California Wildfires

SpaceNut · 2019-11-11 14:41:07

With several years of large fires its Rebirth, angst and the 'new normal' of California wildfires

Haunted by loss of families and belongings they face the insurance companies that defaulted for many leaving them stuck with a mortage and no home to actually live in.

For the many others who remain, it means a life interrupted by electrical outages, the utility company's attempt to prevent power lines from sparking fires in the high winds. It means readying "fire Totes" that contain important documents and keepsakes. It is food lines and pop-up assistance centers and having counselors and comfort dogs at the ready when children return to school after evacuation. It is sprinkler installation and built-in tactics to combat fire, trimming vegetation vigilantly and creating "defensible space" around homes, now a regular topic of conversation between neighbors.

There are more than a few that feel Climate change could end mortgages as we know them

. In California, for instance, 50,000 homeowners can't get property or casualty insurance because of the increased risk to their homes.
Yet for now, no mortgage lender, portfolio manager or buyer of mortgages takes into account climate-induced floods, except to determine if a house sits in a 100-year floodplain at the time the mortgage is issued,

A wet forest is harder to burn and with water reaching draught levels in multiple years that would explain why the forest is a burning

Oldfart1939 · 2019-11-11 15:03:55

I'm aiming my comments at the issue of what causes these fires to propagate and become unmanageable. I've lived in the Rocky Mountain states the bulk of my adult life, and have been an outdoors oriented person the entire time. I blame the disasters on the so-called "greenies," ot the ardent tree huggers. I'm not sure of the time frame or any specific dates, but the "green movement" of prohibiting the USFS from doing REAL forest management is ultimately responsible. My late wife and I purchased some mountain land in Wyoming in 1994--160 really beautiful acres with fishing stream flowing through, and was about 50 % timbered. We were surrounded on all sides but one small strip, by Forest Service land. The timber was about 75 % good, but a large portion of our trees, and those of the forest land, had become infested by the Pine Bark Beetle; as a result, there was a LOT of dead, dry, and standing timber. That was a recipe for absolute disaster. So we began a major project of felling and removing the dead trees selectively from out land; we had a 4 WD tractor and hauled out literally hundreds of dead trees which we cut up and took much of it home for firewood. Some of the other dead but still useful timber we converted to fence posts for the ranch. Then with onset of my wife's illness, we sold the property "just in the nick of time." Two years after we sold it, there was a massive forest fire in the area which destroyed several thousand acres of USFS forest.

To make a long story short--the land which we had selectively thinned managed to survive better than the unmanaged USFS land.

The culprits involved are dead and still standing trees; lots of underburden on the ground, out of control vegetation that was capable of burning. There is NOTHING uglier than the remains of a once beautiful forest left to burn due to poor management. That means NO management or attempt to keep the forests healthy by selective thinning and removal of diseased timber. This is due to the efforts of radical environmentalists. I lay it firmly at their feet.

So---I am saying the "green freak" Californians have created their own doomsday.

SpaceNut · 2019-11-11 15:47:21

You are 100% right with managed forest grooming such that partial removal over periods of time allow for fresh growth to be continual. In between the cuttings is soil managment to allow for the under growth to be turned in and groomed to support the new trees. Even the conservation forest areas are cut managed to reduce fires here in NH.

So what are the federal foresty rules on this action as the tree crop is for profit in many areas for harvesting and this is taxed by the communities that the forest is in?

The governement agencies are not set up to generate profits and I am sure can not let others take for free either as its owned by all.

Oldfart1939 · 2019-11-11 17:38:33

USFS formerly held auctions, and the receipts went into the US Treasury. The "tree huggers" all put a stop to that practice. They thought that conservation meant "let it all burn." In my view, conservation means CONSERVE the resource, and not let it degrade to shit. The old practice of clear cutting was ugly, but selective harvest of timber is utilization of a valuable National resource. In the Rocky Mountain west, even clear cutting was beneficial to the elk herds. Elk can browse on younger vegetation, but can't eat the older trees.

Stupid is as stupid does.

SpaceNut · 2019-11-11 18:11:06

Seems that my town got smart and is using it to offset the property taxes for its residents.

Conservation really means that its going to stay as a nature forest rather than a parking lot does not mean unmanaged for sure as you are indicating for the "tree huggers" that would just lead to more problems than it does good to leave nature to nature. As has been seen mother nature does not like powerline issues or the random unauthorized campfires.... Even at the age of 13 in the Boy scouts we never set any forest fires.....

Oldfart1939 · 2019-11-11 18:55:39

Most, but not all, forest fires are started by lightning. In Colorado, near Nederland, some camping illegal aliens hiding in the National Forest had a campfire get out of control and nearly burned the village down. Burned about a thousand acres s a result.

Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2019-11-11 20:53:18)

SpaceNut · 2020-01-04 20:04:54

I thought that I had posted about the fires for Austrialia

So why did it take so long for help to be given to fight them...

US sends additional support to Australia to help battle apocalyptic wildfires

Wildfires raged on Saturday in Australia, choking the sky with smoke, forcing thousands to flee and prompting the U.S. to send more fire personnel to help battle the blazes. The country's wildfires began in September and are expected to last for several months as the hot weather continues.

https://myfirewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au/

SpaceNut · 2020-01-08 19:37:43

Ferocious fires in Australia intensify

suomi-npp-viirs-australia-east-coast-fire-smoke-tracks-hg.jpg

As the New Year starts, the outlook for the bushfire situation in Australia continues to be grim. These huge and disastrous fires continue to burn ferociously and with abandon, and reports have come out that the fires have actually intensified in the last 12 hours. NOAA-NASA's Suomi NPP satellite captured imagery of the fires and the resultant billowing smoke cascading off the edge of Australia on Jan. 01, 2020.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fire … index.html

The smoke and fire are changing our lives...

kbd512 · 2020-01-08 21:33:53

Well, we do have 747's that can smother fires. Maybe we need some more of those over there. We also have StratoLaunch doing its best imitation of a paperweight right now and that thing was meant to carry a monster payload. I'm not sure how thoroughly it's been flight tested at this point, but maybe someone should get on that so someone can benefit from it.

SpaceNut · 2020-01-16 19:49:40

NASA animates world path of smoke and aerosols from Australian fires

A fleet of NASA satellites working together has been analyzing the aerosols and smoke from the massive fires burning in Australia.
The fires in Australia are not just causing devastation locally. The unprecedented conditions that include searing heat combined with historic dryness, have led to the formation of an unusually large number of pyrocumulonimbus (pyrCbs) events. PyroCbs are essentially fire-induced thunderstorms. They are triggered by the uplift of ash, smoke, and burning material via super-heated updrafts. As these materials cool, clouds are formed that behave like traditional thunderstorms but without the accompanying precipitation.
PyroCb events provide a pathway for smoke to reach the stratosphere more than 10 miles (16 km) in altitude. Once in the stratosphere, the smoke can travel thousands of miles from its source, affecting atmospheric conditions globally. The effects of those events - whether the smoke provides a net atmospheric cooling or warming, what happens to underlying clouds, etc.) - is currently the subject of intense study.
NASA is tracking the movement of smoke from the Australian fires lofted, via pyroCbs events, more than 9.3 miles (15 kilometers) high. The smoke is having a dramatic impact on New Zealand, causing severe air quality issues across the county and visibly darkening mountaintop snow.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/

SpaceNut · 2020-06-16 16:48:22

PG&E pleads guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for 2018 Northern California fire

SpaceNut · 2020-08-01 16:40:40

Must be time to breakout those presidential forestry rakes once more as

Southern California wildfire forces evacuations

Southern California wildfire spreads amid scorching temperatures, forces evacuations; The Apple fire burning in Riverside County, about 75 miles east of Los Angeles, sparked the evacuation

SpaceNut · 2020-08-22 20:34:44

President Trump approved a disaster declaration for California as wildfires in the state rage on, funneling federal aid to affected regions.
areas include Lake, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma, and Yolo counties,

California sure sees an above average number of very large fires....

SpaceNut · 2020-09-13 19:27:54

This is now not just a California problem as more of the west coast is a blaze...
https://www.fireweatheravalanche.org/fire/

Tremendously long list
https://www.fireweatheravalanche.org/fi … -wildfires

Dense smoke smothers Pacific Northwest, shutting residents indoors and complicating fire response BB18ZogG.img?h=533&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oregon … ocid=ientp

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/des … a-72983738

kbd512 · 2020-09-13 20:28:40

Those fire trucks are definitely from "back in the day". It might be past time for a serious equipment upgrade. We need agricultural tillers or trenching machines to dig fire lines and some bulldozers to knock down dead trees. Continuing to do this work by hand is fighting a loosing battle.

tahanson43206 · 2020-09-14 06:25:22

This is the NewMars forum, so large scale thinking (as well as tightly focused thinking) is part of the culture.

I'll take the risk of posting a large scale solution worthy of a population of intelligent creatures faced with a problem as severe as we are seeing now.

There is enough sunshine available to deliver fresh water to the West Coast of the North American continent in a controlled manner.

At present, abundant sunshine lifts water from the oceans and carries it around the world in a random manner (with some broad trends).

The random process delivers water inconsistently with the needs at given locations.

For snow pack in mountains the inconsistent distribution is not a problem, because channels (rivers) carry melt water back down to the sea, and humans have long ago learned to channel that flowing water to meet their local needs.

The problem I am addressing with this (NewMars scale) proposal is to prepare fresh water on a continental scale, and to deliver it by pipeline to every part of the coast of the continent where it is needed. In this case, I would tip my hat to Louis, who advocates for solar power every chance he gets.

In this situation, since we already have natural water delivery on the scale needed all done by solar power, it seems to me reasonable for humans to apply ingenuity to employ that sunlight to prepare and to deliver water to where it is needed.

It would take some effort to accomplish this, but humans have been known to undertake difficult projects from time to time when it suits them.

(th)

kbd512 · 2020-09-14 08:08:47

tahanson43206,

California already has lots of solar power. They also have lots of rolling blackouts. The problem is that solar energy is diffuse, they have to clear cut entire forests (possibly less of a problem now since California's total mis-management of their forest resources has caused the very problems they're now having), and that as of now solar power still provides a tiny fraction of the power required. The rest is provide by gas, coal, or nuclear power. There's no way to deliver water on a continental scale using the Sun, when the Sun stops shining every single day, or more often when clouds or smoke from fires obscures the Sun.

Here are some wild and crazy thoughts:

There's a human population density limit, especially in forests or scrub brush deserts that have had problems with major fires for centuries. The only reason people live there is that the cities made housing prices within the city completely unaffordable for the average person. This problem is rectifying itself as people leave west coast states for midwestern states in droves. They're coming to places like Arizona and Texas in order to escape the crushing taxation and cost of living that they voted for, only to re-create the very problems they had on the west coast that caused them to leave.

Electrical equipment needs to be buried when there are flammable materials above ground. Pay up front or pay later in the form of fires and destruction of property. Either way, you're going to pay.

When you set off fireworks in dry fields, bad things can happen rather quickly. Beyond that, their arsonists are also running amok.

Intermittent energy sources that have no storage capacity are not practical past a certain percentage limit of the total mix of power provisioning, no matter how cheap they appear on paper when the rate payer is paying for the power provisioning infrastructure and power plant, rather than the builder of the power plant. The solar and wind companies have become masters of the "hide the true cost" game.

tahanson43206 · 2020-09-14 09:11:40

A Google search for ways to capture water vapor evaporated from oceans yielded this (to me surprising) article:

https://www.wired.com/2014/03/warka-water-africa/

Structures like that could be set on floats above the ocean. Modern scientific analysis should reveal the optimum design to admit photons while capturing water vapor liberated from the ocean surface.

(th)

kbd512 · 2020-09-14 10:26:21

tahanson43206,

How many of those do you figure you'd need to supply water to everyone on the west coast?

tahanson43206 · 2020-09-14 12:57:22

For kbd512 re #46

Thanks for picking up on this business opportunity ...

The need for fresh water is not going away any time soon. It is already great throughout the world, and this is a time of crisis for the US.

It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good crisis!

I'm seeing (in my mind's eye) a harnessing of the capitalist system on a scale similar to building liberty ships in WW II, or B24 bombers, or tanks, or any of the myriad of other war products this country churned out.

The actual devices are (as illustrated by the link) as simple and easy to understand as anything that might come along.

It should be possible to put millions of currently unemployed low skills workers into production of these devices, and the need is so great the production lines should continue for a number of years.

In direct answer to your question ...

The output of a device is unknown. The experience in the article at the link is probably not very useful, because these systems are installed in a desert environment. I'm proposing they be installed on every suitable location that can be found, including the open ocean where that is practical.

The supporting infrastructure will depend upon invention of sophisticated robotic systems that can tend the devices and bring the fresh water "home", whereever home may be.

Service lifetime for such simple systems should be measured in multiple decades, and that metric should improve over time as improved materials and manufacturing techniques are developed.

The need for fresh water in the US is X.

The supply of fresh water from one of these devices is Y.

The number if devices needed is X divided by Y (with units matched, of course).

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-09-14 16:14:55

Every spring there is surplus water that just runs off to the ocean where it does no one any good since they need in wells and ponds to draw from in order to make use of it later. The we have all the large storms and hurricanes at which the surge water could be pumped inland in order to do the same will later.
In another topic controlling the moist that gets to the air by solar powered pumping spray into the air to increase the moisture that could be there during the drier times of the year.

kbd512 · 2020-09-14 16:35:46

tahanson43206,

It doesn't matter how much water you have when you keep starting fires in the forests or refuse to remove dry undergrowth. Deliberately breaking something and then saying, "Look at this opportunity we have to implement our agenda" is more than a little bit asinine. Breaking the windows in all the businesses around the country is NOT creating a business opportunity, nor is it improving the economy in any way.

SpaceNut · 2020-09-14 17:04:04

The agenda should be to clear section for harvest and reseeding them with the land prepared so that it can not build up under growth.
You sell the lumber and that offsets operating costs.

Thats what a real state does so as to not have large wild fires.

There are to few forest rangers to secure the large areas without putting up surveillance gear to aid in the monitoring as well as barrier detection for those that cross into those forests. This is simular to any thing which has a border as it requires intelligence not just people.

SpaceNut · 2020-09-15 20:04:47

A fire bug or just someone that wants a free meal and a cot...
Oregon man arrested after starting brush fire with Molotov cocktail accused of setting six more after he was released, police say

Domingo Lopez Jr., 45, was booked Sunday afternoon after witnesses said he set a section of grass along the I-205 freeway on fire with what appears to be a Molotov Cocktail, according to a report by the Portland Police Bureau.

clark · 2020-09-16 00:00:43

Hey @$$holes.

People are out in the fires. Human suffering. Maybe it gets reported as a lot. You are a f*cking dick. read it. say it out loud. then do what you have to do. be a dick. you can figure out how you are human later.

Post moderated / edited for vulgarity by kbd512

Children do read this site, clark. Please use a modicum of discretion in your language in public forums, even if you're angry.

Last edited by kbd512 (2020-09-16 14:07:01)

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#26 2019-11-11 14:41:07

Re: California Wildfires

#27 2019-11-11 15:03:55

Re: California Wildfires

#28 2019-11-11 15:47:21

Re: California Wildfires

#29 2019-11-11 17:38:33

Re: California Wildfires

#30 2019-11-11 18:11:06

Re: California Wildfires

#31 2019-11-11 18:55:39

Re: California Wildfires

#32 2020-01-04 20:04:54

Re: California Wildfires

#33 2020-01-08 19:37:43

Re: California Wildfires

#34 2020-01-08 21:33:53

Re: California Wildfires

#35 2020-01-16 19:49:40

Re: California Wildfires

#36 2020-06-16 16:48:22

Re: California Wildfires

#37 2020-08-01 16:40:40

Re: California Wildfires

#38 2020-08-22 20:34:44

Re: California Wildfires

#39 2020-09-13 19:27:54

Re: California Wildfires

#40 2020-09-13 20:28:40

Re: California Wildfires

#41 2020-09-14 06:25:22

Re: California Wildfires

#42 2020-09-14 08:08:47

Re: California Wildfires

#43 2020-09-14 09:11:40

Re: California Wildfires

#44 2020-09-14 10:26:21

Re: California Wildfires

#45 2020-09-14 12:57:22

Re: California Wildfires

#46 2020-09-14 16:14:55

Re: California Wildfires

#47 2020-09-14 16:35:46

Re: California Wildfires

#48 2020-09-14 17:04:04

Re: California Wildfires

#49 2020-09-15 20:04:47

Re: California Wildfires

#50 2020-09-16 00:00:43

Re: California Wildfires

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