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We Know How to Prevent Megafires

propublica.org

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Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#101

Post by emn13 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #91
emn13 wrote: post #13

Heads up that propublica doesn't mind intentionally deceiving readers; I don't trust them anymore. Just a few months ago I read this: https://www.propublica.org/article/taxpayers-paid-millions-t... - and my initial reaction was "bad, big company!" A little digging later; turns out the piece is deceptive to the point that I don't buy it's an accident. So hey; maybe they're telling the truth this time. But liar, liar,…

There is nothing wrong with the propublica article. It simply claims that the company received public money years ago to design a low-cost ventilator that it never sold, and instead used that money to also design higher-cost ventilators that it actually started selling...without any inventory issues. The company claims that the US tried to order the cheapo ventilators for COVID use too late, and they may be true, but…

The article clearly implies that some or several of involved parties are ripping off taxpayers when instead the actual costs per ventilator are quite low, and not only that, the deal they're referring to wasn't even due now. That's deceptive. Even your summary is deceptive when you say stuff like "instead used that money to also design higher-cost ventilators that it actually started selling" - there seems to be 0 evidence of that occurring at least in any unreasonable sense.

Put it this way: what's there actually to report here? That a lowest-possible-cost contract for a few ventilators before 2022 didn't deliver many more before 2020? That the contract looks reasonable, and so far honestly fulfilled?

The insinuations aren't harmless. Not only because it might lead people to support more oversight and interventions where none are warranted, but also because they distract from real issues - and there are more than enough of those.

Did you look at the slightly more in-depth review of the article in this comment? https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/04/trump-administration-an...

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#102

Post by TaylorAlexander »

mc32 wrote: post #93
murgindrag wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five minute fire response times presume that there isn't a million acre fire saturating all fire departments. If CZU were rapidly spreading and hit the side of Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose all at once, I think we'd have multiday response times. Fortunately, it wasn't. Was it possible for it to spread like that? I don't know. During COVID19, we had a constant series of claims, repeated by politicians and pub…

If the CZU fire had jumped jurisdictions (HWY 35?) it would have turned worse because the Evergreen fire had sucked all those resources already. The governator really needs to return firefighting resources back to normal. There has been a significant drawdown of resources in Cal as other states boost their capabilities but the governator has not countered that and now resources are thin in CA.

We also need to pass AB 2147: https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/wildland/news/...

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#104

Post by paulmooreparks »

bamboozled wrote: post #98
akiselev wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussions are full of anecdata. That's what makes them interesting. Care to contribute some of your own that add to or argue against the GP's?

"I think there has been a general decrease in the value placed on self discipline." This is 100% just an opinion. I could also say that there are a LOT of people who are training harder and dieting due to things they see on Instaram for example. It's really just hard to quantify something like this and it's really just a subjective opinion.

He said, "I think there has been...", not, "Studies have shown that there has been...", which implies that it's a statement of opinion. In the context of the discussion, that makes perfect sense. What's the problem?

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#105

Post by dusted »

instead of controlled burns, couldn't the wood be chopped down and transported out? I mean, wood is not free.. it's worth something right? Couldn't it be sold cheaply for building materials and energy (a gasification boiler is super clean compared to "natural" burning).

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#106

Post by zdragnar »

bamboozled wrote: post #98
akiselev wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussions are full of anecdata. That's what makes them interesting. Care to contribute some of your own that add to or argue against the GP's?

"I think there has been a general decrease in the value placed on self discipline." This is 100% just an opinion. I could also say that there are a LOT of people who are training harder and dieting due to things they see on Instaram for example. It's really just hard to quantify something like this and it's really just a subjective opinion.

If you want objective data, look at obesity levels, that is fairly well studied. Instagram is popular (and, I think, contributes to the culture of self) but does not seem to have had a statistically significant effect on exercise habits.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#107

Post by Marsymars »

stickfigure wrote: post #57
jeffbee wrote: post #15

There's a couple of misleading statements in here. It's true that CDF firefighters make a decent living, but it's also true that every other fire department pays better. They'd all take a position in a city fire department if they were after more money. The other misleading thing is associating these current fires with bad forest management practices. It's true for Sierra Nevada forests generally, but that's not wher…

One other thing I've recently learned is that outside of cities, fire departments are mostly volunteer. Here in the Vacaville Fire Protection District (most of northwest Solano county, which burned heavily in the LNU complex) the department is 90% volunteers. And that's fairly typical. (I recently applied)

Hah, growing up in a rural area, I assumed that fire departments were volunteer-based everywhere, and didn't discover otherwise until I moved to a large city.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#108

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

svrb wrote: post #99
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a solid idea about about the pre-European history of fire in the US west, including some information about native american practices during parts of that history (they burned, at least in some areas and for some of the time). We have hard evidence of what the last 100 years of forest management policy has done. Nobody is proposing "nature can never (be) change(d)". The point is that that we tried to do someth…

I believe you misunderstood my comment (perhaps I worded it poorly): I intended that it be interpreted as a statement purely within the meta-discussion. I shared a concern about the arguments used to justify both sides of the debate, and did not intend to advance one side or the other. While you seem to believe I was arguing against preventative burns, the sibling comment seems to believe I was arguing for preventati…

I don't believe you were arguing against preventative burns. You were clear arguing against the idea that things must remain the same. My point was the people who understand this stuff are not arguing that things must remain the same.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#109

Post by trhway »

gamblor956 wrote: post #89
trhway wrote: post #37

Control burns look to me just like blood letting - a thing from the past when we didn't know better. how to prevent megafires? How about extinguishing them while they are just fires? A fleet of 100 tanker planes is just a few $B investment with couple hundred $M/year maintenance. Several round trips of those 100 tanker planes in the first day when these fires have just started would have solved the issue. They would…

Many of the trees in CA evolved in environments with regular fires. Some, like the sequoias, require fire in order for their seeds to open. A fleet of 100 tanker planes is just a few $B investment with couple hundred $M/year maintenance. Each DC10 tanker costs about $120 million. The newer 747 tanker starts at $140 million and that's before customization. A fleet the size you are suggesting would cost more than $12 b…

>Each DC10 tanker costs about $120 million. The newer 747 tanker starts at $140 million and that's before customization.

One drop from such a plane covers with fire retardant an area 90ft wide 1-2 miles long. 100 of these would definitely be more than enough, and isn't really needed. Especially considering that those planes are pretty picky about airstrips, and Cal Fire can't (or wouldn't) use them in the first attack waves.

The majority of Cal Fire air tanker fleet - about 30 planes - is something like 7 of C130 ($30M, fire retardant payload 4000gals, 1/3rd of DC10) and 20 something of S-2Ts (1200gals, 1/10th of DC10). So in total in one sortie they can cover an area 90ft wide 4 miles long which is obviously wasn't enough, even if we consider 2-3 sorties in a row (i.e. 8-12 miles), to extinguish/contain all the fires started in the thunderstorm night. Whereis scaling that fleet 5-10 times (which would mean on the scale of $2-5B if C130 are used) we'd get to cover 90ft by 20-40 miles (40-120 miles for 2-3 sorties in a row) in the first few hours - thus these megafires wouldn't have a chance to develop.

>And that's assuming you could find sufficient freshwater sources to fill all of those planes. If that amount of water was available, CA wouldn't be in a megadrought and the fires wouldn't be as bad.

that is just ridiculous demagogy, a high school debate club level. Lets look into the real numbers - DC10 (or 3 sorties of C130) takes about 40 tons, so 100 would take 4000 tons, which is 0.005 of 1 day of San Francisco water consumption , and in CA agricultural water consumption dwarfs the urban like 4 times. So what those planes would use is even less than that proverbial drop in a bucket.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#110

Post by [deleted] »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #79
umvi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I lived in the suburbs of Naples people would burn their trash in big piles whenever the garbage collectors went on strike and "nobody" was liable, even though sometimes the fire would spread and burn/damage stuff on the neighbor's property. Then again, Europeans don't have the same litigious culture/attitude that Americans have.

per-capita, lawsuits occur at more or less the same level in the USA as across most of western europe. the USA just has a culture that talks about suing people a lot more; in practice, Europe and the US do so at about the same rte.

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