This electrical transmission tower has a problem • Hacker News Board

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#361

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

biztos wrote: post #290

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the root of the problem is that there's too much forest that hasn't burned. Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem. For instance the Beirut explosion was the fault from the welders causing the explosion. Yes, but the larger and more important issue is why are there so many explosives in the first place? California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. These forests should be periodically burned t…

> California's mismanagement with its forest is the same issue. I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem, which has very different implications especially right now. Am I wrong?

>I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up.

There are two narratives here. The Democrats want to blame Climate Change. Republicans want to blame California's mismanagement. Both are correct but there is no policy that any government could implement that will solve climate change in the next few decades. But you literally have Biden going around and blaming Trump for these fires when there is no climate policy that United States could have implemented in the last 2 decades that would have made any difference.

On the other hand, regardless of climate change, California has implemented policies that created this problem and California can implement policies that will prevent future wildfires from spreading out of control. But California is a mess. Controlled burns are constantly challenged in court by activists and NIMBYs and bogged down by environmental regulations. California needs to perform controlled burns of around a million acres of land, but is doing something on the order a few thousand even with a backlog of 20 million acres[1]. Logging policy has clear-cut forest replaced with dense bush[2]. And bad vegetation management policy has been the mantra for decades in California.

In this case, the Democrats are wrong and are engaging in outright lying in order to deflect blame. Climate change is an important issue, but climate change policy is not going to result in a solution for these wildfires.

>Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem

How? How is this a federal problem?

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/why-isnt-california-...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-10-14/newsom-clea...

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#362

Post by mint2 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

briffle wrote: post #331

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the root of the problem is that there's too much forest that hasn't burned. Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem. For instance the Beirut explosion was the fault from the welders causing the explosion. Yes, but the larger and more important issue is why are there so many explosives in the first place? California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. These forests should be periodically burned t…

That is part of it, the other part is the homes of paradise did not take 'best practices' into account for their homes. (or town, that one narrow road out seems like a deadly bottleneck) There were many news articles at the time talking about how homeowners couldn't prune back the woods far enough from their house, couldn't use less flammable materials in their home construction, etc.

The only way to get developers and builders to build more resiliently is more strong regulation. As it stands, developers have zero incentive to cut into their profit to build a fire resistant structure since they immediately sell it and it doesn’t matter what happens after that, at least to them. In fact, If they are a follower of the perverted philosophy of the past couple decades, if have shareholders it would be their duty to maximize profits by not spending extra.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#363

Post by burlesona » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

andrewl wrote: post #322

There's a comment in the thread suggesting something I'd never thought of before, but which sounds like a great idea, although I'm not too good with economic thinking: "Generation and transmission need to be separated. Generation can be a perfectly competitive market and is naturally suited to private business. Transmission is inherently a monopoly and should be publicly owned. Combining the two in one for-profit com…

It can go the other way as well. Originally power companies like PG&E were also streetcar companies. They found that power generation was profitable, but main line transmission wasn’t. But if you’re going to do the work of building a main line into a city... why not run a streetcar underneath it and sell fares? That combination turned out to be profitable, and to be a great win for the cities.

This was made illegal during the rise of the automobile, all those companies were forced to split up. This greatly weakened the transit companies and helped undo them (as desired by the oil and auto cabal).

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#364

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #361

biztos wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's mismanagement with its forest is the same issue. I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem, which has very different implications especially right now. Am I wrong?

>I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. There are two narratives here. The Democrats want to blame Climate Change. Republicans want to blame California's mismanagement. Both are correct but there is no policy that any government could implement that w…

Yes. Climate change should be met with mitigation (to avoid further climate change) and realistic adaptations of forest management.

But, to make matters worse, the baseline expected rate of fires is higher due to climate change, and is much higher due to PG&E negligence.

We can and should attack all factors with regulation, maintenance policy change, etc. The fact is, we had maintenance policies for PG&E's portion, and they were negligent.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#365

Post by jdsully » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #359

I own roughly 40 acres of Douglas Fir forest in Northwest Oregon, and let me tell you — there’s no black and white answer to this. This is a long post, so buckle up. Start with invasive shrubs like blackberries. They spread wildly and require a ton of work to maintain. (And before people say “use goats”, know they are not a magic bullet.) Limbing trees, where you remove branches under 10’, can help prevent “ladder fi…

These forests managed themselves for thousands of years without us - including periods of invasive species (through geological rather than human means of transmission). I find it funny us humans seem to want to take responsibility for everything.

That said I wouldn't want my house burned down from a forest fire either.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#366

Post by bryan0 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

biztos wrote: post #290

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the root of the problem is that there's too much forest that hasn't burned. Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem. For instance the Beirut explosion was the fault from the welders causing the explosion. Yes, but the larger and more important issue is why are there so many explosives in the first place? California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. These forests should be periodically burned t…

> California's mismanagement with its forest is the same issue. I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem, which has very different implications especially right now. Am I wrong?

Here are some articles explaining California's role in forest mismanagement.[0][1][2]

I think what's interesting, and a real problem, is that all reasons about causes of the fires is seen as a political stance, when the factual causes of the fires should be not a political issue.

All of these things are true. They're not political statements: 1. CA mismanaged its forests by not doing proper controlled burns 2. Climate change making conditions ripe for fires 3. PG&E was negligent in maintaining its infrastructure

But people want to assign the blame to either #1 or (#2 and #3), and by doing that they are implicitly taking a political stance.

It's not productive and makes finding robust solutions to these problems harder.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/why-isnt-california-...

[1]: https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article239475468.html

[2]: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Top-scientist-knew-Bi...

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#367

Post by jartelt » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #361

biztos wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's mismanagement with its forest is the same issue. I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem, which has very different implications especially right now. Am I wrong?

>I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. There are two narratives here. The Democrats want to blame Climate Change. Republicans want to blame California's mismanagement. Both are correct but there is no policy that any government could implement that w…

The vast majority of forest land in California is owned by the federal government and is National Forest land. California can't just go and run controlled burns in those federally controlled forests. That would need to be done in cooperation or under the direction of the US Forest Service and should be funded by the US Forest Service since they own the land.

If the federal government wants better forest management in the National Forests, they should increase funding for forest management and hire more employees into the US Forest Service.

You can certainly blame California for allowing people to build homes at the wildland urban interface and for not requiring homeowners to take better fire defensibility measures. The forests are a more complicated issue and the feds take much of the blame.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#368

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #351

pixl97 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? There is such a thing as a multi domain fault. He never said this wasn't PG&E's fault, just that out of 100% they don't bear all the fault. I mean, California is in the middle of burning down from a lighting complex at this moment. Suing mother nature isn't going to do much good if you want to put the blame on her for that fire. As long as people live in the Wildland Urban Interface, and we live in a climate tha…

The twitter thread makes this exact point. The camp fire would likely have happened with or without this maintenance error on PG&E's part. This is because a tree fell on a different power line and started the Camp B fire, and this was determined not to be the result of a preventable error. Just that fact alone suggests that the main component of the problem is not PG&E's neglect.

Do you believe we should not penalize preventable deaths just because non-preventable deaths also happen?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#369

Post by DuskStar » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

nebulous1 wrote: post #360

DuskStar wrote: post #57

I've got a bit of a problem with articles like this one. I'll try and illustrate it with an analogy: Imagine some asshole puts an incendiary in an orphanage, and rigs it to go off when a nearby speed trap detects someone going more than 10mph over. Eventually, someone does, and the orphanage catches fire. Further, the group responsible for constructing and maintaining the orphanage hasn't looked at the place for 50 y…

> have. But as fires have demonstrated this year... fires are going to happen. Lightning, gender reveals, a broken muffler... Something will provide the spark. I've seen this sentiment in other replies also. To me it implies that you're saying that fires are being started at near the maximal rate allowed by the forest conditions, so that increased sparks are ultimately meaningless. Is this the case?

I do not believe that fires are being started at anywhere near the maximal rate allowed by forest conditions. I DO believe that having vastly more fires started (on the order of 100x or more) would reduce the overall deaths and ecological damage, though. (Having more fires more often makes each fire smaller and less intense, which massively decreases the risk to life) To the best of my knowledge, this belief is shared by most modern forestry experts.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#370

Post by onetimeusename » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

43920 wrote: post #60

This is definitely a failure on PG&E's part, but I'm still not sure how much sense it makes to assign them blame for this fire. The environment they're operating in is somewhat ridiculous - the forest is so dry and overgrown that pretty much any flame source will start a fire large enough to burn a huge area; this specific tower failure is basically just the thing that revealed a much larger issue. With proper engine…

PG&E did request to be able to clear brush up to 15 feet away from the power lines which I believe Gov. Newsom granted a CEQA exemption to them to do[1]. Prior to that, they were only allowed to clear four feet.[2] That doesn't change the broken equipment but some of the blame can be placed on environmental regulations that cause this. What I am not sure of is whether environmental regulatory approval decreases funding and/or increases costs/time of repairing power lines. The power line upgrades do have to be reviewed and approved by environmental regulators. Here is an example[3].

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/california-tests-...

[2]: https://www.sierraclub.org/california/cnrcc/pge-clearcuts-po...

[3]: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/Environment/Info/mha/cabrillosantayn...