Small wildfires happens all the time and in fact natural in that region. So much for wanting nature to return to its course, plenty of plants rely on the natural wildfire occurring. But we can't let that happen because we need to build fancy houses here.
Guess whats gonna happen in another 5 years? You're right, another fire. I am pre-ordering my thoughts and prayers right now. Maybe build your house in mud next time?
Its not my problem if you build your house in the literal line of fire. Climate change is still a thing but we can't blame everything on it.
The Santa Ana winds and the accompanying raging wildfires have been a part of the ecosystem of the Los Angeles Basin for over 5,000 years, dating back to the earliest habitation of the region by the Tongva and Tataviam peoples.
Honest question in good faith: For those that use the reductionist argument of global warming / climate change for every natural disaster, what do they expect to happen if we hypothetically cut all greenhouse gas production to zero? Some kind of climate stasis Garden of Eden scenario?
Imagine a steadily bubbling surface of mixed quasi fluid materials, every thing moves, none the less a pattern of long term "stability" exists wherein various regions have behaviours fixed within local constraints.
California has "behaved" in some manner for twenty thousand years, as has the Pacific North West and the Great lake regions to the north east (in central north america).
Now that the sea+land surface layer has more energy thanks to increased insulation above various parts of the globe are bubbling along more than they have the past; wet forests that have never experienced fire are drying out in a manner previously rare and having fires not experienced in human history, drier areas with a fire cycle (California, Australia) are experiencing more intense and more frequent fire events.
> if we hypothetically cut all greenhouse gas production to zero ..
it will take a lag time for the human added insulation to disapear from the atmosphere, when a new stable equilibrium is reached the energy driving the additional bubbling seen so far to date will be gone and the former equilibrium (of dynamic stability) would resume .. for a few thousand years.
> Honest question in good faith: For those that use the reductionist argument of global warming / climate change for every natural disaster, what do they expect to happen if we hypothetically cut all greenhouse gas production to zero? Some kind of climate stasis Garden of Eden scenario?
I think it's more innocent than that and that your characterization is a strawman. Climate change is real and scary. This type of fire might not be abnormal in LA on generational timescales but it is the kind of thing we would expect to see as a consequence of climate change. So even if this type of fire would have happened anyway it is a real manifestation of a real thing people are rightly concerned about. It's also possible that climate change (and/or the politicization of climate change!) made this fire worse.
The idea of a stable ecosystem is a myth. Yes, in hundreds of thousands and millions of years the region will change dramatically. The difference between natural variability and instability is the rate of change. If left to the "natural" cycles and instability of the earth's climate, you would see gradual changes over tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years.
What people like you don't understand is that our man made climate change is 100 to 1000 times faster than anything nature has dealt (except say a meteor hitting the earth).
So yes, the climate has always been unstable over long periods, but never changed as quickly as we are changing it today. We are the meteor now.
It is ironic that LA is one of the oldest fossil industry originations, Pacific Palisades probably includes a lot of old LA oil money driving gas guzzling Range Rovers, and that the fire surrounds the Getty Villa of the OG Getty Oil Company.
why did no one warn us every minute of every day for the last 10 years?!
But fret not, the right wing on Twitter is taking to blaming a minuscule water diversion to protect an endangered fish for the hydrants running dry.
Not the fact that we built a sprawling megalopolis with ultra-expensive infrastructure maintenance costs... in a desert... where we use the vast majority of local water to feed cows...
10 years? An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006, that's nearly two decades and Gore didn't invent climate change any more than he invented the Internet.
'It will continue to happen until people realize the true root cause which is bad leadership... or continue blaming "climate change" and giving up because we're not changing how much China pollutes the air anytime soon. I would rather at least elect better leaders who have their priorities in order.
So you're saying you want leaders who address climate change. Bad leaders exacerbate climate change.
As the planet becomes hotter and drier, you will see more fires, unless you address climate change.
China makes all your stuff, including bibles, that's why there is more air pollution there. China is rapidly expanding it's renewables deployment and that will improve their air quality and resilience..
Climate change is not a variable in this scenario. Even if that's the actual cause it won't be changing anytime soon. The problem has to be dealt with anyway, and there are a lot of people saying it's due to lack of cleaning up the dry brush, not to mention taking preventative measures with water being ready to be used when it does happen.
This isn't a new problem or even a surprise. We had fires in NorCal the last few years already, and the people in charge are not afraid of losing their job, so there's no accountability until people start threatening them with a change.
