if CO2 catches heat, salt and water also keeps lots of heat. Salt is so good at capturing heat that you can put down an oil fire in a kitchen by putting salt on top. Water also captures lots of heat, so raising temperature is really hard.

Wind turbines kill lots of birds. And with very strong winds, they may break.

We do not have a complete model so we can tell for sure that Earth is permanently heating or not, or that 100% of it is man made or not. Having noisy climate scientists "believing" is not enough. Physics does not care about human beliefs.

Big sun flares started on Nov 5. From Nov 8 to Nov 10 they were hitting Earth. Buttle and Solano counties fires started on Nov 8. Some solar streams have been ejected during November. I suspect solar activity may have a larger impact than humans.

Climate change politics started way before NASA launched a carbon satellite OCO-2 in 2014 and even today carbon absortion by plants is a wild guesstimate because NASA had not even measured it yet worldwide. During day they capture carbon, during night they release. Absortion depends on sun light for photosynthesis and different plants absorb differently. We do not even have a solid number on deforestation. Without accurate models, no thermodynamic simulations will work in the long term.

There is a climate change, yes. Climate has always been changing and as per Earth cycles alone we are having increased temperatures, and the peak may be reached soon. The problem is how much of that change is man made. We do not have reliable models to calculate human contribution to change.

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Originally Posted by ar81

But real chemistry says water becomes LESS acid (not more) when CO2 concentration increases.

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Do elaborate, please.

The Fourth National Climate Assessment was published on Black Friday. Trump doesn't believe it. :picard:

Lewk, since you obviously view Climate Science through a political lens, maybe you should expand your "Conservative Republican" reading list.

http://www.republicen.org/

Note: they're not denying the science.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GGT

The Fourth National Climate Assessment was published on Black Friday. Trump doesn't believe it. :picard:

Lewk, since you obviously view Climate Science through a political lens, maybe you should expand your "Conservative Republican" reading list.

http://www.republicen.org/

Note: they're not denying the science.

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Climate science has an incomplete model. It leads to wrong numbers.
It is like calculating relativistic motion using Newton's equations, instead of Einstein's.
Mercury is subject to relativity. And even satellite clocks are suffering from it.
GPS would be a mess if relativistic calibration was not coded in their software.
Same happens to climate science.

Being noisy and do yellow journalism will not make false become true.
Doing bad math does not make a stone to hit where it would not hit.
Physics does not care about about our bad math.

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Originally Posted by BalticSailor

Do elaborate, please.

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Yeah. What in the actual fuck?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Let's talk about this for a moment. If the natural cost of living in an area is expensive due to the high likelihood of a hurricane or flooding, why the fuck should we subsidize it? Just because you want to live on the beach doesn't mean you get to.

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We've been talking about this for years. Literally. And you always refer to "costs" from an economic angle using risk analysis/insurance models. And I always say there is no safe place (totally without risk) in the US. :donkey:

Even if people move away from coastline beaches, there will still be tornado alley and earthquake fault lines to deal with. It seems the midwest is going to be in a world of hurt, according to the projections, hitting farming and food production (the bread basket of the world) really hard. No amount of farm bill subsidies or commodity trading....or insurance products....will fix that.

Alaska is already moving some remote indigenous villages due to arctic melting and permafrost loss. Do you think they aren't entitled to federal funds for their survival? Drill baby drill? :donkey:



edit: The Alaskan Pipeline had to shut down after a 7.0 earthquake today.

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/04/67228...or-rising-seas

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Originally Posted by GGT

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/04/67228...or-rising-seas

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Quote:

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"We're not worried about the actual hazard because you can accept Mother Nature, and that may happen a hundred years from now," Imperato says, "What we're afraid of is the regulations that are going to affect us today or tomorrow."

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I think that shows a the problem. Risk is increasing, but they don't want to take steps because it might hurt their property value.

The sky is going to fall on a lot of people sooner than later. The thing is, it's falling slow enough that the fuck-tards that have, and are, making the decisions that ensure it comes down will be gone and forgotten by the time it's around the grand-kids' ears. There'll be some documentary showing old footage of various dead government figures making the idiotic arguments we see today to do nothing or even backtrack on climate-change mitigating policy, and social analysis of the group psychosis of people like Lewk and how they idiotically supported such self-destructive, delusional policy-makers.... but nobody, NOBODY, will ever be accountable for this egregious act of negligent stupidity. Looking at some of the recent articles in sci-am about the way accelerated changes they're seeing in the arctic and Greenland, I'd say don't buy any coastal property - and if you own some, sell it right fucking now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Has there been a natural disaster that liberals haven't blamed on global warming?

"Forest fires... yup global warming"

"Hurricane... yup global warming"

"Record rainfall... yup global warming"

"Record cord front... yup global warming"

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It took some doing, but I have located a dumber take on global warming than this.

BEHOLD

Twitter Link

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

The sky is going to fall on a lot of people sooner than later. The thing is, it's falling slow enough that the fuck-tards that have, and are, making the decisions that ensure it comes down will be gone and forgotten by the time it's around the grand-kids' ears. There'll be some documentary showing old footage of various dead government figures making the idiotic arguments we see today to do nothing or even backtrack on climate-change mitigating policy, and social analysis of the group psychosis of people like Lewk and how they idiotically supported such self-destructive, delusional policy-makers.... but nobody, NOBODY, will ever be accountable for this egregious act of negligent stupidity.

Looking at some of the recent articles in sci-am about the way accelerated changes they're seeing in the arctic and Greenland, I'd say don't buy any coastal property - and if you own some, sell it right fucking now.

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Then it really sucks to be a US coastal STATE, huh. We don't take measures to protect them, but also can't sell them off. :bulb:

I think our large land size and "free market economies of scale" politics has influenced our thinking for so long that we don't realize the world is shrinking, and we might eventually be on the losing end. We don't consider it an Existential Crisis because we have so much land to waste? Or we have so much money that we can buy our way out of any crisis, and if all hell breaks lose we have the largest military in the world?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GGT

Then it really sucks to be a US coastal STATE, huh. We don't take measures to protect them, but also can't sell them off. :bulb:

I think our large land size and "free market economies of scale" politics has influenced our thinking for so long that we don't realize the world is shrinking, and we might eventually be on the losing end. We don't consider it an Existential Crisis because we have so much land to waste? Or we have so much money that we can buy our way out of any crisis, and if all hell breaks lose we have the largest military in the world?

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The threat in the long term is not climate change but nuclear waste in California.
Company gives like 10 years guarantee.
Containers may last intact like 25 years.
After that, California is on its own. Planet of Apes 2.0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNoBbsvxTbw

Nuclear power is the answer to a lot of problems in the world.

Apologies for the bump....but California is on fire again. :(

Instead of covering Real News, or engaging in productive-problem-solving, we get race-baiting from Trump TV opinion hosts:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker...lifornia-fires

“The problem right now is that everything, EVERYTHING, from academia to public utilities to politics, everything that goes woke, that buys into this ridiculous progressive ideology that cares about what contractors are LGBT or how many black firemen we have or white this or Asian that, everything that goes that road eventually breaks down,” he declared.

Well, is it not weird that California's state-granted utility monopoly has an inventory of LGBTQ employees but not an inventory of repair needs for its transmission lines? It shouldn't be hard to have both.

But if it had an inventory of transmission lines needing repair (or underground gas lines in urban residential areas) then there'd be a paper trail showing they KNEW those had to be repaired when they chose not to spend the money to do so rather than them being negligent in inspecting. Might not be hard but plainly counterproductive for them. Until people actually start getting killed by their negligence, anyway.

The inevitable tension between dividends for pension funds and patronage jobs.