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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:06 pm Post subject: |
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| mrgybe wrote: | You are absolutely right. It's obviously too difficult and expensive to fund proper forest management from the Rockies to the West coast. Which is why it is so bizarre that over here on the East Coast, in the wooded areas surrounding my OBX house, the Park Service has found the funding to maintain fire breaks, thin the trees and to clear undergrowth every two years.......and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has been able to find the funding to do all that and to have controlled burns every year at the nearby Wildlife Refuge. Even more astonishing, at my place in the Alleghenies, the Forest Service, together with several Virginia agencies, have somehow been able to scrape together the funding to routinely conduct thinning and controlled burns every year. If only they had realized that it was too difficult and expensive, we could have enjoyed home grown smoke and pollutants rather than importing them on the the jet stream.
Where there's a will, there's a way. |
In his addiction to snark, mrgybe has failed to grasp the differences in climate and geography between his example and those in the west. I guess those tall mountains scare the shit out of someone who grew up in England. He can’t quite believe they’re so large. We could talk about rainfall patterns—but we know the gybester can ignore science with the top officials in the criminal family running the country.
But those beetles.... |
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J64TWB
Joined: 24 Dec 2013
Posts: 1685
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 7:17 am Post subject: |
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Life is so simple fo mrgyny.
OBX is about 20 yards wide. Appalachia is a temperate rain forest.
I dare to say he is an idiot. |
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techno900
Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 8:19 am Post subject: |
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Arid type forests have always burned and will keep on burning until the end of time. Simple fact. So, it's incumbent upon whatever regulatory agency that oversees housing in forests to develop policies that help protect those that CHOOSE to build in fire prone areas, but that will be really expensive if forest management is the solution. No guarantees because many regulatory agencies have done little or nothing to protect property owners that live or build in fire prone forests.
It's a gamble, and whether or not there are bark beetles and all electric cars, little will change for a long time. So for those that choose to live in fire or weather related dangerous areas, they should buy (with their own money) plenty of insurance or live elsewhere. |
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boggsman1
Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9120
Location: at a computer
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 8:29 am Post subject: |
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| mrgybe wrote: | You are absolutely right. It's obviously too difficult and expensive to fund proper forest management from the Rockies to the West coast. Which is why it is so bizarre that over here on the East Coast, in the wooded areas surrounding my OBX house, the Park Service has found the funding to maintain fire breaks, thin the trees and to clear undergrowth every two years.......and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has been able to find the funding to do all that and to have controlled burns every year at the nearby Wildlife Refuge. Even more astonishing, at my place in the Alleghenies, the Forest Service, together with several Virginia agencies, have somehow been able to scrape together the funding to routinely conduct thinning and controlled burns every year. If only they had realized that it was too difficult and expensive, we could have enjoyed home grown smoke and pollutants rather than importing them on the the jet stream.
Where there's a will, there's a way. |
CA is giant, and bone dry. Really bad little anecdote. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 9:49 am Post subject: |
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| techno900 wrote: | Arid type forests have always burned and will keep on burning until the end of time. Simple fact. So, it's incumbent upon whatever regulatory agency that oversees housing in forests to develop policies that help protect those that CHOOSE to build in fire prone areas, but that will be really expensive if forest management is the solution. No guarantees because many regulatory agencies have done little or nothing to protect property owners that live or build in fire prone forests.
It's a gamble, and whether or not there are bark beetles and all electric cars, little will change for a long time. So for those that choose to live in fire or weather related dangerous areas, they should buy (with their own money) plenty of insurance or live elsewhere. |
So Techno—what would you do with all the houses and undeveloped lots that exist now in hazardous zones? Let’s not limit this to fire, let’s include flood plains and barrier islands? How can we hold the landowners and developers who created those risks accountable? Should we then let those who have created global warming off free? Or continue to subsidize them, as we are? |
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coboardhead
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
Posts: 4303
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 10:09 am Post subject: |
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Techno
Just so you know the scope of the problem. Residences subject to wild fire threat number close to 7 million throughout the nation. Of course, the risks vary in intensity.
Your plan is to simply ask them to move or insure? Where do they go and what happens to the economies in those areas?
This is even a bigger issue in flood prone areas. Over 14 million residences.
I agree that the problem does not go away with electric cars for a long time (if ever with an expanding population). But, shouldn't the costs be passed on with the products (carbon fuels) to help to mitigate the effects? |
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mrgybe
Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 10:13 am Post subject: |
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Oh dear, I'm going to have to explain this more slowly. Of course the forests in the mid Atlantic are more moist and less prone to fires than the "bone dry" nirvana you all find so appealing. That's the point! Even with a significantly lower fire risk, much of the region has had the good sense to fund proper forest management over decades. Yet you lot, with your homes, health and economy routinely at risk, prefer to constantly talk about climate change and to fund electric vehicles for the well heeled. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns. So, for the seventeenth time, it's a question of focus and priorities! Your choice.
BTW Boggsy, from my SW Va house it is about 60 miles to the horizon. All forest with hardly a structure in sight. About 15 million acres out there. That's large. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 10:44 am Post subject: |
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Oh dear, more information for the deniers to deny.
| Quote: | The Parched West is Heading Into a Global Warming-Fueled Megadrought That Could Last for Centuries
Warmer temperatures and shifting storm tracks are drying up vast stretches of land in North and South America.
BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
APR 16, 2020
A sign referencing the drought is posted next to a fallow field on April 24, 2015 in Lemoore, California. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A sign referencing the drought is posted next to a fallow field on April 24, 2015 in Lemoore, California. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The American West is well on its way into one of the worst megadroughts on record, a new study warns, a dry period that could last for centuries and spread from Oregon and Montana, through the Four Corners and into West Texas and northern Mexico.
Several other megadroughts, generally defined as dry periods that last 20 years or more, have been documented in the West going back to about 800 A.D. In the study, the researchers, using an extensive tree-ring history, compared recent climate data with conditions during the historic megadroughts.
They found that in this century, global warming is tipping the climate scale toward an unwelcome rerun, with dry conditions persisting far longer than at any other time since Europeans colonized and developed the region. The study was published online Thursday and appears in the April 17 issue of the journal Science.
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Human-caused global warming is responsible for about half the severity of the emerging megadrought in western North America, said Jason Smerdon, a Columbia University climate researcher and a co-author of the new research.
"What we've identified as the culprit is the increased drying from the warming. The reality is that the drying from global warming is going to continue," he said. "We're on a trajectory in keeping with the worst megadroughts of the past millennia."
The ancient droughts in the West were caused by natural climate cycles that shifted the path of snow and rainstorms. But human-caused global warming is responsible for about 47 percent of the severity of the 21st century drought by sucking moisture out of the soil and plants, the study found.
The regional drought caused by global warming is plain to see throughout the West in the United States. River flows are dwindling, reservoirs holding years worth of water supplies for cities and farms have emptied faster than a bathtub through an open drain, bugs and fires have destroyed millions of acres of forests, and dangerous dust storms are on the rise. |
There is no doubt that allowing subdivisions in high risk places was a mistake. In California, generally a Republican mistake. There is no doubt that ending controlled burning--which started about a century ago as Federal policy--was a mistake. The issue is, what do we about it now? I take the pious and simplistic lectures of those conservatives who have systematically starved government as just another round of hypocrisy. |
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coboardhead
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
Posts: 4303
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 11:08 am Post subject: |
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Come on Mrgybe. I spent a couple weeks wandering through rural SW Va (flew into Roanoake) finding barns to dismantle and move to Telluride for a wealthy client. So, I was not in the "groomed" part of your forests. I was on, largely, private land. The forests were far denser and overgrown than any forests in my region. In fact, it was difficult to hike off trail at all. I didn't see much effort being put into protecting properties from fires like we see in the more well-heeled neighborhoods in Colorado.
Didn't you have a big fire near the coast of NC VA about ten years ago? How did the pre-fire mitigation strategies work then?
It was beautiful country when I was there...mid October. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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More about the simplistic nostrums of the British Raj. The Santa Monica Mountains are only one of the many regions in California where lots have been created, perhaps unwisely. Here's how:
| Quote: | | California Statehood In 1850, California was admitted to the Union and Los Angeles began to take form as a city. Congress passed the California Land Act in 1851, establishing a three-person Land Claims Commission and a complex legal mechanism to determine the legitimacy of Hispanic land claims. The indefinite boundaries of the unsurveyed landholdings, the lack of documentation in the possession of the claimants, and both the expenses of the legal fees and the time necessary to establish title in the courts often delayed confirmation of landholdings, sometimes for decades. In addition, title to the former rancho concessions was frequently clouded by the host of American newcomers who, taking advantage of a process burdened with confusion and delay, simply settled on the land and were later looked upon favorably by the non-Hispanic courts. By the 1870s, the demand for land in California prompted the subdivision of many of the larger landholdings, although cattle ranching continued. Since the latter decades of the 19th century, the rapid subdivision and re-subdivision of land, often punctuated by claims and counter-claims, has been an enduring characteristic of much California landscape, including pockets of the Santa Monica Mountains. |
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264040447_Santa_Monica_Mountains_Biogeography_and_cultural_history
I dealt with the pressure to continue to subdivide land in the Santa Monica Mountains, which is chaparral not forest, and the coasts of Santa Cruz, San Mateo, Marin and Mendocino counties. As CB noted, we are talking about millions of properties at risk. It is ironic to hear mrgybe and the WSJ talk glibly about just letting these properties burn. That is not conservatism. It is just talking points without any deeper understanding. |
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