From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass
Some climate activists and media outlets are claiming the drought or climate change were major contributors to the recent wildfires around Los Angeles (see sample below)
These claims can easily be shown to be false.
Drought had little impact on the LA fires.
Climate Change had little impact.
Let me provide the facts below.
The Fuels
The vegetative fuels for the fires were predominantly light fuels such as grasses and range vegetation. To illustrate, consider the area where the Palisades fire started (below).
Most of these fuels are 1-10 hr fuels, which means they typically dry out after 1-10 hours of drying conditions.
So even if the previous period had been wetter than normal, then a half-day of drying conditions would make them ready to burn. The meteorological conditions immediately preceding the fires were so drying (very strong winds with very low humidities) that even if it had rained the week before, the fire still would have occurred.
Consider a plot of the ten-hour fuel moisture at the nearby Topanga Canyon site over the past year (below). Keep in mind that when the moisture level gets below 15% rapid fire spread is possible.
Interestingly, even during every wet periods (such as the first part of 2024), fuel moisture levels return to burning-level fuel moisture between showers.
But grasses and bushes were not the only thing that burned. Once the wildfires got to the homes or burning embers reaches the homes, the homes THEMSELVES supplied the fuels.
One house ignited the next.
This is very similar to the situations of others major urban wildfires, such as the Camp Fire (Paradise, CA), Lahaina (Maui), and the Marshal Fire (Superior, CO). Homes flammability has little to do with weather conditions. But poorly constructed homes (e.g., flammable roofs, no screens to stop embers moving into home spaces) are major problems.
There is No Trend of Less Precipitation in Southern California
Several media and other outlets suggested climate change associated dry conditions was a contributor to the LA wildfires. First, as noted above, the light fuels that brought the fires to the homes did not need a drought period to be sufficiently dried to burn.
But even if drought had been important, there is no evidence than climate change could have contributed. How can I be be so sure? Because there is no long-term trend for less precipitation over the region.
Consider the trends of October 1 to January 6 precipitation at Los Angeles from 1950 through this year (see below). The trend line is UPWARDS (brown line). More rain, not less. Yes, the past autumn was dry, but that is not climate but normal weather variability.
Not convinced? Below is the annual precipitation of the region since the late 1940s.
No downward trend. And the last several years have been wetter than normal, which would contribute to more bountiful vegetative growth and thus more fire potential.
The LA Fires Were Associated with Strong-Dry Santa Ana Winds. Such winds are predicted to WEAKEN, NOT Strengthen under global warming.
The LA wildfires were associated with very strong (up to 100 mph) and dry Santa Ana winds, which were generally from the northeast.
There is an extensive peer-reviewed science literature indicating that global warming will reduce the strength, intensity, and frequency of such Santa Ana winds.
It makes complete sense that global warming would weaken the Santa Ana winds.
Such winds are driven by difference in pressure between inland high pressure and lower pressure to the south and west. This high pressure is associated with low-level cool air (cool air is denser and heavier than warm air), which will be warmed due to global warming, thus reducing the pressure difference that drives the Santa Ana winds.
_____________________________________________
Very strong video and photographic evidence indicated the Los Angeles Eaton fire, which resulted in the most deaths was due to a faulty power line. Clearly, this transmission line was not de-energized even with the forecast of severe Santa Ana winds.
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Hitherto, the climate catastrophe messaging was uniform and in lock step. Then Musk bought Twitter. Trump got re-elected and now Zuckerberg has jumped on the free speech bandwagon.
“Meta oversight board members say losing fact-checking could undermine public trust
Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and novelist Khaled Mansour have warned that disinformation ‘can very much kill’”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/meta-fact-checkers-mark-zuckerberg-trump-b2676770.html
Where the LA fires are concerned I would say they have lost control of the narrative, now.
My question is this: How do people like Newsom sleep at night?
Sociopaths like Newscum sleep like babes because they know that their hearts are pure and that their cause is righteous! Until the normies wake up to the wolves living in their midst, they will continue to vote for themselves as dinner, and fleece apparel will sell like hot cakes!
On a side note, I wonder how many EVs left in garages helped intensify the fires, prevent suppression, and spread the flames to adjacent properties; the garage being close to the property line in many dwellings? Yet another new worry for the devout Commifornia virtue signaler!
If, and I really have no idea on it, there were a lot of EVs going up in smoke with all the houses then that smoky air was all the more dangerous to their health.
Newsom ticked all the virtuous boxes and all hell has rained down. Food for thought.
Correct. One other point to consider is that CA and LA are single party jurisdictions, meaning that the winner of the Democrat primary inevitably wins the general election. For Democrats like Newsom and Bass, winning primaries requires ideological purity, not competence.
There is no Democratic primary. There is a jungle primary in which everyone votes.
“Everyone”? LA county has more registered voters than people eligible to vote.
More than everyone.
‘There is a jungle primary in which everyone votes.’
Even better for the overwhelmingly dominant Democrat party, as any piddling amount of support for non-Democrat candidates is further diluted. Again, this means that CA primaries are effectively ideological beauty contests with no points allocated on the basis of demonstrated competence.
No use complaining about the system if people vote for Democrats and Democrats win.
Agree, the great Newsome fire of 2025 is a Democrat disaster
…and any Democrat who complains about such disasters needs to be promptly reminded that they got exactly what they voted for.
When everybody running is a democrat, then yes it is a Democratic primary, de facto if not de Jure .
That’s only half the story, the jungle primary eliminated the process of political parties deciding who they want running before the general election. The change also eliminated write-in votes.
You know that I am no fan of EVs, but an ICEV with a full tank of gas would present the same fire danger.
Not exactly. Gasoline burns, yes, but once it is consumed the fire goes out.
Li batteries do not go out. Even when extinguished, they reignite.
In addition to that, gasoline requires oxygen and direct contact with the spark or flame. Li batteries only need heat.
You need special equipment for EV fires. Most fire departments let them burn and just try to control the spread.
Gas doesn’t present the same unextinguishable fire risk at an EV battery.
Don’t you think that cars in the garage with 10 gallons of gasoline in the tank would help intensify the fire?
Yes, but you know it would not burn with the same intensity heat or duration of an ev and or battery fire.
Duration, yes. Temperature? Gasoline and Lithium batter fires both burn at 2000 C +/-.
Was it Shellenberger who dug up the goss on why the Santa Ynez dam feeding the Palisades was empty for 11 months and the MSM have only just picked it up?
Tucker Carlson Exposes REAL REASON the Santa Ynez Reservoir Has Been Offline – YouTube
In any case you can see why lefty heads are exploding when they can’t control the internet and the message.
I heard that photographic evidence from Google Earth suggests that Santa Ynez had been emptied for repair in 2009. Excuse makers are saying it was empty for “at least a year.”
It’s very likely that besides gross incompetence, there is fraud and corruption behind this scandal.
First of all terming it a reservoir is a bit of an exaggeration, it’s more like a pond! Changes were made to it around 2010 to provide it with a cover to meet requirements for safe drinking water. The recent emptying for repair was due to damage to that cover making it non compliant. Here’s an aerial photo without the cover:
?itok=5Vn70by3
Well over 100 million gallons. The average fire truck holds 1000 gallons of water. Hum???
Phil blew this one. The average Cal reservoir is ~160M gallons. I’m sure that they vary greatly in usable volume, but someone’s got some splainin’ to do on why this one was empty.
Looks like the Mayan sacrificial pool at Chichen Itza. Another generation or two of one-party Democratic rule in CA and they’ll be getting a lot of use out of it, even sans cover.
First of all terming it a reservoir is a bit of an exaggeration, it’s more like a pond! Changes were made to it around 2010 to provide it with a cover to meet requirements for safe drinking water. The recent emptying for repair was due to damage to that cover making it non compliant. Here’s an aerial photo without the cover:
?itok=5Vn70by3
Reservoir
n. a large natural or artificial lake used as a source of water supply.
on his left side of course.
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
I don’t trust the Zuck. He’s just reading the room, I don’t see this as a change of heart. Do you recall how Detroit aligned itself with Biden’s EV mandates? Same thing.
“There is an extensive peer-reviewed science literature indicating that global warming will reduce the strength, intensity, and frequency of such Santa Ana winds.”
The paper cited does not say that. It says:
“The overall decrease in SAW activity robustly projected by downscaled global climate models is strongest in the early and late seasons—fall and spring. SAWs are expected to decrease least at the peak of their season approximately December. Importantly, decreased SAW activity in the future climate is driven mainly by decreased frequency rather than the peak intensity of these winds. These results, together with what we know from recent literature about how precipitation is projected to change in this region, suggest a later wildfire season in the future. “
So there came an intense Santa Ana wind in early January. Seems in line with the prediction. But even if not, it happened.
But the climate fact is that California has been warming, and there has been a huge increase in bad fires. Here, from Cal Fires, is a list of the top 20 by area since 1932 (I have highlighted the ones since 2016):
Yeah. The worst winter fires for 40 years. 😉
“Southern California is experiencing its most devastating winter fires in more than four decades.”
https://apnews.com/article/fire-devastation-climate-change-santa-ana-winds-a46e2bb6785b1e325f6076fb22c8fcc5
So what do you think happened 40 yars ago? Only one fire from 1932-2000 made the list.
So they weren’t the largest. There were winter fires though. Must have been early AGW. ;).
What fires were they?
“Rain and Winds of 90 M.P.H. Lash Southern California
By Gladwin Hill;Special to The New York Times
Feb. 11, 1978”
https://www.nytimes.com/1978/02/11/archives/rain-and-winds-of-90-mph-lash-southern-california-at-least-7-die.html#
Big winds in February, but no fires. Too wet and cold.
“Winds that had brought death and destruction to California slowed to 50 miles ari hour today, and a misty rain helped fight a wind‐whipped fire that killed three men at an Air Force base.”
…
“Even with the rain, a 5,000‐acre brush fire at Vandenberg Air Force Base in which three persons died was reported only one‐third contained. Firefighters from the Air Force and surrounding counties used bulldozers in an attempt to control the fire on the 98,400‐acre base 50 miles northwest of Santa Barbara.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/22/archives/winds-blamed-in-9-coast-deaths.html
December is still winter isn’t it?
Yes. But 5000 acres isn’t anywhere near the largest fires list (lowest 192000 acres).
And I never said it was. Your claim was about fires in winter. 😉
Perhaps you are misinterpreting data about size? Things like changed burning practices, moves to canyon homes etc.
Nick just wondering if you are a member of Extinction Rebelion you seem to have the same fixation and lack of logic.
Leave him alone. He’s just fine.
Democrats decided that ruling over the ashes is just fine.
Now they can build their 15-minute cities.
The list leaves out 1970, which was a major fire year. Those fires did a good job of clearing out a lot of fuel. There were a number of wet years in southern California which led to an increase in fuel build-up prior to the 2003 and 2007 fires. In between 2003 and 2007, 2005 was a very wet year in southern California.
A few months after the 1970 fire season, SoCal had a cold Santa Ana, albeit not as strong as last week.
The ~1950 to 1970’s time period was drier than after 1980. One datum was that Lake Hodges in San Diego county did not overflow between the 50’s and late 70’s, but has overflowed many times since then.
Fuel management has also taken a hit due in part on restrictions on clearing land. One effort in the 1990’s to use controlled burns was blocked by a federal court because of possible damage to a butterfly habitat – but the judge apparently didn’t consider that not allowing controlled burns would increase the chance that a major fire would completely destroy that habitat.
Rake the forests
40 yrs ago … 1984.
Ironically 1984 ‘doublespeak’ was popularized as a form of propaganda, through fiction in 1948. Doublespeak is utilized by those that want to control others.
Some are so good at that they even fool themselves. Hi Nick.
Are you being serious, Nick? It’s a very recent top 20
Using data on U.S. wildfires from as far back as 1926, NIFC reports the numbers of acres burned is far less now than it was throughout the early years of the 20th century, with the current acres burned running about 1/4th to 1/5th of the record values that occurred in the 1930s.
Rewilding is the abandonment of land management and it can be fatal. We in the UK have the after effects of the Natura 2000 directive here – you might recall the the rivers started flooding because they hadn’t been dredged… Like the river Parret in Somerset shown below.
1960s
2014
“NIFC reports the numbers of acres burned “
NIFC does not rport that. The Cal Fires list goes back to 1932.
Have you, perchance, been listening to propaganda central, lately?
Reality Shifting
Is our reality an accurate reflection of an ultimate truth?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0026vvc
My advice is forget rewilding. You know it makes sense. Californians are learning that at great cost
In a journal entry from an 1800 explorer wrote the CA was on fire.
The bridges were built too low, not for a 500-y flood
yes, but what level (defined flood) flooding can they now handle without impacting the flow?
And what level with downstream channel maintenance.
There’s trade-offs. Pick the side you want to advocate for, but let everyone else know that climate/rain change doesn’t have anything significant to do with why the streets pond.
Baroness Young, who was head of the Environment Agency at the time of the flooding, was reported as saying that she would like to have put a limpet mine on every pumping station on the Somerset Levels.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2014-01-22/debates/140122104000001/Flooding(SomersetLevels)
Also the spoil from dredging was classified as toxic waste and could not be left on the river banks, as had happened since time immemorial, but had to be transported to a waste site for disposal. The result was that the cost of dredging went from £20,000 a mile to the hundred of thousands.
About a month ago Baroness Young was interviewed on the BBC Today programme and had the cheek to say that not enough maintenance was being done on rivers and was responsible for the flooding that was happening in the current wet period.
How these people get their £200,000 a year jobs I do not know.
How do they get their jobs? Connections, for the most part.
Poor Nicky can’t tell the difference between incompetent leadership with it’s subsequent dangerous policies, and the virtual climate model reality that he lives in! Beware of CAWG disorientation!
He was quoting from the paper cited by the article, which I presume none of you ‘skeptics’ bothered to check, as per usual.
Hey, Fungal!
Do you still believe what you’re told on the nightly news? Who’s your favorite billionaire subsidy whore? Isn’t Tom Steyer lucky being able to slaughter all those rare and endangered bats and birds?
Read this slowly, so you’ll have a better chance of understanding; the environmental policies in California have been suppress grazing, timber harvesting and brush removal; fire suppression, not so much! Maybe read it slowly AND out loud!
Quoting stupid is still stupid.
You are a true climate disciple, there is no denying your dedication to the cause. Keep banging away with your causal arguments, and don’t whatever you do, look for the full and verifiable risk profile.
“I gave up on Nick Stokes a while ago. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or his professional credibility.” – —Dr. Michael Mann
Did he say that? Really? So Mann, by his own mouth, is part of a cause, not doing science any more, if he ever did.
No, that’s what Mann said about Dr. Judith Curry. Should have been noted as such by the commenter.
The actual quote is “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.” – Dr. Michael Mann.
From Mickey Mann, who has the zero opposite of professional credibility.
This is utter tripe. The temperature on the worst days of the LA fires was low 20s Centigrade. So temperature had nothing to do with the fires.
You are being bamboozled by the anomaly carp pedled by alarmists. For example, Australia had the hottest year on record according to the BoM and yet all the hottest places experienced maximums 3 to 6C below their highest ever recorded. It is a stretch to suggest that the warmest month according to UAH, August, was hot. It was a tad more pleasant than uncomfortably chilly.
The climate alarm is wall-to-wall BS. Fortunately enough people are awake to the climate scam to force the elected representatives to challenge the scammers.
Not just the BoM; UAH too, and by a large margin.
The sun rose in the east this morning and water is wet. So what?
You still haven’t come up with a single bit of evidence of human causation.
You do know there was an El Nino in 2016, and another one in 2023, which affected the whole year…
If you think there is human causation, you need to explain how it only happens at El Nino events.
Yet we all survived and few even noticed and most went to work and complained about cost of living. There is nothing any Australian can do that will make one ounce for difference.
OH. Average temperatures. So tell us which towns cities had record temperatures in 2024. According to BoM of course.
Reading is your friend.
”…….yet all the hottest places experienced maximums 3 to 6C below their highest ever recorded”
One degree is a large margin? Do women laugh at you?
I took from the paper that global warming had little to do with the fires or their spread.
Fires run uphill unless the wind is sufficient to force embers downhill. The speeds for this are less than the maximum temperature. There are several time lapse photos and videos that show this occurring.
Your comment doesn’t address at all the main factor of the grasses and shrubs having short drying times which is the real culprit and only enhanced by higher than normal precipitation.
You haven’t refuted the authors conclusions at all, as usual.
Here is what they actually said, which is rather prophetic:
“In light of these projections, the largest wildfire in SoCal history (Thomas Fire) occurring in December 2017 and fanned by back‐to‐back SAW events is likely a harbinger of wildfire seasonality we would expect to experience more often in the future. In December, back‐to‐back SAWs are most probable providing opportunities for wildfires to burn longer and bigger. In the future, the probability of back‐to‐back events will diminish somewhat, but will still remain much stronger in December than it ever was in October or even November. The higher year‐to‐year precipitation volatility (Polade et al., 2014) translates into higher probability of extremely wet winters followed by extremely dry winters (Swain et al., 2018) and additionally suggests a boost to the availability of dry fuels, bolstering the later peak in future wildfire activity, that is, nudging the extremes of future later fires to be more intense and, therefore, more extensive. “
In the 2007 IPCC AR4 the WGII SPM states with ‘high confidence’ re the western US:
It sites [14.4, B14.1] of the main report for full details.
[snip]
Failure to take the forests leads to more fuel for fires
“with ‘high confidence’”
What does that even mean, and how did they come with it.
Surely not from “attribution” models.. that would be funny. 😉
“are projected to”
Oh… another “prophecy”… tarot cards and crystal balls. 🙂
Attribution models would have it killing people around the other side of world from smoke or ash particles and it will run to several million.
[snip snip]
So what did WG1 the Physical Science Basis say?
Oh it was the Suppository Pack for Morons. 😉
So what did the authorities do after that projection? Why was there no attempt to reduce the build up of vegetation or improve the fire resistance of the buildings? Many of the pictures of the recent fires seemed to show a lot of wooden housing crammed together with little protection. Why were building codes not improved?
Ok, let’s accept for argument’s sake the “prophetic” foresight of both your comments. If they saw this in their crystal balls (or teacups or chicken entrails) as far back as 2017 (Nick) or 2007 (TheBrokenNail) why didn’t they do something about it then? You can cherry-pick quotes and highlight all you want, the failure had NOTHING to do with climate change and EVERYTHING to do with misplaced values and a failure of government policies (and politicians).
The point of citing the eerily prophetic GRL paper is that Cliff Mass completely misread it (or didn’t read it at all). He claimed that it said AGW meant less SAW, and so the fires could not have been AGW. The paper actually said the contrary.
As to alleged failures by authorities, that has nothing to do with whether climate change is a cause.
It has absolutely everything to do with it because “climate change” is not, can not, and will never be a “cause” of anything, but especially wild fires.
Climate change is a statistical construct. It does not cause anything.
Every fire except two that you marked in yellow…
… happened since Newsome was elected.
If the authorities in LA truly believe that climate change is making wild fires more frequent and intense, then that makes them even more derelict in their duties.
If they truly believed their climate change excuse, then the LA fire department would have been one of the best staffed in the nation, rather than the one of the worst.
If they truly believed their story on climate change, then the infrastructure would have supported the needs of fighting large fires…. As it is, both the city of LA and its fire department had as their very top priority Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Newsom mitigated the increased risk of fires by approving more solar and wind factories, banning gas stoves and ICE vehicles.
One of, if not the most green/progressive states continue to suffer from horrible wildfires? How can it be so? Surely the atmospheric conditions within the Californian border must be perfect, a goldilocks zone created by windmills, EV’s and solar panels.
That is a bit like saying stockpiling explosives can be dangerous. Well I guess it depends if you leave it in the open and people can smoke around it.
So we had Santa Ana winds drying brush and grass and someone did not expect dangerous fires? That sounds like a failure of authority. 😉
Nick, the most recent fires, meaning those in the last 30 or so years, also coincide with regulatory changes in California that have reduced timber cutting and fire suppression efforts.
Let’s assume you’re right, and anthropogenic climate change has contributed to some degree to the intensity of this year’s Santa Ana winds. They are still approximately the same speed as has occurred in the past, going back more than 150 years. It was not any incremental change in the speed of the winds, or the (supposed) overall increase of temperatures of 1.5 C, that were responsible for the huge losses in California. It was poor management by LA and California of fuel loads and water supplies, regulations that made investment in fire-proofing houses uneconomical, and a host of other avoidable mistakes that made this happen. Climate change had nothing to do with that.
If there’s a silver lining to this awful event, it’s that people will be forced to consider whether any of the huge amounts they have been paying to prevent climate change made any difference whatsoever in preventing or lessening the effect of these fires.
The winds did not make the fires more intense per se. They made the firefighters’ jobs more difficult and dangerous and most importantly made containment impossible. Without containment fires spread. Embers would have still drifted whether the winds were 20 mph or 100 mph.
It is a tragedy for the people. The lack of ownership of the failures is, IMHO, criminal. The point is, the winds were not the root cause and what I am seeing is a deflection away from what needs to be discussed.
Climate change is the modern bogeyman and climate change had little or nothing to do with these horrific fires.
Not to mention that climate change, which is a statistical construction, can cause nothing.
It’s like this everywhere Nick-
Ana Kasparian finally sees the TRUTH.
Even Bollockswood has had an epiphany with the rose coloured glasses falling off and seeing woke green idiocy and incompetence for what it really is. Save the freaking planet when they can’t even plan and prepare for the local neighbourhood burning down? Save yourself mate and head for the exits too before the tar and feathers turns into torches and pitchforks.
But isn’t “decrease least” indicative of what could still be considered a Decrease?
So a fair decrease in Fall
A slight decrease in Winter
And a fair decrease in Spring
This seems like the overall Decrease indicated to me!
But then it turns out that any decrease at all is in frequency, not intensity.
According to the study, in which they only say “likely”. Where’s the quantification?
It was Cliff Mass who cited the paper.
Unresponsive.
Its all based on climate “prophecies” (scary music)…
… which are based on climate models (Benny Hill music)
Yakity Sax
And…doesn’t a “Decrease in Frequency” indicate “Less Likely to occur?
No. It will occur, but with lower frequency.
How the GRL paper got to this:
“nudging the extremes of future later fires to be more intense and, therefore, more extensive.”
was the following. In the past, the fire season was in November, because then the SA winds were revving up, and it was still warm enough. But now we will be getting November warmth in December, with stronger winds (than Nov), even if a little reduced for December. Net result – bigger fires.
Decrease in Frequence absolutely indicates less likely to occur at any particular moment.
A frequency of 12 fires per year gives a probability of 1 for each month (all other factors normalized). A frequency of 6 fires per year gives a probability of 0.5 for each month (all other factors normalized).
There has also been a huge increase in population, and likewise a huge increase in potential ignition sources, not to mention a significant change in vegetation densities and invasive types. That would be far more significant than a small increase in temperature unless you insist that raising ambient temperatures a couple of degrees affects the kindling temperature of fuels.
But put all of that aside, and let’s assume that climate change is a factor. How would a wise person react to that condition? I suggest that resources expended on Net Zero nonsense that will have no effect on climate would be better spent hardening defenses against severe conditions that already exist and might be a bit worse in the future. That would be true regardless of whether the potentials are greater in October or January.
Things change, and change is disruptive. Bad management is bad management. Climate change is not responsible for this disaster. It was perhaps inevitable no matter what anyone did, but it was certainly worse due to the distractions of the political agenda.
Geez, Nick, you just post the same B*lls**t over and over. This was already destroyed in a previous post.
Destroyed? No-one has been able to come to terms at all with the huge recent increase in massive California wildfires, except to talk about dykes and smelt and other distractions.
Dykes are a distraction. Smelt are extinct.
That increase has happened while Newsome has been Governor.
We have the cause pinned rather precisely, I’d say. !!
I thought the same thing … if you want talk about the cause lets look at the authorities and there actions.
Reactions
AND
Lack of Preactions
Huge recent increase in massive California wildfires?
If one can assign an increase to 1. Ok.
Apart from Thomas and Carr…
all of these fires you have marked, have been since Newsome was elected.
Nick, using those dates, there is a strong correlation between internet usage and California wildfires. Also, a strong correlation with smartphone ownership and climate change.
Or perhaps correlation is not equal to causation.
Lol. How can anyone publish this completely made-up nonsense and get away with it? It’s fantasy land drivel from beginning to end.
It’s the paper Cliff Mass recommended. But he didn’t read it carefully.
Makes good sense to me.
It would, wouldn’t it.
Foolish to ignore the incompetence at the local and state level and instead prop-up the climate change narrative. I am familiar with the Marshal fire in Superior, CO. Any rational person could see the potential of rapid fire spread across the prairie due to dry grasses and the propensity for chinook winds along the Front range. Add in cheat grass and no fire breaks and the density of homes in the area and its easy to see what was forth coming. The same thing happened in Medical Lake, WA recently: dry grasses and high winds produced a catastrophic fire.
That article likely will never be mentioned by the corrupt, biased, censoring, lapdog Corporate Media, an evil hand maiden of the Deep State bureaucracy.
We should distribute it widely, fight fire with fire.
Empty reservoirs meant to be used for fighting fires
Donating fire equipment to extremely corrupt Ukraine
Cutting the budget of the fire department to give the money to useless illegal walk ins from all over
The mayor of LA on another “fact finding” vacation in Africa, on the government dime in 5 star hotels
Why in hell are Americans putting up with this dysfunction and third world crap?
I forgot
About 100 fire trucks were in repair shops when the fires started, not repaired because of budget cuts.
The Mayor, plus her delegation, was in Ghana being feted by the US Ambassador, smiling and whooping it up, with photos for her albums, nor reported by the Corporate Media.
She, not a care in the world, until frantic calls came in LA was on fire, destruction as if a small nuclear bomb had fallen
She accepted 500 fire fighters from Mexico, but turned down the firefighters from New York City
Not a federal dime to California, until after Newsum and Bass have resigned.
“Extremely corrupt Ukraine”?
I believe this is hyperbole.
My wife is Ukrainian. I take offense on her behalf.
Your wife exempted.
I saw an aerial video of the upscale housing of Zelenskyy’s clique.
Each huge house had been labeled with the owner
Those houses would fit in a town, such as Greenwich, CT
I repeat, Ukraine is extremely corrupt; about 35% of the weapons NATO sends disappears on the international black market.
For example, Iran buys and gives it to Hamas
Just check Wiki
Wiki is as unreliable a resource as exists.
So anyone in the US with upscale housing is corrupt as well?
You are saying Ukraine is corrupt, not the government or the politicians but the whole country, and within it, the millions of normal people.
How much of that alleged 35% disappearance is confirmed to be solely due to Ukrainian officials? You do not know. Nobody knows.
Where is the paper trail that shows Iran bought all of them? Where is the paper trail that show Iran gave them to Hamas.
The weapons that have been discovered in the Iran-Hamas arms flow are primarily Russian.
Your generalization is inexcusable. I still take offense.
I have posted this on YouTube, but no one has answered.
(I’m in England).
Can someone tell me why on earth there weren’t huge firebreaks – bare earth areas? Is it because the land is so valuable, so the urge to build on it rode over any fire concerns? Looking at it on our news, one can see huge areas of trees right up to homes! I’m surprised this isn’t a very regular event.
Thank you.
Many Americans in this region apparently don’t think before they build. Same in Florida re Hurricane resilience. And build from wood (it is an earthquake zone so wood is good it bends and moves without collapse …………. as long as you secure the main posts to the foundations, which some didn’t before the last big one i remeber. So they fell off their bases and had to be fork lifted bcak onto their footings and nailed down a bit better, or whatever .
It’s America, just do it land. Don’t think. Cross your fingers, be positive, etc..They only worry about disasters when the inevitable happens.
Those of us into music remember the burn out of rock stars in Laurel Canyon…. it early happened again this time with the current Sunset fire, thankfully controlled. Stuff grows back and burns agin, the cycle continues.
https://www.lafire.com/famous_fires/1979-0916_KirkwoodBowlFire/092479_kirkwood_heraldexaminer.htm
‘It’s America, just do it land. Don’t think. Cross your fingers, be positive, etc..’
There’s no problem with living in ‘just do it land’ unless one’s government, like in CA, insists on socializing the costs of stupidity.
Building houses on the Mississippi flood plains.
The floods come. The houses are destroyed.
US tax dollars rebuild…. in the same location without adaptation or constraints.
The floods come. Spin, rinse, repeat.
This is America, land where one does not have to be responsible for the consequences of bad decisions.
This.would have required those “Firebreaks” to be Miles wide. The speed of the Santa Ana Winds were carrying Hot Embers over 2 miles from existing fire lines. The Gaia worshipers in Commifornia would have been aghast at miles wide clear cut fire breaks.
For a time they were worried the fire might jump across the gigantic Interstate 405 freeway, which is a fire break about 16+ lanes wide.
“:…which is a fire break about 16+ lanes wide.”
Not in the ~50% of it that is elevated.
Thanks for the entree. Uncle Clyde and I just LOVE to tell our stories.
Late ’90’s. Early summer. Early in the day. I’m leaving Carpinteria, going to get a status update on tubing rotator installs in the Brea oilfield. 101 to 188 (quick stop in Moorpark) to 405, and back to 101 . ~8AM, near the 405/101 cross, I’m in the 2nd to right lane. Jay shows up in the left lane, in an open top hot rod. He needs to make the right exit to continue on the 101 to Universal studios, and traffic is about stalled. Honking and waving ensues, and the seas part to allow Jay to make his exit. He smiles and waves at us. My 15 minutes of fame adjacency.
I wish that I had Uncle Clyde’s facility at weaving his wool gatherings into the thread. But since every WUWT post is essentially “open”, why not?
First off, with winds over 60 and 70mph, any firebreak would have to be hundreds if not thousands of feet wide.
Secondly, the environmentalists are utterly opposed to all fire prevention measures and have rigged the regulations to make them all but impossible.
It can take months to get permission from the government to clear brush around your buildings.
They use to do controlled burns.
I think climate change would run a very distant last from gross incompetence and stupidity from the various governments and agencies. The fact they are bickering blaming each other and ass covering means they know where the buck stops.
Skeptical science posted the drought monitor showing drought for Nov Dec 2024 show level 2 drought conditions and compared that to the zero drought conditions for similar fire in 2011 trying to prove “climate Change” was the cause.
Skeptical Science in their usual pattern, omitted the fact that the LA basin has been in drought conditions 1/2 of the time since the start of the drought monitor circa 1980.
The monthly rainfall data since 1870(ish) shows approx 1/3 of the years with less than 10 inches of rain a year.
fwiw – Just noting that Skeptical science is one of the worst / most dishonest “science based” websites
They are neither skeptical, nor scientific. And never have been.
What is truely surprising is they will often publish a study that is obvious junk science and near academic fraud level junk science.
yet the commentators will go to defcon 5 defending glaring fraud level junk science. Astonishing that the commentators lack basic science and math skills to recognize junk science.
SK Sc – just had an article on excess death rates for republicans vs democrats where the deaths by party affiliation was completely unreliable, yet they defended the study because it was peer reviewed.
Their stated purpose is to prove skeptics don’t know anything.
Although it isn’t one of the clearest pictures of the transmission towers at the fire site, it does appear that ALL conductors are still attached to the towers in question. 3 distinct conductor lines on either side of Both Towers appear to be attached to the towers.
Is this a case of power line failure or a planned arson site beneath the towers??
Exactly. Just because a power line is near the point of ignition doesn’t prove the electrical equipment is at fault. Just like being near the Capitol on Jan 6 01 doesn’t make a person a rioter. Unfortunately, proximity can become a convenient story for those in need of one.
Winds can cause the lines to arc, without being brought down.
While that has been the case for many power line initiated fires, the construction of the pylons and arrangement of the insulators makes me wonder as to how the lines could be touching in the vicinity of the pylon.
The other “the gun ain’t smoking” detail is that SCE did not record any line transients until an hour after the fire started.
Yep, at the pylons (Towers) the lines are about 4M or 13-15′ apart
Temp, as well as particulate, also reduces the resistance in the path to the ground.
Or to other wires
I approve of considering the alternatives, all of them.
From Jim Steele’s article:” Fabrications linking rising CO2 to wildfires should be ignored.”
All of the GHG’s change climate and cause wildfires folks seem happy that H2O and CO2 are fire suppressants. But don’t realize the dichotomy of their position.
There are a couple of things I think contributed to the Pacific Palisades fire rapid spread and destruction that I haven’t seen or heard mentioned anywhere. 1. Over growth of plants around many of the homes including vegetation growing up against them. A google street view before the fire clearly shows how much vegetation there was around many of the homes that burned. 2. Very narrow streets with lots of vehicles parked on both sides which probably contributed to a slow evacuation and I would suspect kept fire trucks from being able to quickly get into the neighborhoods.
Laguna Beach above highway 1 is a prime example of what Pacific Palisades used to look like and I’m surprised it hasn’t happened there yet.
Ignoring Acute Danger: Fukushima Reactor Meltdowns and Los Angeles Wildfires
In both cases, Fukushima reactor meltdowns and Los Angeles wildfires, civil authorities and corporate managers took no effective action to deal proactively with what in hindsight were highly visible threats, doing so well before the two disasters actually occured. In both cases, ample warnings were voiced that a loaded cannon was pointed directly at people and at property. Warnings which were completely ignored.
The Fukushima Reactor Meltdowns:
In 2008, a team of experts warned TEPCO’s corporate management and Japan’s nuclear regulators that a high-wave tsunami capable of breaching the Fukushima seawall was a high probability event.
The proper response would have been to revise the safety basis analysis, to initiate a high priority project to move the standby power generators to high ground; and to add batteries and small portable generators as an interim step while the relocation project was in progress.
None of these actions were taken. IMHO, two reasons why include:
— Acknowledging the tsunami danger and revising the safety basis would be an admission that the original analysis was significantly flawed, exposing TEPCO and the Japanese regulators to accusations they weren’t taking public safety seriously.
— Initiating an urgent project to move the standby generators to high ground would create an opportunity for anti-nuclear activists to permanently shut down the reactors.
Rather than take the risk that making the proper decisions might result in the permanent closure of the reactors, Fukushima’s corporate owners and Japan’s nuclear regulators took a gamble that the worst which could happen wouldn’t happen. They lost that gamble.
The Los Angeles Wildfires:
California governance is managed by an Environmental Industrial Complex (EIC) consisting of an alliance of state and local officials, government employees, politicians, attorneys, consultants, lobbyists, and a variety of environmental & social justice NGO’s. Operating California’s EIC is the single largest business and industrial activity in the state.
Southern California has always faced a serious threat from wildfires — one which in past decades had been controlled more or less effectively. State and local authorities decided that wildfires are much less important to deal with than are other environmental, social grievance, and social spending priorities. The change in spending priorities and in personnel policies has taken place with the express approval of California’s voters.
IMHO, two reasons why previous wildfire management policies were abandoned, and why civil and corporate managers were paralyzed in the face of the acute SoCal wildfire crisis, are these:
— To return to previous wildfire management and personnel policies is to admit that climate change doesn’t seriously impact the environment, and also to admit that alleged social and economic injustices aren’t as easily solved as California’s social justice warriors now claim.
— The social and political climate in California fosters an atmosphere of indecision among government and corporate authorities. Shutting down power has career risks for corporate managers if collateral impacts occur even while a larger catastrophe is avoided. Responding quickly to an acute crisis, but with inadequate resources, exposes public officials to criticism that they aren’t doing their jobs.
Rather than take a risk that making the proper decisions might result in permanent damage to their environmental/social justice agendas — and to their own personal career prospects — public officials and corporate managers took a gamble that the worst wildfire event which could happen wouldn’t happen.
They lost that gamble. All of them. The government officials, the corporate managers, and California’s voters, most of whom were on board with these wildfire and personnel policy changes.
Yes there’s a significant political wind change demanding accountability from a swamp of elites that have been living off the fat of the land or more succinctly the productive success of fossil fuels. The rise and rise of navel gazers and stinkers in residence most notably in our sandstones but Covid exposed a lot of their deficiencies and belief in Gummint can kiss everything better. All they really did was print helicopter money that spiked massive inflation that’s being felt with widespread discontent now. Western electorates are in no mood for wasteful dilettantes obfuscation and coverups anymore.
That’s essentially what Trump is all about as he stared down the swamp and took everything they and their lickspittle sycophantic media lackeys threw at him as well as a bullet. He’s unleashed the voices demanding accountability and real answers everywhere and even the lamestream media are cottoning on-
Watch LAFD Chief Get Visibly Angry as Host Goes Off Script to Ask This – YouTube
Doesn’t know where the water comes from for the fire hydrants? It’s your damn job stupid!
If you want to save the planet you’d better have real answers and prescriptions rather than expensive fickle energy and things that don’t work and piss people off doing it hard-
‘My heat pump has quadrupled my bills – then it broke down’
You’re a true believer climate changer then you sure as Hell want to get off woke right now and come up with workable prescriptions or you’re going down with the delusional and incompetent leeches too as we’re seething and coming for the swamp.
Funny how the LA Fire Chief makes more that twice the salary as the President of these United States.
It isn’t funny and it isn’t true.
And just a week before, several media and other outlets suggested that large waves that destroyed the end of the Santa Cruz Wharf were caused by climate change.
It is truly a miracle molecule, that CO2. It now controls the weather directly.
Very nice Cliff.
Williams was hand-picked for the role as deputy by woke Mayor Karen Bass in February 2023 and given significant public safety responsibility, including oversight of the city’s fire and police departments.
Mayor Karen Bass’ deputy who oversees LAFD is on administrative leave
Trust them they’re from the Gummint and they’re here to help.