I try to live with as small a footprint as I can possibly manage in the 21st century. What are your compromises?
There are cycles, ups and downs, nobody is debating that. However there has never before been a global civilization on the scale that we have now, one that is totally reliant on a stable climate for its very existence.
Even if⌠and the carbon isotopes prove that our problem is man made⌠it were a period in the natural cycle.
Putting your hands in your pockets and telling yourself that: âNoting I can do, its just natureâ and going about your merry way is not going to save our society .
Yes, that is SOX reduction mainly. Which has a warming effect, however it is considered smaller than the warming effect of CO2.
One big and underestimated factor is methane emissions. Cattle ranching and natgas production.
Just wait until the rising sea temperatures destabilise the frozen methane hydrates currently locked in the sea floor. Hope yâall like the smell of methane.
Itâs more the permafrost and related methane release than subsea - but itâs not going to be great either.
I take it you have read âThe Swarmâ.
No I havn´t, but judging by the blurb I think I will.
This is a nice change. Society will not collapse by nuclear war, but by climate change events 
About forest fires in human impacted environments, one of the greatest hazards are the accumulation of âfuelâ because of successful firefighter interventions in the past. Every time firefighters win, the problem becomes larger. Maybe the question should be, why are firefighters needed in first place?
It is a great book.
I suppose it is going to be a toss up.
Choose your poison.
Global thermonuclear war.
Society collapse
Asteroid strike.
Super Volcano
Climat Change
Virus pandemic
humanity loses the will to live.
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Reading all this, Iâm fast doing that.
Thatâs what controlled fires during the wetter seasons are for. They âclean the floorâ and can create barriers for wildfires, making them less difficult to contain. The question is if CA does them, during Trump45 they apparently didnât as he kept blaming them.
Speaking of needing firefighters, LAâs DEI politics criticizes the fact that the vast majority are white men and aims to change that, with obviously detrimental consequences for their competence.
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Eh. White heterosexual male Christians are responsible for most of recent human misery. LAâs policy is just trying to remedy that.
Some things in life are unavoidable, like wild fires. Only possible thing to do is to not be there when it happens.
But the fourth little piggy made his house out reinforced concrete with a fireproof roof:
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Itâll be uninhabitable for a looooong timeâŚcan you imagine the stink? My neighbourhood burned in the '70s (sparing my house, but it was terrifying). I sold up and moved, and the house burned down in the '89 fire.
Stalin
Gaddafi
Pol Pot
Khamenei
Lukashenko
Assad
The Taliban
et al
All the above were not Christian.
Some people think Margaret Thatcher made a few people miserable but she wasnât male so doesnât fit.
Who was on your list or was it some catchy phrase you saw whilst scrolling Tik Tok?
I think he means God.
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Yes, thatâs what I wonder about for a long time now; why donât they build proper houses?!
When you watch these programs where they flip houses (I admit, a weakness of mine, when I start I watch for hours) you watch them knocking holes out of flimsy walls and install windows. Who needs a storm with those houses, they look as if sneezing would take them down.
When they are torn down, they collapse like houses of cards in no time.
The only thing built like that around here would be a shed. Or maybe a cheap prefab garage.
The exceptions prove the rule and as for Maggie, not sure where she was on the spectrum.
Well, this link from Politico mag was shared on the US politics thread. Something caught my eye:
A group of House Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump talked about tying wildfire aid to a debt ceiling increase Sunday night, as the fires spreading across huge swaths of Los Angeles are estimated to become one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.
Ahhhh, numbersâŚthis gets interesting. Hurricane Ian in Sep 2022, caused 65 billion USD in insured losses in Florida according to Swiss Re estimates. According to US NOAA, total damages (insured + uninsured) where around 120 billion USD. So, a ratio of 1/2 of insured/uninsured damages.
Until today, the damage estimate of the wildfires is 20-25 billion USD in insured damages. But, the coverage of fire insurance in California is much lower than flood and wind damages in Florida, so the ratio of insured/uninsured damages is even smaller. A ratio of 1/3, or 60-75 billion USD in total damages, would put the wildfire events in the top 10 of natural disaster damages in the US.
So, very interesting. Politico mag is not lying. It may be indeed a costly natural disaster event. The issue here is that the fraction of property owners the care to get fire insurance is low. So, a lot of the losses are uninsured. I think it is time to report the losses in terms of % of California GDP. God bless them.