11–20 of 58 posts
Hmmm... data in the article isn’t that compelling. You’d need to go back decades to see if recent fires are out of the norm.
Bloomberg should hire writers that know how to proofread their writing: "He’s proposed a bill that would lesson utilities’ exposure to damages from fires, citing climate change." That tends to "lesson" their credibility.
Anthropogenic climate change is a real and significant threat to the current state of our planet. That being said... It is likely a fairly minor player in the uptick in major wildfires over the past few decades. That is more due to mismanagement of forests, and a "zero tolerance" policy towards fires allowing a huge build up of fuel loads.
Don't want to sound combative, I'm actually very interested. Do do you have any proof of that?
If she's blaming climate change, doesn't that make PG&E culpable? IIRC the majority of their power is generated from natural gas (at least since they shut down San Ohnofre and planned closure of Diablo Canyon), not to mention what the "G" stands for.
PG&E has is not trimming vegetation back sufficiently. It is an infrastructure expense that is easy to defer -- for a while. In the Sonoma County fires, trees contacting power lines and either catching on fire directly, or causing a short leading to a transformer explosion sparked a lot of fires. Of course, 100kph winds will cause the fuel to burn wicked fast. I saw a photo of a melted cast metal BBQ grill after the…
PG&E needs to be doing a better job and California should consider bringing back its logging industry. I get burning wood isn’t the cleanest energy source but dead trees are going to burn no matter what. I’d rather someone harvest it and burn it in a controlled environment rather than it rage uncontrollably.
The logging industry will happily wipe out nice, mature, profitable trees that are robust against fire and leave behind the unprofitable brush that serves as tinder. No thanks.
Electricity infrastructure probably needs to be moved back to a core government function like roadways--especially considering that the infrastructure part is going to dominate more and more over the metered part as more renewables come online.
This is why the rest of the world has abandoned above-ground power lines in favor of secure underground power lines. Fewer fires, fewer black outs...
PG&E has is not trimming vegetation back sufficiently. It is an infrastructure expense that is easy to defer -- for a while. In the Sonoma County fires, trees contacting power lines and either catching on fire directly, or causing a short leading to a transformer explosion sparked a lot of fires. Of course, 100kph winds will cause the fuel to burn wicked fast. I saw a photo of a melted cast metal BBQ grill after the…
PG&E needs to be doing a better job and California should consider bringing back its logging industry. I get burning wood isn’t the cleanest energy source but dead trees are going to burn no matter what. I’d rather someone harvest it and burn it in a controlled environment rather than it rage uncontrollably.
http://biomeiler.nl/carbon-sequestration-by-biomeiler-wood-c...
Anthropogenic climate change is a real and significant threat to the current state of our planet. That being said... It is likely a fairly minor player in the uptick in major wildfires over the past few decades. That is more due to mismanagement of forests, and a "zero tolerance" policy towards fires allowing a huge build up of fuel loads.
'Even in California, which for years has wrestled with fire devastation, a study in the International Journal of Wildland Fire found that the number of wildfires burning more than 300 acres per year has been tailing off since a peak in 1980.'
Stefan H. Doerr, Cristina Santín. Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2016; 371 (1696): 20150345