Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Forest Service officials close all California national forests

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 236 posts

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#101

Post by nradov »

dav wrote: post #51
burlesona wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a thought experiment, I wonder what it would cost to build a European village scale town for 22k people (the population of SLT) and then literally build a moat around it as a firebreak.

The moat won’t work as well as you probably think. A lot of the problem comes from the sky raining down embers on flammable roofs and such...

This is why the building code in high risk areas should require Class A fire resistant roofs. This won't protect homes from huge firestorms but they're effective against falling embers.

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/roofing/21018219/fire-resistant...

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#102

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

pokstad wrote: post #93
jjulius wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is about privately-owned land, not federally-owned land. You and the post you're responding to are both correct; the state is responsible for some areas, and the federal government is responsible for others.

You’re missing something here. Fires can start on private and state land and then spread to national forests. Also, more and more Californians are moving away from the coast into rural suburbs due to cost of living. Additionally, due to COVID lockdowns, more people are camping than ever. Fires aren’t started by climate change, they’re started by humans.

I believe that in 2021, most of the wildfires in the west have been started by lightning rather than human error. If so, your final sentence is not really true, and might even be false.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#103

Post by TomVDB »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #88
maxerickson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the insurance thing work? (my broad understanding is that property insurance is a relatively functional market where they won't underwrite a policy that doesn't make sense)

Insurers aren't perfect. For example, the Northridge earthquake was so expensive it caused insurance companies to exit the California earthquake insurance market. Now the state provides earthquake insurance with high deductibles. I wouldn't be surprised to see wildfires go a similar route in California if the situation isn't resolved.

It’s already like that. Most houses in the Tahoe area that are surrounded by a certain amount of trees are insurable only via the California FAIR plan.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#104

Post by systemvoltage »

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #63
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #21

The US National Forrest and Calfire have been on the losing side of this fire so far. All the technology that produces memes that spread across the globe in seconds and launches and lands orbital rockets flawlessly cannot stop this fire. This has been a dry summer which can be attributed to global warming. I for one am not a defeatist that will let global warming beat me. We need to think of solutions to fires like t…

> I for one am not a defeatist that will let global warming beat me. Thinking about it in terms of victory and defeat isn't very helpful IMO. The reality is pretty clear: humans need to adapt to climate change. We are already past the point of no return, and in places like California the effects of climate change are mounting at a faster rate than we can realistically mitigate them. > We need to think of solutions to…

Climate Change is only a small contributor of forest fires in California, there was a pretty lengthy discussion on HN last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28122867

Direct source: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a...

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#105

Post by fasteddie31003 »

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #63
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #21

The US National Forrest and Calfire have been on the losing side of this fire so far. All the technology that produces memes that spread across the globe in seconds and launches and lands orbital rockets flawlessly cannot stop this fire. This has been a dry summer which can be attributed to global warming. I for one am not a defeatist that will let global warming beat me. We need to think of solutions to fires like t…

> I for one am not a defeatist that will let global warming beat me. Thinking about it in terms of victory and defeat isn't very helpful IMO. The reality is pretty clear: humans need to adapt to climate change. We are already past the point of no return, and in places like California the effects of climate change are mounting at a faster rate than we can realistically mitigate them. > We need to think of solutions to…

Humans have the technology to build structures that can withstand wildfires. It's like saying we should not live in cold climates before we had good insulation. I can build a concrete or metal structure that would be fine in a wildfire. Mountains have access to tons of water during the winter. They just need to retain that water for wildfire season.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#106

Post by AnimalMuppet »

edge17 wrote: post #53
prawn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Array of 2-5 day options in Utah, if you haven't done much there before? Buckskin Gulch, Salt Creek Canyon, into The Maze overlook, Coyote Gulch, etc.

If you're into canyoneering, you could just spend a while canyoneering in Zion and camping on BLM outside the park or get one of the walk in spots in the park (which I think you can just keep indefinitely until you decide to check out)

Be flash flood aware when canyoneering out here, though...

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#107

Post by rch »

Johnny555 wrote: post #50
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #21

The US National Forrest and Calfire have been on the losing side of this fire so far. All the technology that produces memes that spread across the globe in seconds and launches and lands orbital rockets flawlessly cannot stop this fire. This has been a dry summer which can be attributed to global warming. I for one am not a defeatist that will let global warming beat me. We need to think of solutions to fires like t…

We need to apply Phos-Chek from ground based units Phos Chek is not great for the environment, especially to aquatic life. So ideally there'd be some solution that doesn't use more of it. agricultural level irrigation at the ready The fires are exacerbated by California's long term drought, if there's large quanties of water laying around, then they probably wouldn't have such a bad fire season. Inhabited locations i…

Why not make it clear that people building structures in fire-prone areas are on their own, and should design appropriately?

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#108

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

londons_explore wrote: post #14

Interesting times when a forest can be 'closed'.

The FS is not likely to try to actively patrol any and all access points to FS land. But they will put up barriers and signs, close facilities and so forth. If you are determined, I am sure you could get into most parts of most forests, but "forest closure" was never meant to imply otherwise.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#109

Post by animal_spirits »

cdiamand wrote: post #77
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Phos Chek is probably better than the long term effects from a wildfire. I would recommend looking more into consiquentalists ethics. 2. The mountains have excesses of water in the spring which could easily be sequestered for wildfire season. 3. I own land and live in a wildfire prone area. I will not be moving out to live in a human shit ridden city. I am prefer nature over close human habitation.

Is there an argument to be made for just letting the fires burn? Don't the fires have a positive effect on the soil?

They do. Many species of conifer seed don't even begin to germinate until exposed to the heat of a wildfire. Fire's are a part of the natural lifecycle of a west coast forest. Unfortunately the over suppression of fires over the last 120 years has over fueled these forests and we are witnessing the consequences now.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#110

Post by wrycoder »

amluto wrote: post #91
wrycoder wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the actual global atmospheric warming is minimal, 0.14 C/decade. [0] The actual problem is climate change in the western part of the United States, coupled with higher population density, poor forest management, and poor power line maintenance. [0] https://www.drroyspencer.com/2021/08/uah-global-temperature-...

The California problems may well be more due to forest mismanagement and PG&E issues than global warming. But 0.14C/decade is not “minimal” in any useful sense — it’s severely problematic.

That’s 1.5 C per century.

Where I sit, there was ice a mile thick 15,000 years ago. We are still coming out of the last ice age. Besides that, we have just come out of the so-called Little Ice Age, at the height of which people walked from Manhattan to Staten Island on the ice in New York Harbor.

1.5 C per century is inconsequential. Not only that, but I predict that humans will stop emitting CO2 in a few decades, in any case.

Post reply on HN