With Wildfires, California Experiences a 'Cascading' of Climate Disasters (msn.com) 271
"Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves.
"Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face," reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) The crisis in the nation's most populous state is more than just an accumulation of individual catastrophes. It is also an example of something climate experts have long worried about, but which few expected to see so soon: a cascade effect, in which a series of disasters overlap, triggering or amplifying each other. "You're toppling dominoes in ways that Americans haven't imagined," said Roy Wright, who directed resilience programs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency until 2018 and grew up in Vacaville, California, near one of this year's largest fires. "It's apocalyptic."
The same could be said for the entire West Coast this week, to Washington and Oregon, where towns were decimated by infernos as firefighters were stretched to their limits.
California's simultaneous crises illustrate how the ripple effect works. A scorching summer led to dry conditions never before experienced. That aridity helped make the season's wildfires the biggest ever recorded. Six of the 20 largest wildfires in modern California history have occurred this year. If climate change was a somewhat abstract notion a decade ago, today it is all too real for Californians... "If you are in denial about climate change, come to California," Gov. Gavin Newsom said last month.
Officials have worried about cascading disasters. They just did not think they would start so soon...
Philip B. Duffy, a climate scientist who is president of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, said many people did not understand the dynamics of a warming world. "People are always asking, 'Is this the new normal?'" he said. "I always say no. It's going to get worse."
"Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face," reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) The crisis in the nation's most populous state is more than just an accumulation of individual catastrophes. It is also an example of something climate experts have long worried about, but which few expected to see so soon: a cascade effect, in which a series of disasters overlap, triggering or amplifying each other. "You're toppling dominoes in ways that Americans haven't imagined," said Roy Wright, who directed resilience programs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency until 2018 and grew up in Vacaville, California, near one of this year's largest fires. "It's apocalyptic."
The same could be said for the entire West Coast this week, to Washington and Oregon, where towns were decimated by infernos as firefighters were stretched to their limits.
California's simultaneous crises illustrate how the ripple effect works. A scorching summer led to dry conditions never before experienced. That aridity helped make the season's wildfires the biggest ever recorded. Six of the 20 largest wildfires in modern California history have occurred this year. If climate change was a somewhat abstract notion a decade ago, today it is all too real for Californians... "If you are in denial about climate change, come to California," Gov. Gavin Newsom said last month.
Officials have worried about cascading disasters. They just did not think they would start so soon...
Philip B. Duffy, a climate scientist who is president of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, said many people did not understand the dynamics of a warming world. "People are always asking, 'Is this the new normal?'" he said. "I always say no. It's going to get worse."
Fuck the bureaucrats. (Score:5, Insightful)
In California, you can't even remove standing dead timber from your own land without getting permission from a goddamned idiot who will lecture you about how it's "bad for the owls" to take dead trees down. You know what else is bad for owls? THE WHOLE FUCKING FOREST BURNING DOWN.
Re:Fuck the bureaucrats. (Score:5, Informative)
CA: 125,000 acres of controlled burns per year
FL: 2,000,000 acres of controlled burns per year
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]
CA: 800,000 acres of uncontrolled wildfires
Re:Fuck the bureaucrats. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fuck the bureaucrats. (Score:4, Insightful)
Major difference in the terrain and ecosystems between California and Florida...
Florida's also a swing state (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
California is a NET RECIPIENT of Federal money. It doesn't send one thin dime to Florida. Jesus, the lies never end with you.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-no-longer-pays-more-to-Washington-than-15243861.php
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2019/03/20/how-much-federal-funding-each-state-receives-government/39202299/
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state
Ummm, think man: this is because of the Deficit (Score:3)
Right now almost every state gets more back than it pays in. Read your own links. It's because washington is sending out more money than we send in. So much so that almost all states are net positive in income.
But this doesn't change the fact that per california resident they are net $12 and in red states it's many thousands of dollars.
think man before you speak.,
The problem with California... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The problem with California... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really not too many people. It's the other thing you said. Cities are efficient. But people just can't live in the woods and not expect their house to burn. The woods need periodic fires.
You do know that this sort of thing is coming to everywhere else in the USA that has trees though, right? Almost no forests in this country are managed worth a damn.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Climate change IS caused by human stupidity.
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The recent NSW report on the Australian fires revealed that less than 1% were linked to arson, and the vast majority were caused by lightning.
Eucalyptus (Score:3)
California is following the fire season that Australia had at the beginning of the year. We were lucky that the next disaster was a flood.
Then a global pandemic.
Re: (Score:2)
There is reason to expect this will become a cycle.
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Eucalyptus?
Why not import trees from Australia and plant thousands of acres? https://www.independent.com/2011/01/15/how-eucalyptus-came-california/ [independent.com] Trees that produce a flammable oil that lets fires spread along the canopy at an incredible speed. What possibly could go wrong?
Trees from Australia, where not only are the animals trying to kill you, the plants as well.
"Under the Dome" by Stephen King (Score:2)
It's a neat science fiction novel by Stephen King, with his signature darkness. It's AFAICT are rare quasi-political book by King with a solid comment on climate change and the people bringing it about. It's a good read and the parallels to California today are striking. There's a less dismal TV series adoption that's sort-of OK and had Kings blessing and co-operation (Stephen King Cameo [youtube.com]), but the Book is harder at driving the point home and worth the read.
Just in case you aren't scared enough of the global
Just climate change? (Score:4, Insightful)
A century worth of fire fighting and population increase haven't made a tiny little impact too. There is this totally fake assumption of stability underlying climate change claims. There is no stability ... a mild climate is just one of the resources we're running out of, not even the most important one in the short term.
You could drive horse and wagon through California forests before fire fighting began, the forests didn't become dense tinder boxes because of climate change.
Re:Just climate change? (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate Change is loading the dice, so more fires and bigger fires become more likely.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And that is what the insightless masses do not understand. Parameters get shifted in statistical dependencies. It is not "this fire was caused by climate change". Unfortunately, that does make things not less deadly in any way.
Re:Just climate change? (Score:4, Insightful)
The size of the fire depends on the fuel buildup between fires and fires are inevitable ... climate is ultimately pretty much irrelevant unless it can keep the forest soaked throughout summer, but California never had rainforest.
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.fs.fed.us/ne/newto... [fs.fed.us]
California mismanages everything (Score:2, Interesting)
California mismanages their forests, actively suppressing all fires while preventing reasonable harvests, allowing huge build ups of dry dead wood, they mismanage their electricity generation capacity, and they mismanage their water resources, all combining to cause this catastrophe, but it's all the fault of cow farts and SUVs in the rest of the country? Sure. Right. Uh-huh.
Let California burn.
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Cow farts and SUVs right here in California are part of the problem. Go ahead and visit Bakersfield, you'll see. There is a balance, California has gone too far in one direction but there is a balance. We have a lot of people and people in different parts of the state have different needs. Its not so easy to apply practices from smaller and less diverse places to all of California, there is no single right answer.
Re:California mismanages everything (Score:5, Informative)
You mean to tell me that California is mismanaging the forests that are mostly owned by the Federal government? California is just over 45% federal land, and most of the forests are going to be in that 45% because the rest is going to have all the development.
https://ballotpedia.org/Federa... [ballotpedia.org]
Here's a sampler of stories on this issue:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u... [nbcnews.com]
https://www.redding.com/story/... [redding.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/c... [forbes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, most of the forest is federally owned, and most of the rest is private:
https://www.forestunlimited.or... [forestunlimited.org]
Re:California mismanages everything (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: California mismanages everything (Score:4, Interesting)
"Hence why California gets so much money from the Feds and why people in the rest of the country are propping up California's economy through taxes."
I think you're lying, there is nothing to back up your claim and you know it.
Puts CA ahead of forty other states
https://wallethub.com/edu/stat... [wallethub.com]
CA ranking ahead of TX several years
https://taxfoundation.org/stat... [taxfoundation.org]
https://taxfoundation.org/fede... [taxfoundation.org]
https://taxfoundation.org/stat... [taxfoundation.org]
Those are taking aid received into account, so what form of mystery aid is CA getting that TX isn't, that apparently the whole country is involved in covering up since MT, WY, AZ aren't complaining about it either.
Re: (Score:2)
"why people in the rest of the country are propping up California's economy through taxes"
Ha! Talk about clever accounting tricks. Or invalid logic tricks.
Drinkypoo mentioned in another posting...
"And the federal government places restrictions on what may be done and how the money they send for maintenance can be spent. People are acting like this is California's fault because of limitations we place, but the truth is that the limitations are placed on the state by the feds.
--"
IOW, the Feds are in charge.
Re:California mismanages everything (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think money the federal government gives California to manage federal properties should count as "aid" to California. It's really aid to the federal government, paid also by the federal government!
Further, those lands belong to all Americans. You are free to come to California and visit the BLM lands without having to pay California anything. If you have a big enough fuel tank you can fuel up in another state, drive in here, enjoy the BLM lands and/or national forests, and drive out again without spending a dollar here. And the federal government places restrictions on what may be done and how the money they send for maintenance can be spent. People are acting like this is California's fault because of limitations we place, but the truth is that the limitations are placed on the state by the feds.
Bad management of public lands (Score:5, Insightful)
Fires are the result of inept management of public lands. Do you know what you get when you don't adhear to a strict regime of removing dead folliage and over growth? Yup, a tinder box. Mother nature has her own way of management. You got it, wild fires!
People don't trust politicians' WRT global warming, because these yahoos are so quick to blame it for their own failures. We will never pass reasonable legislation to protect our planet if these weasels are allowed to perpetrate such frauds.
Wildfire Acreage Has Actually Declined (Score:4, Interesting)
What has changed is human encroachment into once rural forest and brushlands, and our decision to intervene and prevent fires in otherwise fire-adapted ecosystems. The result is larger fires, more invasive species resulting in declining forest health, and greater cost due to private property loss.
Re: (Score:3)
The site you referenced contains this quote
"Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data."
Re: (Score:2)
The US wildfire climate narrative is easily debunked by data: https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/ [nifc.gov]...
And how do you suppose that data debunks the notion that wildfires are being exacerbated by AGW?
California's number one problem (Score:2, Interesting)
California's climate anomaly of the past 100 or so years has resulted in a population far exceeding what the area can support safely or comfortably. Most wildfires are started by self-centered irresponsible narcissists, a large fraction of the population.
I don't know (Score:3)
Could be just decades of really bad forest management.
Re: (Score:2)
So is the failure to do proper forest management a "huge" failure by California and the environmental community.
Re: (Score:2)
its pretty aweful (Score:2)
The layering of disasters that we face is pretty bad. Cant go out because the air quality is 200 AQI right now.. Need to stay inside and all infect eachother with the virus. The virus that is caused by people continuing to eat meat as a primary protein. Another reflection of climate mismanagement. And its been 25*c... So you need to open the windows and cant. Brain gets fuzzy if you breathe the air. Luckily we have one hepa filter portable unit and its working so im not coughing anymore.
We are already in fr
not the worst (Score:2)
Proper forestry and brush clearing. (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe if they're practiced proper forestry, clearing bush, building fire breaks, etc.
Instead of spending billions on a boondoggle public transit project nobody's ever going to use...
But no! That might disrupt the breeding range of the last Shutsucker Owl in existence that died 40 years ago!
So, had they done their due dilligence...FEWER TO NO FIRES.
Instead, the entire west coast is Hell's Hibachi.
And these idiots keep rebuilding WOOD homes out there.
If you live in a fire-prone area, BUILD IN CONCRETE with m
Every year (Score:5, Insightful)
Do people not remember last year? ND the yeay before? And the one before that?
California burns every year. Poor forest management, plus people building where it burns, have madd things a bit worse. But wildfire is part of the natural cycle. Reading "OMG eleventy" headlines every year just shows how dumb the media is.
Re: Feh. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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It's probably not so much refusal (Score:2)
Meanwhile CA gives out way
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile CA gives out way more money than they get from the Feds.
California gets almost half a *billion* more from the Feds than they pay to the Feds. You're on quite a roll today with the lies, aren't you.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-no-longer-pays-more-to-Washington-than-15243861.php
As the article you reference explains, a big factor (arguably the main factor) for California becoming a donor state is the increasing federal deficit. It's still true that California pays more than it's share of federal taxes, paying 15% of all US taxes with 12% of the total US population. Per capita, California residents are in the top 7 [money-rates.com] states for paying federal taxes.
Re:HOAX (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The winds are blowing fast and hot, the embers cross the fire breaks trivially. We've had fires a couple years ago that jumped across a canyon. There's been a drought and tree disease, leaving trees that will catch with just a spark. This is climate change, clear and simple, and only a moron thinks it is a hoax.
Re: Climate change? Or a climate of tree huggers.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Invasive species create a monoculture that isn't part of the historic cycles of the ecosystem here. Now add to that human development of infrastructure (roads, reservoirs, etc) and human contributions to climate change. At this point we've done too much to unbalance things that doing nothing is not going to have it revert back to its natural state. We're on the hook to be stewards of our forests forever.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
California and all western states, red or blue, do controlled burns. This is not theoretical, we're doing it now. And yet people still believe that it doesn't happen and still give out the uninformed advice that we should do these actions that we're already doing.
Re: (Score:2)
You want to "log" my coyote brush, scotch broom (invasive species and very flammable), and poison oak? Have at it. I'll pay you $1000 to take it. I spend about $4000/year getting brush removed and trees trimmed. Most other properties are completely unmaintained because they're federal (DoA or USFS) or county or semi-abandoned private property.
The 3-8 feet of dry undergrowth is what is setting the trees on fire. It's not that we have too many trees, but we don't have brush trimmers that go up 45+ degree incl
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You don't have anything to burn in Arizona it's all desert.
Please keep believing that, and stay out. California (or is it Oregon?) needs you to keep the insanity going.
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That you find stupidity everywhere really does not make the concentrated stupidity you find in the US any better.
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Brexit proves that Americans do not hold the monopoly on unbridled stupidity.
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No, but they are at the pinnacle of it. The Brits just try to emulate their ill-chosen role model.
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It is a sad state of affairs that I find myself completely agreeing with that statement.
Re: Feh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can and should we do better in the future? Yes. Some lessons are hard-learned. Much of what we're enduring here on the West Coast right now are due to ill-informed decisions from about 100 years ago with regards to land management. Moving forward what needs to happen is we need to learn from those mistakes. It's a process.
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Many not until well after the catastrophe. Even once burned out of their home, many will blame it on something else. We already see it happening. And when their Social Security checks are late, they won't blame themselves for voting for the guy who wanted to throw funding for Social Security into the general fund and let congress argue over it.
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So stupid because we brought you things like the Internet? I don't think you understand just how much gets exported from the US, and California in particular.
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Unfortunately, while the US is both the worst offender in CO2 emission and in ignorance regarding the upcoming catastrophe, the rest of the world is still not there either. Considering that what is going to happen, what causes it and that it is going to be really bad has been known since the 1980s (with pretty solid science even back then), that is really an impressive level of global incompetence.
I also think we have found the reason for the Fermi Paradox, because it is quite reasonable that this works pre
Re: Feh. (Score:5, Informative)
Ranking of countries by CO2 emission totals: ... ...
1 China 10.06GT
2 United States 5.41GT
3 India 2.65GT
4 Russian Federation 1.71GT
5 Japan 1.16GT
11 Canada 0.56GT
12 Mexico 0.47GT
16 Australia 0.42GT
17 United Kingdom 0.37GT
Now lets turn that into CO2 emissions per capita (ranking remains # as above): ... ...
1 China 7.05T
2 United States 16.56T
3 India 1.96T
4 Russian Federation 11.74T
5 Japan 9.13T
11 Canada 15.32T
12 Mexico 3.77T
16 Australia 16.92T
17 United Kingdom 5.62T
Before Americans, Canadians, and Australians pat themselves on the back. They need to realize they could be Mexico or the UK w.r.t. their CO2 emissions. I intentionally leave out the very high per capita countries because their populations are so tiny that a nationwide initiative won't have a global impact. (sorry Australia, I kept you in my list anyways. bad luck for you)
We have some low hanging fruit in the US that can lower CO2 emissions significantly, such as moving away from coal. Because of the very steep decline of coal in the US and a rise in "green" energy, we recently hit a point where transportation is a bigger portion of our CO2 emissions than power generation. It's easy to wind down a few old coal plants. It's harder to change the economics of delivering goods throughout the nation. We don't have farms and factories evenly spread out in every city, there is bound to be some centralized warehousing and transportation required. It's going to take some pretty disruptive government meddling to change how business has organized itself.
And finally, the numbers above are all kind of bullshit because if I buy a widget in the US but it is made in China it counts against China not the American consumer. The accounting of it is not easy and we can't all agree on how to do it. Politically every leader wants to keep their numbers low, even if they have to push responsibility onto less capable countries.
Re: Feh. (Score:4, Insightful)
If California was serious about lowering CO2 then they'd end their stupid ban on new nuclear power and keep what nuclear power they have operational.
California doesn't care about global warming, if they did then they'd stop these policies that are just making it worse.
Take your pick, global warming, no new nuclear power, or keep grinding your economy into dust.
If you believe that there is another pat than the three I gave then let's see you do it. This is not a new development, this has been an ongoing policy of the California government for more than 40 years. You are seeing more economic destruction, more environmental destruction, higher prices, higher taxes, and for what?
Sane people learn from their mistakes. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome.
Oh, and same for Australia. They are on the same path of self destruction as California and for the same reasons.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, Canada could have the same CO2 emissions as Mexico. If we were poor, lived at a latitude where it wasn`t -30 for months at a time, and had 15 times our population density.
We`ll get right on that.
Re: Feh. (Score:4, Informative)
We have some low hanging fruit in the US that can lower CO2 emissions significantly, such as moving away from coal.
Your definition of "low-hanging fruit" is staggering.
Coal is responsible for 23.5% of electricity generated in 2019, what would you have us do to replace it? If we DOUBLE the amount of electricity generated by nuclear power plants (19.7%) we get close, and then add a second helping (doubling) of photovoltaic solar (1.7%) we get close to replacing coal.
That's the low-hanging fruit?
Source: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... [eia.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
Americans are not stupid per se. It's the right-wing media like Fox News, Breitbart and their current dumbass president that makes them stupid.
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Not only Fox. Haven't heard from the president. He hasn't visited the areas or even flown over.
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Re:Fox news hasn't covered this! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
So, how is all your hard work paying off, to pass a Constitutional amendment getting rid of the Electoral College? Should be a snap to get it approved by popular vote in only 75% of the States, most of which are probably eager to give the handful of hugely populated states complete control over Presidential elections. To tell you the truth, I haven't heard much about this Amendment drive; I guess your work has been mostly behind the scenes, right? I mean, the Electoral malcontents wouldn't just sit in front
Re: (Score:2)
>"For the last four days there have been zero articles on the fox news web page about the fire."
Yeah, right. This isn't even a week's worth:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ore... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/liv... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/politi... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/sea... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/dea... [foxnews.com]
https://video.foxnews.com/v/61... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/c... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/cal... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/por... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/liv... [foxnews.com]
https://video.foxnews.com/v/61... [foxnews.com]
https [foxnews.com]
Thos are not on the Fox news web page (Score:2)
None of those is a headline article on the front page of the national site. those are buried on the website. you have to go searching for them. I said "web page" not Web site. Accessibility is how you inform.
Re: (Score:2)
>"None of those is a headline article on the front page of the national site. "
First you said there were zero fire-related articles. Obviously not true. Now you are shifting the complaint to being none on the front page, which is also not true:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/bet... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/la-... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/cal... [foxnews.com]
That is 3 on the front page, NOT counting the opinion video piece on how it is Democrat policies that put them in this position (which it is). How much more newswo
Re:Thos are not on the Fox news web page (Score:5, Informative)
It is not like it is something new or different, there are fires every year.
It's not the fires which are the issue. It's the size and severity [npr.org].
According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, five of the top 20 largest wildfires in the state's history have happened in 2020. The amount that has burned so far this year is 26 times more than the same period last year – and would cover an area larger than Connecticut, fire officials said.
Also, the season is just getting started. There are months to go before any hope of real rain comes to the region.
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It was bad when we had the summer lightning storms. That is extremely rare in California, I've seen it maybe twice previously in my life. And that caused spot fires all over, brush fires, grass fires, forest fires, hundreds of them all small that grow and merge into each other (which is why they're named a "So-and-so complex fire". And those lightning storm cam from very unusual weather patterns.
Not front page news? (Score:2, Insightful)
10% of oregon under evacuations. burned acerage 20x bigger than last year? Largest fires in some state's history? Multiple towns burned to the grown. Governor's office say they are preparing for mass casualties. Federal support missing or exhausted? How is this less front page than say a hurricane?
Re: Not front page news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Fox news hasn't covered this! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
here's why the wildland fires are "only in California."
https://www.sacbee.com/news/bu... [sacbee.com]
This also baffles me why the canucks are doing this:
End of Environment Canada VHF Weather service announcement Sept 7th 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
> politicizing things that have no reason to be politicized.
I guess I'm more cynical - politicizing something in today's political climate immediately means that government will be deadlocked, so that you can't (and thus don't have to) do anything about it.
Global warming. Pollution. Prison reform. Take your pick - they get politicized, nothing further happens, and the existing fat cats keep rolling in the dough. They've gotten so good at selling a narrative to the populace that even a direct democracy
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Those issues aren't "being politicized", they are inherently political.
Right wingers literally do not want to fix some of those problems. They are happy that certain systems are breaking down, and they have faith in capitalism's supposed ability to solve the relevant problems because they don't understand how serious they are.
Those profiting the most from a lack of prison reform, action on AGW, and on pollution are all conservatives. Pretending like problems are continuing to go unsolved because they are "p
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Yeah, it's all those right-wingers running California and Oregon who are are responsible for all these fire disasters, lack of power planning, water usage, and their lousy prevention and responses!!!
Oh, wait...
But it's probably the right-wingers who've been running for decades all these cities with riots and civil unrest and presumably terrible police forces, right?
Hmmm...
Well, maybe we can pivot to lying about about the President instead? If he installs a special new memorial to POWs/MIA on the White House
Everything was always politicized (Score:2)
The trouble is it's annoying as fuck to think about all that, so most folks prefer to shut it out. That's why only about half of people vote. It's not that they gave up on politics, it's that they didn't want the stress of it in their lives in the first place.
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Um, they do NOT rake their needles. The reference here is to Trump's comment that Finns rake the forest floor, which promoted much amusement from the Finns. Maybe Trump misunderstood, tried to convert some advanced concepts into something more familiar to him, but it was a silly quote.
Note that California does clear underbrush. Just not enough. There is so much forested area, twenty million acres, that it's a never ending task without enough people to do it. The most effective method is controlled burn
Re: (Score:3)
That is not a good point in any way. The militias across the US are doing what they are supposed to, protecting local people's property and lives against mad mobs of rioting criminals and looters. Ooops not rioters, I mean 'mostly peaceful protesters.'
A good point is mentioning that neither is BLM and their antifa sidekicks are helping out with the fires. Heck, a number of them have even been arrested recently for starting fires on the west coast.
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That is not a good point in any way. The militias across the US are doing what they are supposed to, protecting local people's property and lives against mad mobs of rioting criminals and looters. Ooops not rioters, I mean 'mostly peaceful protesters.'
A good point is mentioning that neither is BLM and their antifa sidekicks are helping out with the fires. Heck, a number of them have even been arrested recently for starting fires on the west coast.
Your blatant lies are the hallmarks of a good trolling campaign.
1) No "militia" was protecting anything. The U.S. does not have militias. We have the National Guard which took over the role of militias way back when.
2) If these insurgents who show up armed and without permission of the authorities are part of a "militia", under the Constitution they should be well regulated. That means the government schools them in training. I don't think a single one of these "militias" has undergone any government tra
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you don't see a lot of militias heading to California to volunteer as fire fighters
Even more odd is you don't see any militia's, nor the NRA, using their 2A to defend people against a tyrannical government which uses its military to suppress first amendment rights [npr.org] or has masked goons scoop people off the street and put them in unmarked vehicles before taken to secret locations.
It's almost as if all that talk of "protecting" rights is just that. Talk.
I would buy that except (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact if you read through the linked study you'll find that of the 7% of protestors who could be classified as "violent" 5% of them came from out of State. And that's before we talk about stuff like this [reddit.com]
That energy could be devoted to much more useful things. The BLM protestors I get. while only about 200 blacks are shot by cops a year, there's a _lot_ of harassment from the cops on blacks. Samantha Bee just put up a YouTube video abo
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Both sides need these extremist groups to keep their respective media machines running at full blast, which then feeds the political donation pie hole. Antifa and the right wing paramilitary folks are some minuscule fraction of the population but they work their way into the psyche of everyday Fox/MSNBC viewers by dramatic cell phone clips. Which is then amplified well beyond their actual impact. Both groups deserve to have their illegal activities squashed, and harshly at that, but having these lunatics
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+10 comment, but I'm sadly out of mod points today.
Re: I would buy that except (Score:3, Insightful)
Both sides need these extremist groups to keep their respective media machines running at full blast, which then feeds the political donation pie hole. Antifa and the right wing paramilitary folks are some minuscule fraction of the population but they work their way into the psyche of everyday Fox/MSNBC viewers by dramatic cell phone clips.
You make some valid points overall, but miss the larger picture. The Brownshirts were a miniscule fraction of the population in Germany. People aren't concerned about antifa and the like because of their numbers; they're concerned about how mainstream the influence of such groups (and their ideologies) has become. For instance, the "Defund the Police" nonsense found immediate support amongst mainstream left wing politicians ... and not just in the US. Here in Canada we had left wing politicians jumping
Can you point to an Antifa that takes donations? (Score:2)
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and militias protecting property
Since no property was being protected, there's no dishonesty.
Also, as one military veteran [tumblr.com] put it, anyone showing up armed and without permission of the authorities is considered an insurgent. Which is why you keep trying to defend [tumblr.com] the murderer.
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California utilities and property owners aren't even allowed to cut trees around power lines without permits and an environmental review.
So what? The law also requires [ca.gov] "any person that owns, controls, operates, or maintains any electrical transmission or distribution line upon any mountainous, forest-covered, brush-covered, or grass-covered land to maintain a clearance in all directions between all vegetation and all conductors that are carrying electric current". So yeah, you need a permit and an environmental review, so what? If that's too onerous, step aside and let someone who can follow the law do so.
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Because everyone can just put down between $1,136.50 and $3,343.25 (the cost of the permit as of January 2020) every year they want to cut some trees.
Not only that, after the processing time, after the decision is made, there is a 30-90 day review time and that is PER AGENCY where anyone can make an objection (and especially for larger or visible projects, environmentalists ALWAYS DO). Some agency require a separate review, each review gets sent for approval to the Native Americans tribal council of the are
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Right, it's Trump running the California and Oregon state governments into the ground, because we all know he and his Party are just sooooo powerful in those states...
Next you'll be claiming the super-high COVID death rates in eastern Democratic-run states are Trump's fault, while the GOP states with the low death rates have nothing to do with their governor's either.
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Next you'll be claiming the super-high COVID death rates in eastern Democratic-run states are Trump's fault, while the GOP states with the low death rates have nothing to do with their governor's either.
You mean states with large population centers who first encountered the pandemic, who begged the federal government for assistance but were told they were on their own, have a larger death count than less populated states who received government assistance? Color me surprised.
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No. You should also notice that I specified "death rates", not "death count".
The actual distinguishing factor among the states with a super-high death rate compared to everywhere else is that their Democratic governors via explicit policy sent infected patients to locations which contained the most vulnerable populations to death from those infected patients.
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"states ... were told they were on their own" - Trump didn't say that. He said [redstate.com], "We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself." He was telling the governors that it would be faster if they could get the equipment themselves, instead of going through the US government bureaucracy.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said [redstate.com], speaking of the relationship between Trump and him:
... the relationship has been strong and I’m not doing it to kiss the ring. I’m not doing it in a way, you know — I’m just being forthright with the president. He returns calls. He reaches out. He’s been proactive. We got that “Mercy” ship down here in Los Angeles. That was directly because he sent it down here. 2,000 medical units came to the state of California, these fms, these field medical stations, and that’s been very, very helpful ...
An New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo said [nbcnewyork.com]:
"He has delivered for New York. He has," Cuomo said of Trump, in response to a question from Stern about whether the president has really done anything of consequence to help.
"By and large it has worked," Cuomo said of the relationship.
He cited, as he has before, the sending of the Navy ship USNS Comfort and the construction of a military field hospital at the Javits Center as examples of the president responding quickly to the state's needs.
Those're some GREAT drugs you're smoking (Score:2)
In case you haven't noticed, on the Left Coast, they're killing EVERYONE. Burning, vandalizing and destroying EVERYTHING.
And Trump didn't MAKE them do that.
They did it themselves. With the local and state governments (which aren't Republican) supporting them all the way.
All because the Left is deeply violent and racist.
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The arrests all seem to be the same fringe burning churches and autozones
You are correct. Those white supremacists [foxnews.com] are a fringe group [thedailybeast.com] and need to be treated as the terrorists they are.
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Nobody is saying that millions of square miles should be raked. Just do it where it counts: around buildings, power lines, and other stuff created by people. People have had the law come down hard on them for daring to clear fuel away from their houses and businesses. PG&E, for all its faults, wanted to clear brush away from their power lines, but were prevented by California laws and policies. See https://www.sacbee.com/news/ca... [sacbee.com] and https://www.santacruzsentinel.... [santacruzsentinel.com]. You should really check to s