The Los Angeles Wildfires Are Climate Disasters Compounded (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0175858295
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1445229/the-los-angeles-wildfires-are-climate-disasters-compounded
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/09/los-angeles-wildfires-climate-disasters
The Palisades and Eaton fires have each burned over 10,000 acres amid drought conditions that climate scientists say are intensified by global warming. The blazes, occurring weeks earlier than historical fire patterns, come just 16 months after Los Angeles experienced its first tropical storm, illustrating what experts describe as increasingly unpredictable weather extremes driven by climate change.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/09/los-angeles-wildfires-climate-disasters
Really? Climate? (Score:4, Interesting)
They didn't fill the resovoirs
The cut $17 million from the fire budget
They fired firefighters and are understaffed
The didn't comply with brush clearing
The halted prescribed burns
The let storm water wash out to sea
Yeah... All climate change. Totally nothing we could have done.
Re: (Score:2)
Andrew Huberman personally witnessed a schizo homeless man lighting one of the fires, according to social media posts from his account.
The fact is aholes like the author are about to face massive criminal consequences and they are doing the deny, deflect, defend thing now.
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That's a reliable source lol.
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I grew up in southern California and we had terrible Santa Ana winds in winter, just like this; mudslides too. I am also old enough to remember the Pacific Palisades always having erosion problems with landslides along the coast and seeing the Angeles Crest and San Bernadino mountains on fire in the 60s. That didn't deter people from moving there by the thousands into the greater LA area every month it seemed like more cars, more congestion, more sprawl, and not planned. Of course that will damage the envir
Re: (Score:1)
> They didn't fill the resovoirs
This is false. One of the areas that burned, The Palisades, has three giant water tanks that supply the water to the area. All three were completely full at the start of the day, as they always are, and are refilled throughout the night. Water was pumping into them 24/7. Due to the fire they were used 4x faster than normal, and so were drained. Then refilled. Then drained again. Then refilled. Etc etc. Now, if you want to ask "Why aren't the hydrants plugged into the wider city water so they don't n
climate savings (Score:1)
SO all the climate savings those electric cars were supposed to save California wipped out with a single fire... Who do we bill for the carbon usage? DO the home owner pay? Its going to be fun to see how many people with multi million dollar homes are actually rich or just presenting as rich.
Re: climate savings (Score:2)
Whatâ(TM)s funny based on the demographics of these areas there were probably a ton of EV batteries on fire ⦠water donâ(TM)t put out lithium ion batteries when they are on fire.
Corruption Compounded (Score:1, Flamebait)
Corruption enables California to blame fires on climate change instead of looking closer at why fire hydrants were empty.
Corruption enables California’s leaders to get away with shifting blame instead of looking closer at millions cut from first responder budgets.
Corruption enables insurance companies to profit obscenely while denying claims, canceling policies with little notice, and making fire insurance rates unaffordable and pointless.
Corruption enables FEMA to call a $750 check a “good
Doesn't matter. (Score:3)
Whether it's due to climate change or not is irrelevant. You still have to:
- fight the fires
- clean up the debris
- fix the infrastructure
- deal with the insurance and the inevitable rise in premiums
- rebuild lives ... and much, much more. None of this changes one iota based on the root cause.
Because the camps are divided and nobody will budge or change behavior, it really does not matter at all why it's happening. You can debate until your dying breathe, you'll still have to deal with the results. The climate will do what it will, and your opinion on it isn't a consideration.
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Yep, when you're desperately trying to bail out the boat, it's pointless to blather on about the large hole in the bottom.
Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, Slashdot sure has become a den of dumbfucks lately.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure is entertaining though...
Positive feedback (Score:2)
> The ingredients for these infernos in the Los Angeles area, near-hurricane strength winds and drought, foretell an emerging era of compound events – simultaneous types of historic weather conditions, happening at unusual times of the year...
The takeaway from this needs to be that we may have succeeded in making AGW the equivalent of a PA system wailing when the microphone gets too close to the speaker. Only in this case, we may not be able to turn off the amp, unplug the mic, or put a foot through the speaker cone.
Warming results in bigger, more-frequent wildfires releasing increasing amounts of greenhouse gases - which in turn results in more warming. We may already be at the point where if we stopped producing greenhouse gases tomorrow, ther
Where's the Water, Gavin? (Score:3)
[1]https://pjmedia.com/victoria-t... [pjmedia.com]
We thought it was terrible when Newsom and the previous Democrat tenant of the governor's mansion, Jerry Brown, forsook food and water for people to send millions of acre feet per day of fresh water into the salty ocean, during droughts and rainy days alike, to save a bait fish.
Per NY Times regarding LA County “The bulk of the roughly $1 billion collected from Los Angeles County taxpayers over the past four years to store more water has gone largely unspent.“ $1 billion taken, they dump water then we get placed on water restrictions.
[1] https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2025/01/08/wheres-the-water-gavin-n4935795
No, it is a compounded failure at all levels. (Score:2)
Government de-funding preemptive control measures like controlled burns, clearing safety zones, and the fire fighting departments.
Continuing to use water for crops that are a luxury food item, then taking those profits and not doing a damn thing with it towards fire prevention.
California can only blame themselves, I think victim blaming is the right thing here since it is literally ignoring the risks in their own back yard.
I hope all those trees had cancer warning stickers! I smell lawsuits.
Incompetence Is Why Insurance Companies Fled Calif (Score:3)
[1]https://pjmedia.com/victoria-t... [pjmedia.com]
When it's all over and Los Angeles residents take stock of their losses, will they be able to build again? Will there be any insurance companies willing to write fire insurance policies in such a badly managed state as California after the Palisades fire?
Gavin Newsom became California's governor the year after a series of devastating wildfires in 2018, including the Camp Fire in Paradise that killed 85 people and destroyed 18,000 homes. Insurance companies say eight of the 10 top wildfire-insured losses have occurred since 2017. As a result, insurance companies have fled the state faster than illegal aliens have jumped over the border on Joe Biden's watch.
"Climate change" is the lazy excuse the Democrats have used to explain why there have been more fires and more damage from them. They claim that fires are more fiery these days. If that's true then why?
California has always suffered from Santa Ana winds, wildfires, and hot weather. Those things haven't changed. What has changed, however, is the state's management of resources and its response to fires. California is a state of 40 million people and the state has roughly the same water capacity as when Willam Mulholland oversaw the construction of the 233-mile-long L.A. Aqueduct back in 1913. Read more about this in my upcoming piece on Where's the Water, Gavin?
[1] https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2025/01/08/mismanagement-is-why-insurance-companies-have-fled-california-n4935794
Wow. It sounds worse than the 2018 Camp Fire (Score:2)
In Paradise, it was oddly cold and moderately windy, but there weren't hurricane-force Santa Ana winds outside of raging fire fronts like this incident.
I heard from the press briefing of this one that the original fire grew exponentially from dozens to hundreds to thousands of acres within just a few tens of minutes because embers were flying absurdly fast.
SoCal from San Diego to Santa Barbara and much of NorCal is going to have to live life a bit differently to ensure survival of life and property:
1) Co
Re: So (Score:5, Insightful)
âoeHydrants had no water because of climate changeâ⦠yes⦠thatâ(TM)s right actually. In case you hadnâ(TM)t noticed, California is having an unprecedented drought. That literally is why there isnâ(TM)t enough water.
That said, more water wouldnâ(TM)t have made a blind bit of difference. In reality, these very fast spreading fires that are whipped up by strong winds⦠you donâ(TM)t fight them. Thereâ(TM)s literally nothing that can be done to stop one of these fires once itâ(TM)s going. No amount of water that could be pumped by fire fighters would have helped.
Re: So (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe stop growing so many water-intensive crops, if you're in such a dry area then. Basic logic?
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But profit?
Re: So (Score:3, Funny)
But weed, almonds, and avocados are so good
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So you don't like the free market now?
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[1]https://www.ewg.org/research/c... [ewg.org]
[1] https://www.ewg.org/research/california-water-subsidies
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Los Angeles isn't anywhere near where California's agriculture is. There's a huge mountain range between here and there.
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> Los Angeles isn't anywhere near where California's agriculture is. There's a huge mountain range between here and there.
Maybe a lot has changed since I lived there as a kid, but SoCal had quite a lot of desert agriculture back then. An uncle of mine lived close to a huge chunk of semi-arid land where grapes were grown. Vast fields of it.
Re: So (Score:2)
Desert agriculture is irrigated. Between the irrigated fields/orchards lies ... desert. Where not much (fuel) grows. The perfect firebreak.
Re: (Score:2)
What crops? I used to walk through orange groves when I was growing up in Southern California. Those are all gone now. The only agriculture in the southern part of the state is out in the Imperial Valley and that's built on depleting resources from the Colorado River. The Irvine Ranch (about 1/16th of the land in Orange County) used to grow lots of things but now it's a giant urban area. No crops.
Re: So (Score:3)
Did CA have a dam atmospheric river last year? What the hell they do with the water? Drained it in the ocean ?
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Yes. It was to save the smelt you see.
Re: (Score:2)
The water catchment infrastructure you speak of was already approved by voters and funded years ago. Activist groups have so far prohibited their construction by paying off the local pols.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
You have tons of cheap labor walking the streets with free cell phones from cental and south America, probably best to get to work.
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> That's precisely where most the water went. We need to be building more water catchment infrastructure but instead we're talking about reparations and paying for undocumented migrant's every need.
> Sad how such a beautiful state can be so mismanaged.
It's what a majority of Californians voted for. One recalls H.L. Mencken's quip that " people should get what they voted for, good and hard ".
Re: (Score:2)
When the voters vote for something, shouldnt they get it? Its that called ... democracy?
Re: So (Score:4, Interesting)
Local officials still refuse to build several reservoirs that voters funded years ago so 2024's record rainfall was drained into the sea.
Rainfall [Re: So] (Score:2)
> Local officials still refuse to build several reservoirs that voters funded years ago so 2024's record rainfall was drained into the sea.
What "record rainfall"? 2024 was an average year from precipitation in California.
The climate issue was not due to rainfall, but from near-record summer temperatures drying out the landscape, increasing the percentage of California-Nevada that is Abnormally Dry or in drought from 2% on June 1 to 85% by October 1.
[1]https://www.drought.gov/drough... [drought.gov]
[1] https://www.drought.gov/drought-status-updates/drought-status-update-california-nevada-2024-10-17
Re: So (Score:2)
I'm not familiar with LA County/California law. But in my locality, if you say "private cistern", the public water utilities will sic law enforcement on you. It is completely illegal to bypass the water billing meter for your own use. It is legal (and in some cases required) to install rainwater retention ponds and tanks. The difference being the sacred water meter.
If residents were allowed to store rainwater on site and use it to keep landscaping irrigated during dry spells, or use it for firefighting, wi
Re: (Score:2)
I read they went through that water faster then normal because those 3 million gallons wasn't meant for massive firefighting. Of course, if everyone turned on their hoses to try fighting the fire themselves, this also reduces the pressure in the system as a whole. This is a very hilly areas.
None of this really surprises me. For the Palisades, you'll need helicopters and air tankers to really put this fire out. Luckily, the Navy and other states are sending equipment and personnel, so hopefully we can get th
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17 million bucks buys a lot of water.
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Buys alot of weed too, it probably went to the weed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"We truely f-uped up again boys, what do we say?" .... "Climate change?"
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Umm, the hydrants have run dry in the Palisades because it's a very hilly, windy canyon like area. They built a water system there that was for support the rich folk mansions but the water system they designed was never meant to support massive firefighting efforts. The reservoirs (three, one million gallon tanks) depleted faster then they could refill by the pump system.
Cutting the firefighting budget was obviously shortsighted and unfortunately that choice was made by our elected officials at both city an
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California should change their state motto to: "Who could have predicted this?"
Re: So (Score:1)
So water isn't needed or useful to fight fires?
Amazing.
Please explain why the areas in fire have not had brush cleared out (outside of California we call that tinder)?
And why were insurance companies refusing to renew policies in California? Because the state denied them the ability to collect premiums sufficient to cover anticipated losses - that has been going on for years, by the way.
Re: (Score:1)
> âoeHydrants had no water because of climate changeâ⦠yes⦠thatâ(TM)s right actually. In case you hadnâ(TM)t noticed, California is having an unprecedented drought. That literally is why there isnâ(TM)t enough water.
> That said, more water wouldnâ(TM)t have made a blind bit of difference. In reality, these very fast spreading fires that are whipped up by strong winds⦠you donâ(TM)t fight them. Thereâ(TM)s literally nothing that can be done to stop one of these fires once itâ(TM)s going. No amount of water that could be pumped by fire fighters would have helped.
Meh. It's the fucking Guardian again. Everything is global warming now. It's gotten to the point where if I see a Guardian link in the story, I just move on to the next one. It's the same thing from them every day. Second Verse, Same as the First .
Re: (Score:3)
Well, they could have built even one reservoir over the last 50 years. The people of California demanded new reservoirs through a vote just a couple years ago, but not one hole has been dug. They could have cleared some of the brush they knew would cause this exact problem, but they didn't. They could have kept firefighters on staff instead of firing the ones who didn't want the covid vaccine, but they didn't. They didn't have to cut the fire department's budget, but they did.
The State and City gover
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Seriously, read [1]"Cadillac Desert" [wikipedia.org]
Southern California, specifically the LA Basin is unsustainable for the given population and sprawl.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert
Re: So (Score:1)
Also LA sent equipment and fire trucks to Ukraine (because of climate change).
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LA's mayor also just cut the fire-fighting budget by $17 million because of climate change.
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> Also LA sent equipment and fire trucks to Ukraine (because of climate change).
Not because Ukraine is at war?
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This was surplus equipment. Stuff they were upgrading and replacing.
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With 0% containment, is any of it really surplus? Nice try with the spin though
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Please explain how a few more fire trucks would effect containment when they're dealing with 100mph wind gusts blowing embers right over your trucks.
Re: So (Score:4, Informative)
> Politicians defunded actual fire fighting capabilities to shift money to fund DEI initiatives
If you dig deeper you will find the money went o more oil drilling, not DEI.
It is interesting to see how Americans just flat out refuse to let go of the concept of race, choosing instead to embrace fascism, racism and a much bigger poverty gap over freedom, equality and Brotherhood.
So... Congratulations, you just voted to make the land of the free the land of the sheep. Hope you are happy ðY(TM)
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And as a result, they're about to have a lot more people without homes.
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Greed and an inability to handle stats to do rational risk/reward assessments. The lack of empathy is cultural.
When everyone thinks they could get rich if those 'other' people weren't holding them back, when they don't understand the odds... You get poor people defending billionaires and hating scapegoats.
It's perfectly normal behavior for social primates, and it can be overcome with education... If you can get them to accept and value the education. The resulting improvements are fragile, though, as any
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the GOP are racists. So are the Democrats. Any time you have a program designed for a group of people based on their race, that's racism. DEI is actually racists. Admissions and hiring quotas based on race are, wait for it....RACISTS.
So it sounds like we have a lot of racists politicians.
Maybe we should stop letting big business treat us all like indentured servants. Pretty sure, the poorer you are, the bigger impact that has. So really, by allowing American Corporatism to thrive (which is 100% both pa
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the place is on fire because of climate change. The fact you can't do anything about it is your own idiots fault.
Re: So (Score:2)
Maybe clear the tender out of the forests?
Maybe let insurance companies charge rates commensurate to the risk they assume doing business in the state?
Maybe take a moment to ask yourself "Why?" Insurance companies are refusing to renew policies in California?
Maybe not cut the LAFD budget to fund NGOs that defend and protect the homeless camping out in tinder-full forests cooking over open camp fires?
Maybe prioritize citizens over protecting a smelt fish?
Or, just throw up your hands, blame climate change
Why insurance companies are refusing to renew (Score:2)
> Maybe take a moment to ask yourself "Why?" Insurance companies are refusing to renew policies in California?
OK. Here's why: [1]https://www.universityofcalifo... [university...fornia.edu]
[1] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/heres-why-you-cant-get-home-insurance-california
Re: (Score:2)
> No, the place is on fire because of climate change. The fact you can't do anything about it is your own idiots fault.
Oh for fucks sakes. It's an overbuilt area on semi-arid land that has a water shortage because of bad political choices. Toss in further bad choices about things like lack of controlled burns, add in the Santa Anna Winds, and you have a formula for mass fires. Fires are going to happen. These fires are a result of human mismanagement, not because Gaia is angry that we still drive cars and use plastics.
Re: So (Score:2)
The wind is so regular and predictable that it even has a name, yet the gov and mayor cannot plan for the fire season.
Re: (Score:1)
> No, the place is on fire because of climate change. The fact you can't do anything about it is your own idiots fault.
Climate change might explain a level of dryness and wind... but the fact is California has a crap forest management system. You can see articles from 3-4 years ago for universities, along with meta-articles talking about some of the steps that California could do to reduce the impact of fires and it is never done.
Re: (Score:1)
I don't expect you to stop trying but the whole "The things you are observing with your own eyes in real time are all lies" bit isn't going to work this time.
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But they aren't lies, they are well-documented facts. So, we can discard that possibility.
Re: (Score:2)
You made several statements. Now back them with facts.
Fake news (Score:5, Interesting)
> Politicians defunded actual fire fighting capabilities to shift money to fund DEI initiatives within the fire fighting department because of climate change.
This is an example of how news can be slanted by journalists (mostly from the right, this time).
The LA firefighter department came in under budget last year; meaning, they had money left over at the end of the year. The next annual budget decreased the LAFD amount by the amount they came in under budget.
But the right-wing media spins it as "reduced the budget for firefighters right before the current calamity".
I don't know about the rest of the claims, but this one piece of info is fake news highlighted for its outrage value.
Systemic Problem [Re:Fake news] (Score:3)
> The LA firefighter department came in under budget last year; meaning, they had money left over at the end of the year. The next annual budget decreased the LAFD amount by the amount they came in under budget.
Ouch. If that's true, it's a good example of a systemic problem with our government.
When the reward for underspending a budget is that your budget gets cut next year, this is exactly the incentive to make sure government managers spend more money.
Re: (Score:2)
The office, season 5, ep 10. The surplus.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It works like that almost everywhere, not only in govt. I know my corporation does it too.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Office_(American_TV_series)_season_5#ep82
Re: (Score:2)
Having money left over just means you reduced expenditures on, say perhaps, man power that is now needed to fight fires. You are still under manned and under equipped - but the balance sheet looks good!
Compounded [Re:So] (Score:2)
The statement was that climate change compounded the problem. Not that it was the sole cause, nor even the sole compounding factor.
The climate-related factors are historically low rainfall and unusually fast Santa Ana winds.
Re: (Score:1)
If these officials *really* believed in the climate change hype wouldn't they be increasing the fire department's budget instead of cutting it regardless of how much they spent last year?
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We always hear about cutting government waste, right up until someone does, and then it's "WHY DID THEY CUT THAT MONEY THEY DIDN'T SPEND?!? THEY NEED IT NOW ALL OF A SUDDEN DUE TO UNPREDICTABLE EVENTS!!1"
So which is it? Should we be cutting government spending where there is identified surplus, or leaving unused budget there "in case" something that may not happen, happens?
Re: (Score:2)
And The Guardian will report it as fact!