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

I’d like to think so too. It does not get any more personal than when your homes are burned down along with all your precious memories. Judging by the woke clowns in here and some of them live in California, the jury is still out with these liberals. Sometimes the woke mind virus is just too lethal.

 

So you are admitting that when leftist politicians try to blame the fires on "climate change", they are lying.

Thanks.

 

Just because you live somewhere doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about either. It’s like that fchowd nutcase that lives in Massachusetts or wherever and thinks he knows everything about the border problem. I don’t really see the difference in each scenario here.


Anyways, you’d have to be inept to think one thing caused all of this. It’s a combination of natural occurrences (wind, etc) and years of mismanagement by the local governments.

 

This right here is a god damn lie! You called other posters spreading misinformation when in fact you’re the one spreading BS and defending the indefensible which are the woke clowns that are running and destroying California. You’re such a clown man!

 

especially with public monies, there is a lot less flexibility for government entities than there is for private companies or even non-profits

 

We have woke clowns like fb that are so far gone with the woke mind virus that even with his home burning down to the ground, he is still in his woke coma. One of the reasons I got the hell out of California is because of people like him in that beautiful state.

 

Which is exactly why brush and etc has to be cleared in these forest to prevent, or at least try to slow down, communities from burning down.

Complete incompetence by everyone in leadership in LA and surrounding areas. The sad part is, California is more accustomed to forest fires than any other disaster that can hit any different state. Basically this is nothing new and it just seems like they didn’t care to do basic maintenance.

 

California Democrats:

• Massively cut funding to the fire department
• Never followed through on approved and funded projects to build reservoirs to hold more water (instead prioritizing a small fish and "environmental justice")
• Didn't maintain water pressure or adequate water to the fire hydrants
• Had the mayor of LA in Ghana when she knew the risk of wildfire was sky high
• Turned away and fired many capable firefighters so they could hire DEI candidates and then put cross-dressers in charge
• Ignored repeated warnings from LA Mayoral candidate Caruso and President Trump to address these issues

How can liberals in California continue to support Democrats? They have turned the most beautiful area of the country into a burnt hellscape. And all of it was preventable.

 

We have people here that don’t understand that rain water cannot travel uphill.

Yes we are cooked. If the Mayans were smart enough to master the Vigesimal mathematics system and still collapse than we certainly are doomed with the level of stupidity half of our population displays on a minute my minute basis.

 

Are we really back to the raking the forest nonsense?? Good lord you guys… did half the population just get exposed to asbestos or something?

 

There goes his presidential bid for 2028. Big donors will run for the hills and can you imagine how he will try to defend himself during the debates? Good riddance Newscum

 

Massachusetts has a border problem?

 

So far on this thread I have seen a lot of blame getting thrown around, and yes, once this levels out i'm sure there will be hearings.

The one thing I have not seen a lot of is compassion for those who lost so much.

Serious question. Do we feel less empathetic towards well to do folks having their mansions go up in flames as opposed to those country folk in Carolina after the hurricane??

I will be honest, not proud of it, but i do feel a bit more sympathetic to the rural folks.

 

here's Brown's piece for City Journal in case anyone didn't want to read through the tweet version of this

https://www.city-journal.org/article/la-wildfires-cause-california-risk

Patrick T. Brown
How the Los Angeles Fires Became So Devastating
A climate scientist explains the causes and offers potential ways to reduce future risk.
Jan 09 2025

Devastating images have emerged of the immense destruction wrought by several fires in the Los Angeles area this week. These will likely be the costliest wildfires in U.S. history, overtaking the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California.

Many are looking for a clear culprit to blame for this disaster, with climate change being one of the most popular. The fires, however, are the result of both natural and human factors. Climate change may have played a role, but other, more direct causes warrant our attention.

Fire danger is a product of meteorological conditions and fuel (the presence of brush and other flammable materials). You also need an ignition—you can’t start a fire without a spark.

On the meteorological front, Southern California recently experienced an intense Santa Ana wind storm, with widespread hurricane-force winds and gusts over 80 milesper hour in some places. These winds provided the oxygen needed for burning. They drive flames forward, spread embers, and can make aerial firefighting impossible.

Santa Ana winds are an innate part of Southern California’s climate, but it’s not likely that climate change will make them worse. If anything, we expect Santa Ana winds to become less intense and frequent as the climate changes.

Fires need something to burn, so the state of vegetation (the fuels for fires), and in particular how dry that vegetation is, is the other key ingredient. The Los Angeles area has received much less rain than normal for this time of year, which makes vegetation more flammable, but there is little evidence that warming is a primary driver for such a lack of precipitation as we have seen. When Los Angeles does see droughts like this, however, a warmer climate means a drier atmosphere, which works to dry out vegetation and make it more flammable.

Then there is the question of how much fuel there is for fires on the ground. The situation in Southern California Chaparral brush is different than in the forests to the north, where a major problem is fire exclusion—deliberately preventing fires in a region—and the century-long build-up of overstocked forests. Nevertheless, mechanical brush removal and prescribed burning can still be used to reduce vegetation and fire danger, though it comes at a cost to ecosystems. And even assuming the increase in regional temperature that we expect to see by 2050, achieving California’s goal of eliminating 1 million acres’ worth of flammable material per year, along with the federal government’s target of removing such material on 50 million acres over a decade, would reduce the future wildfire threat.

Achieving these goals requires overcoming multiple challenges, including funding constraints, workforce shortages, and logistical issues related to complex land-ownership patterns. The California Environmental Quality Act poses bureaucratic and regulatory obstacles to clearing hazardous materials on state land. The National Environmental Policy Act does the same on federal land. The Forest Service’s NEPA reviews, in particular, often culminate in litigation that delays projects by about three years, on average.

The overwhelming majority of California’s recent wildfires were lit by people. Equipment use (chainsaw and mower sparks), ATVs, dirt bikes, smoking, campfires, barbecues, fireworks, and arson are all common causes. An important part of the solution, then, is to increase public awareness of fire safety. (Such efforts have already proven successful, as human ignitions have probably decreased over the past several decades.)

Utility-caused fires pose an additional risk for future disasters. Southern California Edison has preemptively shut off power in several regions to reduce the risk of powerline-caused fires; this is not an ideal solution, but it does prevent ignitions. In the longer term, California should continue to reduce vegetation around power lines, bury distribution lines, and install power lines that automatically de-energize upon making contact with an object.

Given that extreme fire weather conditions like this will inevitably occur and given that human ignitions cannot be eliminated, protection at the structural level is also vital. Houses are much more resilient to fires if they have no vegetation within five feet of them, and vegetation is sparse and fire-resistant from five feet to 100 feet away. Building codes and “home hardening” also make a difference. Installing non-combustible roofing materials (e.g., metal, tile, or asphalt shingles), ember-resistant vents with mesh screens, and fire-resistant materials for siding (like stucco, fiber cement, or metal) have been shown to be effective in both lab and real-world settings. There is also a synergistic effect, with increased overall effectiveness, as more houses in a neighborhood adopt these practices.

It goes almost without saying that well-resourced firefighting (personal as well as air and ground equipment), as well as high-quality fire-weather forecasting, are critical to slowing down and ultimately containing fires like these.

Devastating events prompt people to search for villains, but reality is more complicated. Climate change may be making fires more dangerous, but it isn’t meaningfully affecting California’s high winds and drought. In any case, the effects of global emissions reductions on fire activity are indirect and will not be realized in the short term. While fire suppression and reducing flammable material are unlikely to be as important in Southern California’s brush landscapes as they would in Northern California’s forests, vegetation reduction would still appreciably reduce fire danger in these landscapes.

We live on a planet that is often hostile to our well-being no matter what we do. Southern California has been fire-prone throughout human history, and it will continue to be. Devastation from natural disasters cannot be completely avoided, and we are often left with partial measures that can only reduce risk, not eliminate it.

Patrick T. Brown (@PatrickTBrown31) is co-director of the Climate and Energy Team at the Breakthrough Institute and is an adjunct faculty member in the Energy Policy and Climate Program at Johns Hopkins University.​

 

Did you just hire Adoo to do your post formatting?

 

At least someone gets it

 

I use indentation for block quoting too.

Using indentation to embed your own responses would be weird, though.

 

labeling someone a climate change denier is just a little too glib and not at all helpful. If you've got evidence that Shellenberger has read the data and trend incorrectly, you should produce that

"normally" is an interesting choice of term. Supposedly you're an economist, so you must have some familiarity with statistics and the ideas of statistical norms and deviations. How is what's "normal" relevant to chaparral fires in January? you should explain that directly, not just point at statistical infrequency as some kind of meteorological "gotcha" and then walk away.

and pro tip: if you choose to respond, full paragraphs are wonderful. You should try them some time.