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United States Earth

The Los Angeles Wildfires Are Climate Disasters Compounded (theguardian.com) 196

Unprecedented January wildfires in Los Angeles signal an emerging pattern of compound climate disasters, as record-breaking Santa Ana winds up to 100 mph combine with the driest start to a winter season in the city's history.

The Palisades and Eaton fires have each burned over 10,000 acres amid drought conditions that climate scientists say are intensified by global warming. The blazes, occurring weeks earlier than historical fire patterns, come just 16 months after Los Angeles experienced its first tropical storm, illustrating what experts describe as increasingly unpredictable weather extremes driven by climate change.

The Los Angeles Wildfires Are Climate Disasters Compounded

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  • So (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @09:49AM (#65075167)

    Hydrants had no water because climate change. Forest management wasn't done because of climate change. Politicians defunded actual fire fighting capabilities to shift money to fund DEI initiatives within the fire fighting department because of climate change.

    Holy fuck, climate change explains everything! Next time I do something wrong and get called out on it, I'll blame climate change too.

    • Re: So (Score:5, Insightful)

      by beelsebob ( 529313 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @09:53AM (#65075185)

      âoeHydrants had no water because of climate changeâ⦠yes⦠thatâ(TM)s right actually. In case you hadnâ(TM)t noticed, California is having an unprecedented drought. That literally is why there isnâ(TM)t enough water.

      That said, more water wouldnâ(TM)t have made a blind bit of difference. In reality, these very fast spreading fires that are whipped up by strong winds⦠you donâ(TM)t fight them. Thereâ(TM)s literally nothing that can be done to stop one of these fires once itâ(TM)s going. No amount of water that could be pumped by fire fighters would have helped.

      • Re: So (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @09:54AM (#65075191) Homepage
        Maybe stop growing so many water-intensive crops, if you're in such a dry area then. Basic logic?
      • Re: So (Score:4, Interesting)

        by BeepBoopBeep ( 7930446 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:06AM (#65075231)
        Did CA have a dam atmospheric river last year? What the hell they do with the water? Drained it in the ocean ?
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by ravenshrike ( 808508 )

          Yes. It was to save the smelt you see.

        • Re: So (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:32AM (#65075317)

          Local officials still refuse to build several reservoirs that voters funded years ago so 2024's record rainfall was drained into the sea.

          • Local officials still refuse to build several reservoirs that voters funded years ago so 2024's record rainfall was drained into the sea.

            What "record rainfall"? 2024 was an average year from precipitation in California.

            The climate issue was not due to rainfall, but from near-record summer temperatures drying out the landscape, increasing the percentage of California-Nevada that is Abnormally Dry or in drought from 2% on June 1 to 85% by October 1.

            https://www.drought.gov/drough... [drought.gov]

            • LA was abnormally wet in 2024 and 2023. Was it record setting? I don't know. https://www.latimes.com/califo... [latimes.com]
        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          I'm not familiar with LA County/California law. But in my locality, if you say "private cistern", the public water utilities will sic law enforcement on you. It is completely illegal to bypass the water billing meter for your own use. It is legal (and in some cases required) to install rainwater retention ponds and tanks. The difference being the sacred water meter.

          If residents were allowed to store rainwater on site and use it to keep landscaping irrigated during dry spells, or use it for firefighting, wi

          • If residents were allowed to store rainwater on site and use it to keep landscaping irrigated during dry spells, or use it for firefighting, wildfire damage could be reduced.

            Perhaps, but diseases transmitted by mosquitoes could increase. It could also make the land even drier because the water is collected rather than being allowed to run off and soak the surrounding land. I'm actually not against rainwater collection but I think it's important to think about all of the potential downsides before allowin

      • 17 million bucks buys a lot of water.

        • Buys alot of weed too, it probably went to the weed.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by sarren1901 ( 5415506 )

        Umm, the hydrants have run dry in the Palisades because it's a very hilly, windy canyon like area. They built a water system there that was for support the rich folk mansions but the water system they designed was never meant to support massive firefighting efforts. The reservoirs (three, one million gallon tanks) depleted faster then they could refill by the pump system.

        Cutting the firefighting budget was obviously shortsighted and unfortunately that choice was made by our elected officials at both city an

        • Your insurance market will simply turn into a socialized loss absorption program through a state insurance entity. Instead of corporate coverage taking the loss, you and your other citizens will. The rich will self-insure, because they can. Good luck getting a mortgage though, the mortgage companies will rape your state owned entity to ensure they go unscathed when this happens again (maybe another 5 years based on recent history) and those backing the state entity (tax payers) are screwed.
        • Your insurance market was already dead since California outlawed insurance rates based on projections. With California weather returning to its extremely arid norm after the very abnormally wet late 19th and 20th centuries, this means more fires, especially since they refuse to do regular controlled burns, brush pruning, and power line maintenance.

        • by kenh ( 9056 )

          So rich homeowners in the hills surrounding LA don't deserve adequate water pressure in their fire hydrants because of hills? Uhm, seems to me the answer is to store water on the high ground so it can provide adequate pressure to all the houses below.

          Cutting the LAFD budget while insurers are refusing to write new/renew homeowner policies DUE TO STATED CONERNS about impending wildfires is simply non-sensical.

          De-prioritizing performance to diversify the LAFD may make some members of certain under-represented

      • California should change their state motto to: "Who could have predicted this?"

      • Re: So (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @11:40AM (#65075537)
        Well, they could have built even one reservoir over the last 50 years. The people of California demanded new reservoirs through a vote just a couple years ago, but not one hole has been dug. They could have cleared some of the brush they knew would cause this exact problem, but they didn't. They could have kept firefighters on staff instead of firing the ones who didn't want the covid vaccine, but they didn't. They didn't have to cut the fire department's budget, but they did.

        The State and City governments have known that this would happen for decades and did nothing about it. At every opportunity they decided to make the problem worse.

        • Re: So (Score:4, Interesting)

          by kenh ( 9056 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @02:05PM (#65076081) Homepage Journal

          They refused to investigate the claims insurance companies made as they explained their exit from the California insurance market over the past few years: "the threat of massive wildfires with catastrophic damages AND the inability to charge their customers premiums commensurate with the risk their properties faced" instead, the politicians puffed up their chest and said they fought to keep home owners insurance policies affordable, and who needs those greedy insurance companies that wanted to raise your premiums!

          Now, incapable of accepting responsibility for their actions, they fall back on "climate change" as the reason... I don't think that's going to 'stick'

      • Seriously, read "Cadillac Desert" [wikipedia.org]

        Southern California, specifically the LA Basin is unsustainable for the given population and sprawl.

      • by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @12:00PM (#65075633)

        ...California is having an unprecedented drought.

        The major drought I think you're eluding to ended a few years ago and while large parts of Southern California (as in not the whole state as you said) are having a fairly small one right now https://www.drought.gov/states... [drought.gov] it is not even remotely "unprecedented". We get droughts all the time in California and so far, by our standards, what So Cal is experiencing for drought is small and pretty normal right now.

        It should also be said that such a relatively mild drought like So Cal is experiencing right now should not even remotely be causing these water shortages at hydrants that they are getting as that region gets FAR worse droughts than what they are getting now. There's obviously something wrong with LA's water infrastructure if these problems are wide spread.

        Please note, I'm not at all saying global warming didnt have a hand in creating these fires. I'm just saying your comments about drought in California were not correct in several ways.

      • You don't stop them, you prevent them. You remove fuel. But radicals in California prevent that.

        The fuel can either burn in small controlled burns or it can accumulate and burn in these massive wild fires. The small controlled burns actually more closely emulate nature. Creating a patchwork or area with varying amounts of fuel, the recently burned areas created natural fire breaks.
    • Re: So (Score:4, Informative)

      by wertigon ( 1204486 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @09:58AM (#65075201)

      > Politicians defunded actual fire fighting capabilities to shift money to fund DEI initiatives

      If you dig deeper you will find the money went o more oil drilling, not DEI.

      It is interesting to see how Americans just flat out refuse to let go of the concept of race, choosing instead to embrace fascism, racism and a much bigger poverty gap over freedom, equality and Brotherhood.

      So... Congratulations, you just voted to make the land of the free the land of the sheep. Hope you are happy ðY(TM)

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If you dig deeper you will find the money went o more oil drilling, not DEI.

        Do you have a source for this? Because according to the LA City Controller, the LA Mayor's budget did remove $17.6million from the LAFD budget. There's no mention of anything related to 'more oil drilling'.
        Links to the official City of Los Angeles budget summaries can be found in this article [krem.com], showing LA reduced the LAFD budget and increased funding for LAPD's budget as well homeless initiatives.

      • Greed and an inability to handle stats to do rational risk/reward assessments. The lack of empathy is cultural.

        When everyone thinks they could get rich if those 'other' people weren't holding them back, when they don't understand the odds... You get poor people defending billionaires and hating scapegoats.

        It's perfectly normal behavior for social primates, and it can be overcome with education... If you can get them to accept and value the education. The resulting improvements are fragile, though, as any

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sarren1901 ( 5415506 )

        Yes, the GOP are racists. So are the Democrats. Any time you have a program designed for a group of people based on their race, that's racism. DEI is actually racists. Admissions and hiring quotas based on race are, wait for it....RACISTS.

        So it sounds like we have a lot of racists politicians.

        Maybe we should stop letting big business treat us all like indentured servants. Pretty sure, the poorer you are, the bigger impact that has. So really, by allowing American Corporatism to thrive (which is 100% both pa

      • by kenh ( 9056 )

        Politicians defunded actual fire fighting capabilities to shift money to fund DEI initiatives

        If you dig deeper you will find the money went o more oil drilling, not DEI.

        Are you really trying to say that LA County spent $17M it took from the LAFD to run LA County Oil Drills? Is LA County in the oil business?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      No, the place is on fire because of climate change. The fact you can't do anything about it is your own idiots fault.
      • Re: So (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kenh ( 9056 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:52AM (#65075379) Homepage Journal

        Maybe clear the tender out of the forests?

        Maybe let insurance companies charge rates commensurate to the risk they assume doing business in the state?

        Maybe take a moment to ask yourself "Why?" Insurance companies are refusing to renew policies in California?

        Maybe not cut the LAFD budget to fund NGOs that defend and protect the homeless camping out in tinder-full forests cooking over open camp fires?

        Maybe prioritize citizens over protecting a smelt fish?

        Or, just throw up your hands, blame climate change & republicans, and send everyone a $750 check to help them in this troubling time.

        The residents of Palisades and other California communities are looking at the former residents of Lahaina, the victims in Asheville, and are scared at the level of help and support they can expect from the current administration.

      • Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @11:12AM (#65075437) Journal

        No, the place is on fire because of climate change. The fact you can't do anything about it is your own idiots fault.

        Oh for fucks sakes. It's an overbuilt area on semi-arid land that has a water shortage because of bad political choices. Toss in further bad choices about things like lack of controlled burns, add in the Santa Anna Winds, and you have a formula for mass fires. Fires are going to happen. These fires are a result of human mismanagement, not because Gaia is angry that we still drive cars and use plastics.

      • by nucrash ( 549705 )

        Maybe they should have bought another private jet or something. That would have fixed everything.

    • You made several statements. Now back them with facts.

    • Fake news (Score:5, Informative)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:24AM (#65075287) Homepage Journal

      Politicians defunded actual fire fighting capabilities to shift money to fund DEI initiatives within the fire fighting department because of climate change.

      This is an example of how news can be slanted by journalists (mostly from the right, this time).

      The LA firefighter department came in under budget last year; meaning, they had money left over at the end of the year. The next annual budget decreased the LAFD amount by the amount they came in under budget.

      But the right-wing media spins it as "reduced the budget for firefighters right before the current calamity".

      I don't know about the rest of the claims, but this one piece of info is fake news highlighted for its outrage value.

      • by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:53AM (#65075381) Homepage

        The LA firefighter department came in under budget last year; meaning, they had money left over at the end of the year. The next annual budget decreased the LAFD amount by the amount they came in under budget.

        Ouch. If that's true, it's a good example of a systemic problem with our government.

        When the reward for underspending a budget is that your budget gets cut next year, this is exactly the incentive to make sure government managers spend more money.

      • Having money left over just means you reduced expenditures on, say perhaps, man power that is now needed to fight fires. You are still under manned and under equipped - but the balance sheet looks good!
      • Why did they come in under budget? They're an emergency response agency. Some years will face more emergencies than others. As I recall, they also started using convicts as firefighters. How did that impact their budget? Did they reduce the number of actual firefighters in favor of "free" labor?

        And since when does a government agency end the year without spending any surplus they may have? Was the surplus the result of firing firefighters?

    • The statement was that climate change compounded the problem. Not that it was the sole cause, nor even the sole compounding factor.

      The climate-related factors are historically low rainfall and unusually fast Santa Ana winds.

      • And the article discusses nothing else. The Guardian is not a journalistic outlet, they have made that explicit.
        • by XXongo ( 3986865 )
          There's approximately 20,000 news articles about the California fires. If you are annoyed that this one happens to discuss just one of many issues, it's not like there aren't plenty of others.
    • And The Guardian will report it as fact!
    • And if they can convince everyone it's a result of climate change, then it implicitly becomes the fault of the GOP.

  • Really? Climate? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linuxrunner ( 225041 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:19AM (#65075271)

    They didn't fill the resovoirs

    The cut $17 million from the fire budget

    They fired firefighters and are understaffed

    The didn't comply with brush clearing

    The halted prescribed burns

    The let storm water wash out to sea

    Yeah... All climate change. Totally nothing we could have done.

    • Re:Really? Climate? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @11:45AM (#65075553)

      I grew up in southern California and we had terrible Santa Ana winds in winter, just like this; mudslides too. I am also old enough to remember the Pacific Palisades always having erosion problems with landslides along the coast and seeing the Angeles Crest and San Bernadino mountains on fire in the 60s. That didn't deter people from moving there by the thousands into the greater LA area every month it seemed like more cars, more congestion, more sprawl, and not planned. Of course that will damage the environment, less resources, more smog, and more long commutes. Beautiful orchards comprising thousands and thousands of acres were bulldozed for housing tracts because the land became too valuable. All the while stupid politicians who don't recognize the risk of uncontrolled urban development instead focusing on stupid ideals that put the public at risk are the real culprits here. But yes let's blame the climate change boogey man as thousands lose their homes and ignore decades of stupid politicians not doing the hard things that could have prevented a lot of tragedy. Southern California will always be dry, it survives tenuously on long aqueducts supporting a population that couldn't be sustained there naturally but nobody talks about that. It's like the feigned shock when homes and businesses are built in 100-year flood plains and then there's a flood or let's build right up to the edge of the ocean because I'm rich and can afford to build there and suddenly surprise when a storm comes through and wipes out their overbuilt monstrosities. Let's not talk about Imperial Beach being closed for 30 years because Tijuana dumps millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean either. We don't talk about that because it would be "racist" but yes let's blame the climate change boogeyman for that too.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Agnapot ( 1916966 )

      They didn't fill the resovoirs

      This is false. One of the areas that burned, The Palisades, has three giant water tanks that supply the water to the area. All three were completely full at the start of the day, as they always are, and are refilled throughout the night. Water was pumping into them 24/7. Due to the fire they were used 4x faster than normal, and so were drained. Then refilled. Then drained again. Then refilled. Etc etc. Now, if you want to ask "Why aren't the hydrants plugged into the wider city water so they don't n

      • When it rains we're supposed to prevent every drop from channeling through the thousands of streams and creeks and city drains to the sea?

        With terraces and recharge basins [wikipedia.org] to catch stormwater and recharge aquifers. Yes, I think we should do more of that, actually. But as you explained above, that wouldn't have solved the problem of the water tanks being depleted by firefighters faster than they could be refilled. We'll need a new plan for that.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by eepok ( 545733 )

      They didn't fill the resovoirs

      Bullshit.There was good rain last year. Many reservoirs were topped off. https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resa... [ca.gov]

      The cut $17 million from the fire budget

      They City of Los Angeles cut Los Angeles Fire Department budget by 2% ($17.6M) just a few months ago. That had no effect on the fire. They could have tripled the budget and that also would have had zero effect on the fire.

      They fired firefighters and are understaffed

      Every public department is understaffed. No one has the appropriate funding or staffing to fully succeed in their work. Anywhere.

      I could find zero evidence of LAFD firing or laying of

  • Doesn't matter. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:29AM (#65075305)

    Whether it's due to climate change or not is irrelevant. You still have to:

    - fight the fires
    - clean up the debris
    - fix the infrastructure
    - deal with the insurance and the inevitable rise in premiums
    - rebuild lives ... and much, much more. None of this changes one iota based on the root cause.

    Because the camps are divided and nobody will budge or change behavior, it really does not matter at all why it's happening. You can debate until your dying breathe, you'll still have to deal with the results. The climate will do what it will, and your opinion on it isn't a consideration.

    • Yep, when you're desperately trying to bail out the boat, it's pointless to blather on about the large hole in the bottom.

  • Oy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Patent Lover ( 779809 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:34AM (#65075325)
    Well, Slashdot sure has become a den of dumbfucks lately.
  • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @10:48AM (#65075359)

    The ingredients for these infernos in the Los Angeles area, near-hurricane strength winds and drought, foretell an emerging era of compound events – simultaneous types of historic weather conditions, happening at unusual times of the year...

    The takeaway from this needs to be that we may have succeeded in making AGW the equivalent of a PA system wailing when the microphone gets too close to the speaker. Only in this case, we may not be able to turn off the amp, unplug the mic, or put a foot through the speaker cone.

    Warming results in bigger, more-frequent wildfires releasing increasing amounts of greenhouse gases - which in turn results in more warming. We may already be at the point where if we stopped producing greenhouse gases tomorrow, there would still be enough positive feedback "baked into" the climate to keep emissions climbing along with temperatures.

    But maybe we're not at that point. Maybe we should make a more concerted, better-coordinated effort to mend our ways. That probably doesn't entail building power-hungry data centres in the service of more crypto-currency scams, social media ad delivery platforms, and so-called "AI". Just a thought...

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Thursday January 09, 2025 @11:24AM (#65075481)

    https://pjmedia.com/victoria-t... [pjmedia.com]

    We thought it was terrible when Newsom and the previous Democrat tenant of the governor's mansion, Jerry Brown, forsook food and water for people to send millions of acre feet per day of fresh water into the salty ocean, during droughts and rainy days alike, to save a bait fish.

    Per NY Times regarding LA County “The bulk of the roughly $1 billion collected from Los Angeles County taxpayers over the past four years to store more water has gone largely unspent.“ $1 billion taken, they dump water then we get placed on water restrictions.

  • In Paradise, it was oddly cold and moderately windy, but there weren't hurricane-force Santa Ana winds outside of raging fire fronts like this incident.

    I heard from the press briefing of this one that the original fire grew exponentially from dozens to hundreds to thousands of acres within just a few tens of minutes because embers were flying absurdly fast.

    SoCal from San Diego to Santa Barbara and much of NorCal is going to have to live life a bit differently to ensure survival of life and property:
    1) Co
  • Predictable. Every time something bad happens weatherwise, everyone immediately assumes "GLOBAL WARMING".

    - the current drought in SoCal is pretty much average for that region: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu... [unl.edu]
    - The Santa Ana winds have been a thing in CA FOREVER.*
    - the last 2 years have been wet, and this year drier, meaning larger than usual loads of dry brush
    - the Los Angeles fire dept was defunded by -$17 million, donated equipment away to Ukraine, suspended 113 firefighters w/o pay over covid, fired 24

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. -- Dawkins

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