RIP. Greenville, Berry Creek, Big Creek, Paradise California

[JackFlorey]

So you think there's no hope to save the area?

"Save the area?" The area isn't going away. No fires will burn _everyone_ out. But the problems will get worse, despite mitigations.

For Florida, there's solutions. Domes, bubbles, and domes/bubbles on stilts.

Florida alreado puts many homes on stilts. And they get washed away by the next hurricane. (Happened to a friend of mine to a summer house.) It's not what's ON the stilts that is the issue - the issue is that stilts cannot withstand the sand around them being eroded away.

Florida is another area that is just going to get worse. As sea levels rise, they will lose land. As storms get worse, the shoreline will change more rapidly. And people will refuse to build pillbug shaped homes because they don't want them. There are mitigations of course (moving everyone inland for example) but many won't want them - so overall, the problem will get worse.

And of course since no one is willing to tackle the root cause of either of those problems, that will be the dominant factor as we move into the future.

But first, they need working firefighting infrastructure in the first place.

They have that; they have a fire system that can (and does) handle ordinary housefires. They just don't have the capacity to fight these kinds of fires and they never will. It would take trillions of dollars to build a system that could handle a new house fire every six minutes for 23 million people spread over 60,000 square miles. And if you say "well, we can't do THAT but we can upgrade the system in Malibu!" then the next fire will hit Elsinore.

What will happen is that they upgrade the fire system to deal with larger fires; still nothing like we've seen here. And people will see larger and larger losses over time.

Consider that North Carolina could have avoided most of their hurricane damage by simply building further away from rivers, streams and watersheds, and Florida could avoid their problems by moving their coastal cities inland. That's not going to happen either. Does that mean that, when the next disaster hits, it's their fault for not preparing?

 

[JackFlorey]

Could they not build a massive, load bearing deflector/divertor for the santa ana winds somewhere along it's path out the desert? ( using a series of air deflectors )

It would be an insanely expensive project, but.. it would cost a lot less less than the area being gradually destroyed.

Well, if you are going to start down the path of "insanely expensive but better than the alternative" then just stop emitting CO2 and methane - and you solve the root cause. (I know, that's what the OTHER thread is for - but it is the ultimate solution if that's what we are looking for.)

As to wind deflectors, they would have to be on the order of 3 miles tall to be effective. Wind is not caused by air that gets moving, but by different air pressures in different regions. So you'd have to put up walls high enough to isolate areas of high pressure and low pressure. And of course they would drastically and catastrophically alter the weather around them; you would see torrential rains at the base of the western side of the wall, as daily winds off the ocean hit the barrier and went straight up. The eastern side would become a desert drier than the Sahara as zero moisture would reach them.

 

[neptronix]

Mountains in the region successfully shape the air flow already.

Los Angeles is earthquake prone region but.. you could build huge skyscrapers and put stabilizing balls in them.. and they could act as the diverter. Yeah, you would want these as close to the intake point as possible.

Prior art: Taipei 101 tower

Or monster concrete pieces.
Solutions are ungodly expensive and hard to make practical, but i think it's possible by physics, at least

They have that; they have a fire system that can (and does) handle ordinary housefires. They just don't have the capacity to fight these kinds of fires and they never will. It would take trillions of dollars to build a system that could handle a new house fire every six minutes for 23 million people spread over 60,000 square miles. And if you say "well, we can't do THAT but we can upgrade the system in Malibu!" then the next fire will hit Elsinore.

I think filling the reservoir would be a good start:

What will happen is that they upgrade the fire system to deal with larger fires; still nothing like we've seen here. And people will see larger and larger losses over time.

Knowing my home area, i think that's exactly how it will go. The area would burn down before environmental review to the solution is finished.

Consider that North Carolina could have avoided most of their hurricane damage by simply building further away from rivers, streams and watersheds, and Florida could avoid their problems by moving their coastal cities inland. That's not going to happen either. Does that mean that, when the next disaster hits, it's their fault for not preparing?

I say it's a failure to adapt and built proper infrastructure to make an uninhabitable place habitable. The beatings from mother nature will continue until ingenuity improves.

 

[marvin78]

As to wind deflectors, they would have to be on the order of 3 miles tall to be effective. Wind is not caused by air that gets moving, but by different air pressures in different regions. So you'd have to put up walls high enough to isolate areas of high pressure and low pressure.

Windbreaks do work, don't need to be 3 miles high to work either. But they have a severely limited area in which they affect ground speed ( their intended use case ). And often cause bigger problems at the border of this area ( peak wind speeds will likely be higher, and direction fluctuate, due to vortex shedding ).

 

[marvin78]

I think filling the reservoir would be a good start:

When should maintenance be done then?

 

[neptronix]

Well, if you are going to start down the path of "insanely expensive but better than the alternative" then just stop emitting CO2 and methane - and you solve the root cause. (I know, that's what the OTHER thread is for - but it is the ultimate solution if that's what we are looking for.)

Fossil fuels are what makes civilization possible right now. The best you can expect is a gradual lowering of the emissions problem, after it continues to get worse. That's a way harder problem to solve, i'm looking for the easiest feasible solution.

As to wind deflectors, they would have to be on the order of 3 miles tall to be effective. Wind is not caused by air that gets moving, but by different air pressures in different regions. So you'd have to put up walls high enough to isolate areas of high pressure and low pressure. And of course they would drastically and catastrophically alter the weather around them; you would see torrential rains at the base of the western side of the wall, as daily winds off the ocean hit the barrier and went straight up. The eastern side would become a desert drier than the Sahara as zero moisture would reach them.

Man, i wish i had some kind of supercomputer + physics simulator right now. I don't know if you need a 3 miles tall aerodynamic device or not.
You would probably end up sacrificing part of the region to boost another up. It's major geo-engineering.

 

[marvin78]

Los Angeles is earthquake prone region but.. you could build huge skyscrapers and put stabilizing balls in them.. and they could act as the diverter. Yeah, you would want these as close to the intake point as possible.

Did you just propose a giant skyscrapper with a giant weight in them, to actually 'stop' the earthquake from happening?

I get your principle, but humans aren't capable of creating a force large enough or controlled enough to mimic the forces involved in an earthquake even a mild one.

Assuming ofc that I do indeed get your principle, akin to 'sound dampening' with opposite waves.

 

[neptronix]

Less dramatic:

Did you just propose a giant skyscrapper with a giant weight in them, to actually 'stop' the earthquake from happening?

No, to ball is there so that the super tall structure can withstand the earthquake. It counteracts the problems involved in making super tall buildings in areas that have earthquakes often.

 

[marvin78]

That's a way harder problem to solve, i'm looking for the easiest feasible solution.

It's the same problem, and cheapest solution is lowering emissions. That's the whole debate ( ... which we're NOT having here.. because it's meant for the other thread ).

And yeah that's how skyscrappers been built for a long time, with counter weights ( Flatiron building in New Yorck 1903, even when the counter weight was to stabilize the structure due to winds acting on it's triangular shape ).

Mass dampers are often included in building codes afaik.

 

[JackFlorey]

Windbreaks do work, don't need to be 3 miles high to work either. But they have a severely limited area in which they affect ground speed ( their intended use case ).

Agreed. I was replying to a suggestion that showed a single line of windbreaks.

If you just want to provide a windbreak for your own house they can be much smaller (2x the height of the house.) But surrounding everyone's home - or even small neighborhoods - with a 50 foot windbreak might cause other issues.

 

[JackFlorey]

Fossil fuels are what makes civilization possible right now.

The same way horses made civilization possible. Not too many of them left now. We've moved on.

And now we're moving on from fossil fuels; most of the electrical power in California now comes from non-fossil-fuel sources. It would be insanely expensive to do that all within 20 years. But if you are starting to talk about city-wide weather modification across the US we are well into insanely expensive.

At some point you have to fix the root cause if you want to solve the problem.

 

[marvin78]

But surrounding everyone's home - or even small neighborhoods - with a 50 foot windbreak might cause other issues.

Yup, just as it's not feasible to add mass dampening to houses.

edit:

At some point you have to fix the root cause if you want to solve the problem.

Not only that, fixing the problem is cheaper then fighting the results.

 

[neptronix]

The region was known for lots of fires before global warming was a term anyone understood and the world was ~1.5C cooler.

Solving global warming is pretty tough. The world has has collectively spent gazillions over decades attempting to combatting it. Despite those efforts, the curve is steepening.

Price of giant concrete spoiler: single or double digit billions USD
Price of replacing oil to fix the climate: so far, we have no idea. Whatever we're spending on it currently, isn't anywhere close to enough since we seem to be making zero progress.

 

[marvin78]

Whatever we're spending on it currently, isn't anywhere close to enough since we seem to be making zero progress.

But the mistake people make is thinking that because things haven't gotten better, we've not made a difference.

What if we done nothing, and it would be not 1.5c warmer but 3c right now already? What would the effects be? Or 5c? How would that curve look right now if we had not already lowered emissions so much? How much influence does methane thawing in permafrost have? How much influence does lower absorption and storage of co2 in our oceans have due to warmer water?

People should look at that graph and wonder how much worse it will be and get if we do nothing.

There are tipping points in our climate, we do not want to be living when we hit one we as a people are not ready to handle it 'nicely'. I would prefer it not happening it all, even to my kids or grandkids, but if it's going to happen I rather push it back as far as possible don't you?

Imagine what the world will be like when agricultural zone's have moved faster then humans are able to adapt, famine's are rampant and people are trying to immigrate to different regions at a scale we have never seen before.

I can't proof this off course, but I think it is cheaper to fight emissions then to fight the results of climate change.

 

[neptronix]

But the mistake people make is thinking that because things haven't gotten better, we've not made a difference.

How do you accurately evaluate that?

Here's a problem.
A lot of local improvements in CO2 output usually involve just moving to a different place.

China overtook the USA as the world's biggest polluter bout 10 years after we signed free trade agreements with them.



The gain in emissions from China from handing them ~75% of western manufacturing is larger than the reductions all the west has made combined.

With today's technology, if you are dead serious about improving the climate, you need to effectively kneecap the entire world's lifestyle. That would require leaders of the world to get together and actually agree on things. And a lot of suffering.

I think it's a lot easier to build insane megastructure climate change mitigations right now.

 

[JackFlorey]

With today's technology, if you are dead serious about improving the climate, you need to effectively kneecap the entire world's lifestyle. That would require leaders of the world to get together and actually agree on things. And a lot of suffering.

Yep. The alternative is to kneecap them through stronger hurricanes, deadly wildfires, new diseases as animals move out of their old habitats, droughts, famines, floods, loss of homes etc.

There are no easy answers. One of the problems with climate change is that emitting CO2 to get cheap power is like taking out a loan with a very high interest rate. At first things are great. But at some point the loan payments become runious. and you say "but I just can't AFFORD to pay it all back, and I have to eat! So I have to keep letting it build up!" And it's hard to recover from that. The earlier you try to solve the problem the better off you are.

Of course when it comes to money you can always declare bankruptcy and make it someone else's problem. Can't do that with the climate.

 

[marvin78]

How do you accurately evaluate that?

.. which is why I said I can not proof it. But I'm just plain me, there are way smarter people who do seem to think this is what we should be doing.

China overtook the USA as the world's biggest polluter bout 10 years after we signed free trade agreements with them.

The gain in emissions from China from handing them ~75% of western manufacturing is larger than the reductions all the west has made combined.

...and the US is still ahead of everyone else when it comes to accumulated pollution.

Here's a ranking of countries by their historical accumulated pollution (measured in cumulative CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry since 1750):

Rank	Country	Cumulative CO2 Emissions (GtCO2)
1	United States	430
2	China	260
3	Russia	170
4	Germany	90
5	United Kingdom	80
6	Japan	40
7	India	30

 

[99t4]

Could they not build a massive, load bearing deflector/divertor for the santa ana winds somewhere along it's path out the desert? ( using a series of air deflectors )

Yes!!! And if it could be bi-directional it could stop that crappy California air blowing into Utah! Win-win situation!

>95% of the fire smoke we breathe comes from California, not our state. It's many times worse than our local pollution.

 

[marvin78]

With today's technology, if you are dead serious about improving the climate, you need to effectively kneecap the entire world's lifestyle. That would require leaders of the world to get together and actually agree on things. And a lot of suffering.

It would go a long way if the largest source would not claim it's better to 'Drill baby Drill'.

*yes I will keep keep calling the US the biggest polluter until China would actually overtake you in total polution caused.

 

[neptronix]

Yep. The alternative is to kneecap them through stronger hurricanes, deadly wildfires, new diseases as animals move out of their old habitats, droughts, famines, floods, loss of homes etc.

Yeah. It's a choose your own suffering adventure.

...and the US is still ahead of everyone else when it comes to accumulated pollution.

Here's a ranking of countries by their historical accumulated pollution (measured in cumulative CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry since 1750):

Rank	Country	Cumulative CO2 Emissions (GtCO2)
1	United States	430
2	China	260
3	Russia	170
4	Germany	90
5	United Kingdom	80
6	Japan	40
7	India	30

At least we're still number one at something.

But also... don't pollutants dissipate? the comparison should be on what current emissions are, no?

 

[neptronix]

Yes!!! And if it could be bi-directional it could stop that crappy California air blowing into Utah! Win-win situation!

 

[marvin78]

Trump team drafting executive order to halt offshore wind projects, New Jersey lawmaker says​

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew said in a statement Tuesday he is working “closely” with Trump’s team to draft a forthcoming executive order that would temporarily “halt offshore wind turbine activities” on the East Coast as the administration reviews the industry.
The order would also seek more lasting roadblocks for wind farms, the statement said.
Van Drew, a Republican who represents Atlantic City and much of the New Jersey’s southern coast, said the planned executive order is expected to land in the first few months of the administration.
Trump has long disliked offshore wind and recently tied turbines to whale deaths, though there is no evidence the two are linked, according to scientists and federal officials.

But also... don't pollutants dissipate? the comparison should be on what current emissions are, no?

The only process in which existing co2 in 'dissipated' is photosynthesis. As you can deduct, most of it remains in the atmosphere or is taken up in the ocean. So no, with this ( co2 ) we should look at total pollution caused if we were to look for 'blame'. The co2 the US has 'given' the world is still there, and it's the biggest single contributor.

 

[neptronix]

Sounds like you're calling the right wing AGW skeptics in for debate with posts like the above.

Okay, let's not talk solutions. Let's have another flame war about co2.
I can just move things to the AGW debate thread if you want. let me know what topic you prefer discussing.

 

[99t4]

Does that mean that, when the next disaster hits, it's their fault for not preparing?

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!"

 

[JackFlorey]

Sounds like you're calling the right wing AGW skeptics in for debate with posts like the above.

Yeah that's the danger in bringing up the influence global warming has on events like these.