Environment LA Wildfires

[Mofra]

So I was incorrect in thinking this was mostly just wealthy celebrities in the Malibu hills?

There are in fact a lot of people living in vans in and around the area (the streets not far from Venice Beach are full of them) and some of the larger houses have guest quarters for help to live on site.

Not to mention all of the people that will lose their jobs servicing the larger houses. It's definitely going to hurt thousands of people, not just the wealthy residents there.

 

[Couch Coach]

Just wow

Satellite images reveal devastating scale of LA fires

Multiple fires burning in Los Angeles, California, have razed neighbourhoods and decimated Hollywood landmarks in one of the country's worst-ever fire disasters.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Pakenhamsaint]

The question came from a place of currently watching College Football playoffs, where they're fundraising for Red Cross. It's not quite clear to me where that money is going.

I guess it's a symptom of media mostly covering the celebrity angle, and not having had any time to read up on it in the last 24 hrs.

There's two main fire areas.

Pacific Palisades which is on the coast and where the celebrity angle comes from.
Then there's Altadena which isn't an affluent area at all

 

[Frank Bunn]

I've heard firefighters talking about it being largely impossible to combat the fires due to the combination of wind and how dry everything is.

It's eeriely similar to hearing first hand accounts of the Black Saturday bushfires. The ratings are based on how far the embers can ignite homes ahead of the fire front and on Black Saturday they were measuring the embers in kilometres that were exceeding the 'catastrophic' rating.

The scariest part about this is it's January - the middle of their winter. We're so accustomed to heading about bushfires in January it's easy to forget these are the colder months over there.

When you say winter, the mean temperature in December and January in the LA area is about 14C. Some of the areas in Victoria most prone to fires have a mean in July of 8C with regular frosts. It's a different scenario.

US government data from the LAX area shows a rise in mean annual temperatures between 1950 and 1960 but none since then. Annual rainfall shows no trend of either increase or decrease. The area has had virtually no rain since March 2024. Hence why it's so dry. But that's not unprecedented. 1947, 1956, 1968 were similar.

I'm always happy for people to check my figures but I don't think we can attribute these fires to 'climate change'.

 

[Gavin Excell]

Tool predicted this LA Armegeddon as well with Aenima back in 1996.




They were praying for rain but they were also praying for tidal waves rather than fires like LA now.

The PE also prescient (1989)

 

[Gavin Excell]

When you say winter, the mean temperature in December and January in the LA area is about 14C. Some of the areas in Victoria most prone to fires have a mean in July of 8C with regular frosts. It's a different scenario.

US government data from the LAX area shows a rise in mean annual temperatures between 1950 and 1960 but none since then. Annual rainfall shows no trend of either increase or decrease. The area has had virtually no rain since March 2024. Hence why it's so dry. But that's not unprecedented. 1947, 1956, 1968 were similar.

I'm always happy for people to check my figures but I don't think we can attribute these fires to 'climate change'.

I heard last night that large parts of LA have had 1 cm of rain in last 6 months

 

[Gough]

The PE also prescient (1989)


View attachment 2201019

Watching Flavor Flav cavort with Martha Stewart and the US Olympic team is a long way from the existential threat to America's children that he was once seen to be. I don't know if Tipper Gore is still alive but wherever she is she's spinning.

 

[Frank Bunn]

I heard last night that large parts of LA have had 1 cm of rain in last 6 months

I often go off government airport data as it goes back further than other weather records. LAX has temperature and rainfall data to 1945.

As I said, the LA area has had virtually no rain since March 2024. Hence why it's so dry. But that's not unprecedented. 1947, 1956, 1968 were similar.

 

[Plugger35]

One of the reasons LA has a lot of homeless people is that it doesn't rain there much and even in winter it doesn't get that cold.

They will have even more homeless people there now including some celebrities.

 

[Present Not Past]

Officials are yet to state what spark started the fires but David Acuna, a battalion chief at the Californian Fire Service, said 95 per cent of wildfires in the area are started by humans.

So these fires were deliberately lit.
MAGA gift for Trump's inauguration?

 

[cats_09]

Officials are yet to state what spark started the fires but David Acuna, a battalion chief at the Californian Fire Service, said 95 per cent of wildfires in the area are started by humans.

So these fires were deliberately lit.
MAGA gift for Trump's inauguration?

Members of the MAGA and/or Elon cults are already blaming these fires as being deliberate lit as a distraction ahead of Trump's inauguration - some truly believe it's the Democrat side of things doing this and they won't be safe until Trump officially takes office

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

Officials are yet to state what spark started the fires but David Acuna, a battalion chief at the Californian Fire Service, said 95 per cent of wildfires in the area are started by humans.

So these fires were deliberately lit.
MAGA gift for Trump's inauguration?

A lot of homeless people live throughout the area, and it's speculated that cooking fires may have contributed. The gale-force winds were significant in the fast spread of flames and sparks. Plus so much ground leaf, grass and branch litter has accumulated for years without being cleared. The same contributed to our fires of 2019-20, sparking ( ) discussions about back burning and forestry management.

Human involvement whether deliberate or accidental accounts for the majority of fires. Lightning strikes and fallen power lines can sometimes be blamed.

Also, California has a lot of eucalyptus trees like ours and they are well known as literal "bombs" of flammability.

 

[Mofra]

I often go off government airport data as it goes back further than other weather records. LAX has temperature and rainfall data to 1945.

As I said, the LA area has had virtually no rain since March 2024. Hence why it's so dry. But that's not unprecedented. 1947, 1956, 1968 were similar.

Weather and climate are two different things though, and the reality of incidence risk is far more complex than just simple temperature and rainfall stats ('hydroclimatic variability').

Hydroclimate volatility on a warming Earth - Nature Reviews Earth & Environment

Rapid transitions between extreme wet and extreme dry conditions — ‘hydroclimate whiplash’ — have marked environmental and societal impacts. This Review outlines observed and projected changes in hydroclimate whiplash, suggesting that subseasonal and interannual volatility will increase markedly...

www.nature.com

In more easy to understand terms:

Climate change: What role is it playing in the California fires

Experts say that rising global temperatures are making wild fires more likely in California.

www.bbc.com

 

[Plugger35]

The blame game has started.

 

[Pakenhamsaint]

The problems in LA are now causing issues in Las Vegas. The main pipeline that supplies fuels has been shut down

 

[DickieKnee]

A guy there said they saw smoke over the hill, they said don't worry the fire won't come over the hill, nek minnut

They reckon they were hurricane speed winds. I remember Black Saturday in Victoria and talking to a guy who was in the CFA at the time. Hot dry landscape and 100kmh northerly winds. He said there were spot fires starting kilometres from the main front and impossible to stop, it was jumping fire breaks the lot. Lots of people caught and died leaving it too late to get out as the front was moving so quick.

 

[Ocha905]

When you say winter, the mean temperature in December and January in the LA area is about 14C. Some of the areas in Victoria most prone to fires have a mean in July of 8C with regular frosts. It's a different scenario.

US government data from the LAX area shows a rise in mean annual temperatures between 1950 and 1960 but none since then. Annual rainfall shows no trend of either increase or decrease. The area has had virtually no rain since March 2024. Hence why it's so dry. But that's not unprecedented. 1947, 1956, 1968 were similar.

I'm always happy for people to check my figures but I don't think we can attribute these fires to 'climate change'.

Great, another climate change denier.

Facts:

• 99% of climate scientists agree climate change is happening https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966
• The worlds temperature has increased by at least 1.1°C since the Industrial Revolution.
• The rate of warming has increased from an average of 0.06°C a decade from 1850 to 0.20°C from 1982. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature but here's a chart from the site -

• A major problem of the increased temperature is the higher frequency of "whiplash" conditions it creates (rapidly changing wet and dry periods).
• The higher temperature causes the atmosphere to absorb, evaporate and release more water which creates more intense climate events such as flooding and drought.
• Specifically related to LA - "Decades of drought in California were followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023, but that then flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024." (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ewe4p9128o).
• The more intense periods of rain allow more growth and this is literally more fuel for fires when the more intense, prolonged drier periods set in which also dry the vegetation faster. Therefore more vegetation that's more vulnerable to burning.

You can say you don't deny climate change and were just applying your cherry picked data ("iT's BeEn DrY bEfOrE!!") but I'd bet my life you'd use the same argument for any future natural disaster, thus again denying the role of climate change.

This is the one and only reply I'll be making to you on this subject. I've seen your similar bullshit arguments about diversity in film and tv and won't be getting dragged down into something similar. I've wasted enough time on this reply already.

 

[beez]

They reckon they were hurricane speed winds. I remember Black Saturday in Victoria and talking to a guy who was in the CFA at the time. Hot dry landscape and 100kmh northerly winds. He said there were spot fires starting kilometres from the main front and impossible to stop, it was jumping fire breaks the lot. Lots of people caught and died leaving it too late to get out as the front was moving so quick.

Exactly why we cannot risk windmills as an energy source and should go for the much safer nuclear option.

 

[Pakenhamsaint]

The aftermath in Altadena

 

[Frank Bunn]

Great, another climate change denier.

Facts:

• 99% of climate scientists agree climate change is happening https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966
• The worlds temperature has increased by at least 1.1°C since the Industrial Revolution.
• The rate of warming has increased from an average of 0.06°C a decade from 1850 to 0.20°C from 1982. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature but here's a chart from the site -

View attachment 2201113

• A major problem of the increased temperature is the higher frequency of "whiplash" conditions it creates (rapidly changing wet and dry periods).
• The higher temperature causes the atmosphere to absorb, evaporate and release more water which creates more intense climate events such as flooding and drought.
• Specifically related to LA - "Decades of drought in California were followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023, but that then flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024." (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ewe4p9128o).
• The more intense periods of rain allow more growth and this is literally more fuel for fires when the more intense, prolonged drier periods set in which also dry the vegetation faster. Therefore more vegetation that's more vulnerable to burning.

You can say you don't deny climate change and were just applying your cherry picked data ("iT's BeEn DrY bEfOrE!!") but I'd bet my life you'd use the same argument for any future natural disaster, thus again denying the role of climate change.

This is the one and only reply I'll be making to you on this subject. I've seen your similar bullshit arguments about diversity in film and tv and won't be getting dragged down into something similar. I've wasted enough time on this reply already.

If you are going to give a bunch of copy and paste about global climate change you need to show how it has impacted local conditions. I'm giving you recorded data from a US government website for LA between 1950 and 2024. I supplied the link. You are welcome to check for yourself.

There were no 'decades of drought'. 2022 had low rainfall, 2023 was high. As I said, there has been very little rain after March 2024, but that's not exceptional. This is how it looks over time.



The LA temperature record doesn't show a significant upward trend in recent years. The hottest year was 1959. The mean for 2024 was below average.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

The point is, climate change or not, mitigation strategies need to be prioritised much more aggressively and generously funded. Politics should not be at the forefront. It’s the same in our country.

Building houses in flood-prone, or densely vegetated and difficult to access areas, is a hazard, as acknowledged by insurance companies. Building and environmental regulations imposed by Green councils often don’t take into account the potential dangers. (Don’t know how it works in USA but likely similar.)

If you think you KNOW that fires and floods are likely, indeed imminent, it’s sensible to plan ahead. Do your duty to your constituents.

 

[Mofra]

If you are going to give a bunch of copy and paste about global climate change you need to show how it has impacted local conditions. I'm giving you recorded data from a US government website for LA between 1950 and 2024. I supplied the link. You are welcome to check for yourself.

There were no 'decades of drought'. 2022 had low rainfall, 2023 was high. As I said, there has been very little rain after March 2024, but that's not exceptional. This is how it looks over time.

View attachment 2201169

The LA temperature record doesn't show a significant upward trend in recent years. The hottest year was 1959. The mean for 2024 was below average.

You've already been directed to a study (by more than one poster) that shows that rainfall and temperature are not the only inputs.

You can lead a horse to water, etc etc

 

[Frank Bunn]

You've already been directed to a study (by more than one poster) that shows that rainfall and temperature are not the only inputs.

I had a look. Climate change can mean anything when chasing a research grant. More rain, less rain. More or less tropical storms. Warmer winters, cooler winters. In this case you have 'hydroclimate whiplash events'. From that study.

lack of a uniform definition of hydroclimate volatility

offset between the magnitude of observed and modelled trends also highlights a key issue of concern

it is possible that the Earth experienced an ‘unlikely’ iteration of natural variability during the observational period

despite high confidence in the sign of future trends in global-scale hydroclimate whiplash, substantial uncertainties remain with respect to their magnitude and spatial pattern.

 

[Chief]

I had a look.

Did you? With your eyes?

 

[revo333]

So I was incorrect in thinking this was mostly just wealthy celebrities in the Malibu hills?

I spent a week in Malibu in 2018.

The houses right along the beach would mostly be celebrity types but I had a walk through a few suburbs more inland and while you probably have to earn a nice living not every house looked in great shape and not everyone wearing designer clothes.