Life-threatening' windstorm fans fires in Southern Calaifornia as blazes burn in Los Angeles

You missed Katrina.

 

so wait . . . "Bass' decision to cut $7 million from the department's overtime budget" was not a budget cut?

 

Semantics, all that matters is that the budget for the fire department YoY increased. I don' know about you, but when a budget goes up YoY, you don't call it a budget cut.

 

okay

 

Depends on what your baseline is, I suppose. If the budget increased by $50 million from the prior year, still would be a net increase with the $7 million overtime budget cut wouldn't it?

What I'm wondering is where the $23 million figure is coming from, or the $17 million figure from that Savendra tweet.

 

if a budget increased by $50 million, and a total of $80 million were newly-committed to capital expenditures, while the operating budget was cut by $30 million . . . I'd say that if I were counting on operating in the black I'd feel like I was $30 million in the hole

 

Makes sense, but are these hypothetical or actual numbers? I didn't see that there was a 30 million operating budget cut.

 

no, you offered a hypothetical, I responded with a hypothetical--but the point remains, budgets are not simply a "semantic" issue. When monies are taken from operating budget lines, while operating expenses stay the same, those reductions are experienced as budget cuts.

In reality, I have no idea what the LAFD budget looks like--all I know is that the Chief (a credible source) complained of experiencing a $17 million reduction in her operating budget.

 

That's actually all I was looking for -- the source of the claim there was a cut to her operating budget. If it came from the Chief, then yes I agree it is a credible claim.

 

an alternative view

 

maybe. but the AP article you posted doesn't seem to be the point you were originally trying to make with your "observations" then (although correct me if I'm wrong, I may have missed your point):

There’s no sure link between Santa Ana winds — gusts from the east that come down the mountains, gain speed and hit the coast — to human-caused climate change, said Daniel Swain, climate scientist for the California Institute for Water Resources.

But a condition that led to those winds is a big plunge in the temperature of the jet stream — the river of air that moves weather systems across the globe — which helped bring cold air to the eastern two-thirds of the nation, said University of California Merced climate and fire scientist John Abatzoglou. Other scientists have preliminarily linked those jet stream plunges to climate change.
​

I haven't really read all this stuff posted here tonight carefully, but the Patrick Brown tweet thread I posted seems to downplay or de-emphasize climate change as a direct causal factor with these specific fires. I think that's what the other poster was driving at with the "no basis in fact" statement, which may have been an overly strong statement, but one that I think is basically on the money when it comes to severe-weather attribution alchemy (as Pielke puts it).

 

the AP article? sure.

 

California

It’s so corrupt and inept.
They took 38 days to count their votes.
That tells you everything

Evidently, like 20 years ago they moved ownership of one of the huge reservoirs to private hands with a secret meeting. No votes, no debates.
Diane Feinstein is to blame for a lot of the shady dealings


Now the public has to buy that water back.
It’s mostly controlled by that pistachio company and POM juice

 

lol. here's where your habit of an elliptic bullet points/outline/weird formatting outline style of posting keeps me and I suspect others from ever understanding what it is you're trying to say.

if you were clear and I just didn't get it . . . well okay then.

 

New threat: LOOTERS. 20 arrested for looting in the area already. The likely suspects?