Trump doesn't care if wildfires destroy the west – it didn't vote for him

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Frederick Foresight, Sep 13, 2020.

  1. gwb-trading

    gwb-trading

    Why don't you go read the Canadian government websites I provided which show why the Canadian government believes they had a quiet fire season this year, but also a quiet season in recent years -- compared to the U.S. While certainly 2018/2019 were more active than 2020 for Canada. The overall reality is that the U.S. western states have disastrous forest management practices (and yes, the documents from these states also clearly outline how poor their practices are).
     
    #21     Sep 14, 2020
  2. Bugenhagen

    Bugenhagen

    You will still be idiots...

    ET for the non-right is a little bit of entertaining low grade morbid curiosity, a good dash of genuine concern for the state of thinking of the right and a lot of this.

    18252-Rodney-Dangerfield-quote-THIN-01-768x416.jpg

    Of course, how to look smart, hang around with stupid people.

    I'm not saying it's entirely mentally healthy for anyone. I spend a lot of my time surrounded by people way way smarter than me and I'm getting older, nearing 50 and my brain is not what is was in creative problem solving. Its nice to see the errors in stuff you guys present in moments, low hanging fruit, a cheap buzz.

    But.. There comes a time when it's time to take a break as shovel loads of lazy brained horseshit get too much. I'm getting close to can't take ET anymore.

    So ill have a nice nap and not be bothered with it for the evening.
     
    #22     Sep 14, 2020
  3. smallfil

    smallfil

    There used to be forest management in California but, extreme liberals with their environmental expertise thought, it was a bad idea to clear all the dead trees and dried brush? Yeah, leave it alone and do not disturb the environment. Worked out pretty well so far and you know what happens next. Higher taxes to prevent forest fires but, do not hold your breath. It is going somewhere else, in the politicians and their lackeys pockets.
     
    #23     Sep 14, 2020
  4. gwb-trading

    gwb-trading

    So I can only take it you did not read the information at the Canadian government websites to educate yourself..... and you prefer to re-direct with nonsense about "stupid people" rather than looking the facts.

    The map of wildfires is interesting. All these wildfires in Washington currently near the Canadian border and not a single wildfire over on the Canadian side of the border. Did it magically only rain and have a wet spring in Canada but the rain showers strictly stopped at the national border?
     
    #24     Sep 14, 2020
  5. Overnight

    Overnight

    #25     Sep 14, 2020
  6. Snarkhund

    Snarkhund

    The Climate Cult sees forests as a carbon sink, a place where carbon is stored, nothing more.
     
    #26     Sep 14, 2020
  7. Arnie

    Arnie

    Wildfires Caused By Bad Environmental Policy Are Causing California Forests To Be Net CO2 Emitters


    In the past two years, wildfires scorched 2.9 million acres in California, including five of the state’s 20 deadliest fires killing 131 people.

    Former California Gov. Jerry Brown grimly warned that because of man-made climate change, these destructive wildfires are the “new abnormal” that threaten “our whole way of life.”

    Newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rhetoric has been more balanced.

    As with Brown before him, Newsom blames climate change for the fires, saying during the campaign last September that, “The science is clear — increased fire threat due to climate change is becoming a fact of life in our state. Drier, longer summers combined with unpredictable wet winters have created dangerous fire conditions.”



    Claiming that climate change causes wildfires naturally leads to a demand for action, with Newsom promising an aggressive progressive pushback against the Trump Administration’s effort to cut red tape regarding vehicle mileage standards, power plant carbon dioxide emissions, and oil and gas extraction.

    That’s politics. Governing often dictates practicality. Here Newsom appears set to do more to combat wildfires than the tentative half-measures signed into law by Brown. Newsom is calling for improved wildfire surveillance and warning systems, better urban planning, and helping property owners clear brush.

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    Regarding reducing the fuel load, in an interview four months ago, Newsom said that there are “Hundreds of millions of dead trees” in the state and that it cost his father $35,000 to clear “a small little patch of dead trees” on his property.

    Newsom didn’t admit it, but the outrageous cost to remove a few dead trees from private land is a consequence of California’s Byzantine environmental regulatory patchwork.

    This is California’s big secret: it’s not climate change that’s burning up the forests, killing people, and destroying hundreds of homes; it’s decades of environmental mismanagement that has created a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush.

    This dangerous situation attracted attention from President Donald Trump who, during the height of California’s wildfires last year insisted that “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor."

    The irony is that forest management is so bad on public lands that a new report, ordered by the California legislature in 2010, shows that the portion of California's National Forests protected from timber harvesting is now a net contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fires and trees killed by insects and disease.

    Every year about 3.8 billion board feet of new timber grows in the Golden State, capturing almost one metric ton of CO2 per acre in the productive timberland areas. Trees grow until they die, burn, or get harvested. If harvesting declines, tree mortality and fires increase. It’s the tyranny of math.

    In the early 1990s, a series of restrictions were placed on logging in the West to protect the Spotted Owl. As it turned out, nature was more complicated than expected, with owl numbers continuing to decline—even after the California timber harvest plummeted—due to predation from other raptors.

    In the meantime, the harvest fell below the growth rate in the 1990s, to about 1.5 billion board feet per year over the past decade. The tree harvest on federal lands is now one-tenth of what it was in 1988, President Reagan’s last full year in office.

    The California forest report draft concludes by observing that the “Current flux [of CO2] may not be sustainable without forest management!” while citing the challenge of “Aging of forests on federal lands.”

    Unlike much of the American South and East, California has a distinct wet season, with Pacific storms rolling in by November or December and wrapping up by March. In even the wettest years (2016-17 was the wettest in 122 years) much of California is bone-dry by late fall. Thus, it isn’t climate change that sets the conditions for fires—it’s California’s natural weather pattern. Comparing acres burned in wildfires to weather and tree harvest data, there appears to be little link to climate—but a big connection to the growing forest fuel load, especially on government land.

    Which brings us back to policy. If federal and state environmental policies continue to make it difficult and costly to harvest timber and manage the fuel load, then the wildfires will continue and they will be bigger and deadlier. This will, in due course, cause some politicians to blame the fires on climate change.

    In the meantime, the timber harvest infrastructure is less than one-third of what it was 30 years ago, meaning that even if politicians were sincere in wanting to manage the public forests, there few people remaining to manage them.
     
    #27     Sep 14, 2020
  8. Cuddles

    Cuddles

    yes, ignoring anthropogenic CO2 production is indeed bad environmental policy
     
    #28     Sep 14, 2020
    Bugenhagen likes this.
  9. Bugenhagen

    Bugenhagen

    One thing I noticed owning land in mountainous SoCal is the federal government owns nearly all the forests. Its not really much different in the other western states I expect.

    https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/08/13/c...rm-strategy-to-manage-forests-and-rangelands/

    "Since the federal government owns nearly 58 percent of California’s 33 million acres of forestlands, while the state owns 3 percent, joint state-federal management is crucial to California’s overall forest health and wildfire resilience."

    So the remaining is company, private and Indian land etc.

    Now it has got hotter in the past decade (this is hugely important, bark beetles etc.), there are too many moving out to the country affecting natural burns, there are invasive species and Cali the state has work to do on forest management.. however... 3 percent?

    We would need to overlay federal land management with fire locations but I'm fairly sure what we will see.
     
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2020
    #29     Sep 14, 2020
  10. Overnight

    Overnight

    And there it is, again...The spotted owl.

    Back in the day, the spotted owl was the meme used to complain about envriowackos. It is still appropriate.

    So how many people have died now indirectly because of the fucking spotted owl?
     
    #30     Sep 14, 2020