Climate Scientists Grapple With Wildfire Disaster in Their Backyard (axios.com) 78
The wind-whipped firestorm that tore through parts of Boulder County, Colorado, on Thursday struck at the heart of one of America's top climate science and meteorology research hubs. From a report: Now some of the top minds who study how climate change is amplifying wildfire risks find themselves shaken and struggling to process what they just witnessed. The Marshall Fire destroyed as many as 1,000 homes and may have killed two people, while leaving thousands of others homeless after tearing through Denver's northern suburbs of Superior, Louisville and Broomfield.
While 2021 was full of extreme weather events across the United States, this one stands out for targeting some of the top scientists who are responsible for warning the public about growing wildfire risks as the climate changes. Boulder is home to multiple NOAA labs as well as the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Colorado and the Center for Severe Weather Research. There are also climate intelligence firms and satellite companies located there, such as Maxar.
While 2021 was full of extreme weather events across the United States, this one stands out for targeting some of the top scientists who are responsible for warning the public about growing wildfire risks as the climate changes. Boulder is home to multiple NOAA labs as well as the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Colorado and the Center for Severe Weather Research. There are also climate intelligence firms and satellite companies located there, such as Maxar.
Re:Karma justice, or just more fuel for the fire? (Score:4, Interesting)
You are confusing the Climate Scientist with Climate Activists.
The Scientists are just saying our current activities from Industry, Commercial Enterprise, and other activities that strongly rely on burring hydrocarbons, are leading to climate change, and now the science is not focusing on if this is a thing, but the correct levels and what short and long term impacts will happen, and how it would change if the hydrocarbon burning is increased or decreased.
The climate activists tend to mix their own personal beliefs mixed with the scientific results, So some of them (which you often see on Conservative news, to help with propaganda to show how bad the other side is) are extremist idiots with overly radical throwing out the baby with the bathwater ideas. There are some of them (which we often see on the Liberal news, to show propaganda to show how bad the other side is) that have the blatant climate deniers or the anti-environmentalist, who relish in spewing smoke into the air.
The science is clear that it is human caused global warming. They are things we can do to slow it down, and give the earth some time to repair itself, A lot of them require minor changes, Upgrade your home heating to a more efficient system (Helping you local economies, with selling new units, and installations). Switching to Electric vehicles (where brick and mortar, store fronts can install comparatively inexpensive charging stations, which they can charge money for charging their batteries, and give 15-20 minutes where person can shop at their stores ), Clean energy is being shown to be cheaper, so this will also cause increased usage, more people driving EV for much more than their ICE Cars, People buying more Electrical Equipment for their homes with Solar Panels,
Sure a change in the economy sounds scary to the old guys who got use to the current economy, and a worried about what their kids will do with it all being different. However 30 years ago, when us old guys got into the economy, many of us jumped onto the new exciting stuff, doing jobs your parents or your grandparents have little understanding on what you do and why it is important.
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Good summary of the situation.
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The science is clear that it is human caused global warming. They are things we can do to slow it down, and give the earth some time to repair itself
Probably way too late for that, even if we vanished tomorrow. The CO2 we've emitted already will be in the atmosphere long enough to cause enough problems (given how long it takes nature's normal methods of fixing it) that it would probably get into runaway methane-related warming before it could grow enough trees and algae to return to ecostasis. The only way out is through, and instead we're running in circles.
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Climate change denial is all about lifestyle. We donâ(TM)t want to adjust our luxury to meet reality.
This. This. This.
I have come to the conclusion after years of the arguments about AGW, that there are only two reasons to deny the Energy retention characteristics of an atmosphere based on it's composition.
One is political manifestation of stupidity.
The other is a selfish enjoyment of warming.
They simply don't care about anyone else outside their family. They enjoy the warmer climate.
I must admit, there are certain niceties like I haven't used a full tank of gas in my snow blower for quite a f
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Climate change denial is all about lifestyle.
I disagree. I say it's all about fear. Fear is a high-gain knob that's easy to turn and produces outsized results. Some folks like Alex Jones or Trump are really good at twiddling other people's knobs.
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Climate change denial is all about lifestyle.
I disagree. I say it's all about fear. Fear is a high-gain knob that's easy to turn and produces outsized results. Some folks like Alex Jones or Trump are really good at twiddling other people's knobs.
I dunno - My older neighbors are kind of happy that they are saving money on snow removal and their energy bills.
But in support of your fear assertion, I place the fear in the "Political manifestation of stupidity" class, so I have no argument with you about what you wrote.
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It's really not ok to build near forests for two reasons. One our homes are flammable and can't survive there if they burn. Two it prevents us from doing the necessary controlled burns like the natives did for over ten thousand years. They had it figured out, we killed off as many of them as possible and made sure not to do it that way. Whoops.
We don't need to adjust our luxury lifestyle (Score:3)
It's like homelessness. When the economy collapses in the wake of the pandemic there was $45 billion in back rent. There was $60 billion in federal aid to pay that rent. Even with our non functioning government and a mountain of obstruction we easily came up with the money because $60
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But take a look at the street kids in Portland. Is rent forgiveness going to help them? Until the government gives them the the $2000 a month apartment they think they are entitled to and a $100 a month for weed, they are going to remain homeless. Otherwise they would
Food and housing are not the same thing (Score:2)
Young people don't need to give up juice and candy. And yes, we're going to run out of metal before everyone can have an SUV, but population declines can take care of that with the right societal changes. And not "One Child" policies but just letting people have the birth control they want...
We give up way, way too
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And yes, we're going to run out of metal before everyone can have an SUV
Nah, there's plenty of aluminum. But with our current system we can't build and operate that many SUVs before we run out of lots of other resources and dependencies, like our biosphere
Re:Not about Lifestyle, it is about Identity (Score:2)
Climate change denial is all about lifestyle. We don't want to adjust our luxury to meet reality.
I do not believe most climate change denial is caused by people choosing their own self interest over future generations. It is about their cultural identity and what propaganda targeting their community leads them to hold as core beliefs. Many of the same communities whose residents won't make personal sacrifices for the planet are more than willing to sacrifice themselves to defend our country in the military. They simply don't believe the sacrifice is necessary to combat climate change.
Those who accept c
Propaganda bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Propaganda bullshit (Score:1)
Re: Propaganda bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Was climate change necessary for this fire to occur? Probably not. But was it a sufficient condition that increased it's likelihood of happening? Absolutely. Causation is complicated. This event fits into the predicted pattern by scientists so that should be taken seriously.
FTA:
What made the landscape so fire-prone before Thursday's extreme high winds spawned the #MarshallFire? Denver data for Sep 1-Dec 29:
Avg temp: 52.2F (2nd warmest in 150 yrs of data)
Precip: 0.47" (least in 150 yrs of data)
Snowfall: 0.3"(least in 140 yrs of data)
One of the most difficult things to do in this field is trying to determine if any weather event is attributable to atmospheric composition effects. Was this attributable to Global warming? Maybe, maybe not. It was surely attributable to high temperatures and drought conditions combining.
What is telling though is the denialists "I don't give a damn - I don't live there." responses. They like their warmer weather - and truly do not care if others die for it.
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The fire was spread by wind. I don't suppose you know where strong winds come from. The 115 mile per hour winds were directly caused by the scale of the low-pressure system passing through. The cause of the spark is irrelevant next to the cause of the massive spread of the fire.
Re: Propaganda bullshit (Score:2)
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I live just a few miles from the fire. I'd guess that in the old normal it wouldn't have happened, at least not in late December. This has been one of, if not the, driest summer/falls on record. In an old normal year, the entire burnt area would have been covered with snow on 12/30, or at least would have recently had snow on it. There would be significantly more moisture. The fuel load was much higher than normal, because we had one of the wettest springs on record: there was lots of organic material to dr
Re:Propaganda bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Is the issue that climate change is bringing wildfires to suburbs or is the issue that suburbs are expanding to where there are wildfires?
Re: Propaganda bullshit (Score:2)
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It's both, it doesn't have to be one or the other and it isn't. We keep building homes mixed in with trees and we keep shitting up the environment producing more AGW that kills more trees and makes fires easier to start, and faster to spread.
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Fires don't consciously go around targeting anybody.
If you look at the aerials of the burned out neighborhoods around Boulder they look exactly like the burned out neighborhoods in California: developments with large, closely spaced houses on tiny lots. The fire whips from one structure to the next and burns out everyone. Fire loves these conditions. So effectively yes, the fires are targeting these conditions.
House density regulations produce developments with houses only a few feet away from each other. These developments aren't very old; they've bee
Re: Propaganda bullshit (Score:2)
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Fire also loves wood. When the fuck are you americans going to start building houses out of brick, blockwork or concrete FFS like most of europe? Sure, wood is flexible and good for earthquake zones but that applies to a tiny portion of the continental USA.
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Fire also loves wood. When the fuck are you americans going to start building houses out of brick, blockwork or concrete FFS like most of europe? Sure, wood is flexible and good for earthquake zones but that applies to a tiny portion of the continental USA.
I'd guess that we're about to, as all of these devastating "natural disasters" are keeping wood prices crazy high, and making other building materials cheaper by comparison. The ball started rolling down the hill with the 2020 derecho, and it just keeps rolling...
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They are more widespread [time.com] than most folks realize.
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House density regulations produce developments with houses only a few feet away from each other.
Under-controlled capitalism does that, actually. People split lots and build homes and sell them not because anyone told them they had to, but because it is profitable. And the ongoing housing shortage makes it more profitable, so lather rinse repeat.
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Under-controlled capitalism does that
Government does that. Towns like Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland and Greely have been trying to prevent 'urban sprawl' as they demean it by requiring developers to pack housing onto tiny lots. If CA people having sold their 600K houses had their way they'd build on an acre or more. This is easy to see when land use isn't being governed by these municipalities; houses built on unincorporated properties are not jammed together like that.
The unincorporated houses didn't burn down either.
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Fort Collins, Loveland and Greely have been trying to prevent 'urban sprawl' as they demean it by requiring developers to pack housing onto tiny lots.
Really? They're holding a gun to their head and forcing them to build housing on tiny lots? Somehow I missed this in the news.
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> Fires don't consciously go around targeting anybody.
Like corporations, fires are people too!
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Unless climate change caused colarado to experience 105F temps with 20% humidity in December, it is not the cause nor is it exacerbated by.
I think you are confusing weather and climate. The weather station on my house (thankfully 5 miles from the fire) indicates that it was down to 22% humidity but with a high of 46F on the 30th, but that's not the point. The point is that the entire area that the fire hit is in "Extreme drought" conditions, a problem that has happened over years, not just one day. We got the record-breaking 100F+ temperatures last summer and critically, the vegetation around here is not evolved for those conditions. The rate
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Record latest first snowfall of the season. And that was 0.3". The first significant snowfall in the area was the day after this fire: 4-6", depending on location.
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That "heat" of the triangle is relevant in so much as it i) makes sure the "fuel" is dry, and ii) starts the actual fire, like a flame or hot cigarette butt. The ambient air temperature is irrelevant. If "heat" referred to ambient air temperature then every winter campfire would be impossible. Once a fire is started it doesn't matter if the ambient air is cold. Fire risk is frequently associated with high air temperatures because it dries out the fuel so readily, and summer often overlaps with "dry" sea
Re: Propaganda bullshit (Score:2)
Re: Propaganda bullshit (Score:2)
Actually I'm a physical chemist who studies soil bacteria and greenhouses gases, and have previously studied emissions from wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, so I do know what an auto ignition point is, and how soil bacteria work. I also know that microbial activity achieving auto ignition points is rare. To my knowledge it has never been attributed to a significant wildfire. The vast majority of wildfires are caused by humans or lightning strikes. So you've chosen a rare event as an example where amb
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True as does logging on tribal land. Case-in-point: the Hondo reservation in Arizona. They logged and managed their forest while the surrounding national forest was untouched. When wildfires came, they burned everything but the reservation land. As an added bonus, they were able to employ lots of people and sell the wood.
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Fires from lightning are natural.
There was no lightning that day.
This wasn't a forest fire, it started in grasslands. Initial reports were that the fire was caused by a downed power line, but that's looking unlikely now.
Your comment has nothing to do with this fire, its causes, or possible remedies.
This is arson. Quit with Climate BS. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Perhaps we have steal from the rich, or too many of one race lived there, or any other number of self delusional
justifications as why this was torched, by some angry humans
Last on my list of excuses for this fire, are nature and climate.
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Last on my list of excuses for this fire, are nature and climate.
The argument isn't that we wouldn't have fires if not for AGW. It's that fires are more serious with it. Why do you find that difficult to believe?
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Last on my list of excuses for this fire, are nature and climate.
The argument isn't that we wouldn't have fires if not for AGW. It's that fires are more serious with it. Why do you find that difficult to believe?
Whether that is true or not, it's unrelated to what happened in Colorado. The root problem is actually housing codes, where wood frame houses are built so close together that a good wind storm has no trouble wiping out a whole neighborhood. Such winds have been around forever.
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You know nothing about this fire.
It began near the intersection of Hwy 93 and Marshall Road. It's miles from the nearest subdivision. The problem was the 115mph winds and extreme drought. The fire managed to travel miles before hitting a subdivision: it doesn't matter how close together the houses were.
The solutions were worse than the problem (Score:1, Troll)
Same thing can be said about how California manages their forest land (hint: they don't). What they could have done to address their prison population and homeless population is put them all to work managing the forests. The cost to do that would probably be less than the cost of imprisonment or dealing with homeless on the street.
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Example? Note much if it is federal land.
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Same thing can be said about how California manages their forest land (hint: they don't).
Example? Note much if it is federal land.
California, like all other western states, was occupied by the people we call Native Americans for over ten thousand years. They set fires every year and successfully avoided these kind of incidents. However, they weren't building shacks in the woods and then expecting them to remain. Our view on property rights etc. has led us to neglect this practice, which is incompatible with our selfish apparent need to erect flammable structures in forest clearings.
In a few places they are letting the remaining native
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> Our view on property rights etc. has led us to neglect this practice
If property rights are given priority over gov't assessments and recommendations, this is what happens. Residents have always complained about controlled burns. Citizens don't like the truth, and vote it away.
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Citizens don't like the truth, and vote it away.
Sure, they vote for candidates who pretend reality doesn't exist, and tell them what they want to hear. See: 45
Preparedness. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Really? Take a look at the drought map: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu... [unl.edu]
Notice anything? No, I figured you wouldn't.
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The suburbs this fire ripped through aren't exactly a "fire prone area".
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A bunch of houses all built out of flammable materials and slapped right up against one another? Yeah, that's a fire-prone area.
A lot of people are in denial about this. You could see it first in California but you're going to see it in more and more places as this sort of thing becomes more prevalent. A lot of how we build houses frankly makes no fucking sense for people who think they're the best in the world. In no way does it make sense for us to be building these shit shacks made out of false-dimension
Not minimizing the impact climate change is having (Score:2)
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Are you suggesting the hotel that burned to the ground was constructed just like a house? Perhaps you're trying to solve the wrong problem....
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>spark more discussion
I see what you did there :-)
Worth thinking about, but the article mentioned that concrete buildings burned too, and that even some of the houses burned from the inside out as flying embers went through every possible opening and ignited the contents.
Which is still room for discussion. Maybe fire codes should say more about home furnishings, which I've read disturbing things about.
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the article mentioned that concrete buildings burned too, and that even some of the houses burned from the inside out as flying embers went through every possible opening and ignited the contents.
With a bunch of flammable homes nearby burning like roman candles in a high wind, the temperatures inside a home can reach the combustion point. This is why defense in depth is the only real defense. We must prohibit construction with flammable roofs at minimum and preferably also siding and window frames going forwards. Vinyl siding, vinyl windows, asphalt roofs, they've all got to go. You may not be able to save your house from going up once your neighbors' houses burn, but if you can stop the first house
"According to the latest models, (Score:1)
...my ass will be on fire in 7.2 minutes. Wait, what?"
Climate scientists? (Score:2)
Climate scientist, or climatist scientists?
Extreme events - not really (Score:4, Insightful)
2021 was full of extreme weather events
No more than any other year. However, the climate hysteria means that every blip is now OMG Eleventy!
Every year has some record broken somewhere. Every year has major storms. Every year sees wildfires. The need for clickbait means that every one of these events gets touted as something dramatic.
Data dump (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/11/1026700103/former-college-professor-arson-charges-california-dixie-fire
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10031697/Woman-Alexandra-Souverneva-arrested-suspicion-starting-rapidly-spreading-California-wildfire.html
You have to see the bigger picture (Score:2)
I live in the northernmost county in Idaho. It is very rural and outside of Bonners Ferry, zoning it pretty minimal. It is also forest fire country.
Because this is forest fire country, there are some things that you just don't do when building a home:
You don't have flammable landscaping close to the house.
You don't have that big beautiful tree right besi
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I've lived in Colorado for 50 years. We have forest fires every year, the three worst in history were just last year. This subdivision is not in a forest, or even near one. There has been nothing like this in Colorado in my lifetime.
Don't look up. (Score:2)