Fires are raging from British Columbia to California | Hacker News Reader

Fires are raging from British Columbia to California

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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> Why would we gut policies that save thousands of lives and eliminate tens of thousands of cases of childhood asthma, bronchitis and emphysema annually? Why wouldn’t we want more efficient cars when we’re still importing three million barrels of oil a day from OPEC countries like Libya, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela?

Countless articles like this ask the same kind of questions over and over again. Leaving the reader to ponder the answers to them.

I'll answer here: People in power earn their money that way.

It's not just "people in power". People have voted for them, in support for such policies. How has that happened?

The politicians (at least in the US it looks like from abroad) are subject to legal corruption aka lobbyists and PACs. That is where they are getting the money not from the voters. They will say whatever they can to get votes then turn around the day after elected to ask their patrons what to vote for.

That is where they are getting the money not from the voters. They will say whatever they can to get votes then turn around the day after elected to ask their patrons what to vote for.

Exactly this. The Clintons went from stony broke to a $250m fortune and no one quite seems sure how. Even the lucrative speakers fees from Goldman’s can’t explain it.

Love him or loathe him, no one can deny that Trump doesn’t need to do that kind of chicanery.

> Trump doesn’t need to do that kind of chicanery

.. because he's funded by laundered Russian money instead? https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundr...

Interesting. I wonder if the full story on this will ever come out. Are these truly the end times? They are for me, I know, but I'm curious.

I think its more like that missing link story in evolution. You know, the one they haven't yet found because it never existed.

Doesn't Trump park half of the Secret Service 100 times a year at his golf resorts at huge costs? Besides the various scandals regarding his Russian contacts.

That Secret Service doesn't get vacation when he's at the White House. And they never slacked off for other presidents. Why does it seem that government expenses are suddenly Trump's fault?

People much prefer a convenient scapegoat from the Others than actually doing the hard work of fixing a problem. And the easiest way to deal with a problem like global warming is to deny it exists, then all the hard tradeoffs of fixing it go away. After all, so long as it's not your house burning down, does it really matter?

Right, and who cares about those snowflakes in California ;)

But damn, what about when we see lots more hurricanes and tornadoes? Maybe some sour grapes?

Well, with all this global warming, it seems to me that the storms that produce tornadoes have been much fewer this year (from my Kansan perspective). The storms have been milder but with greater rainfall.

Sweet grapes for sure.

I wasn't remembering whether any projections have been as specific as Kansas. But a quick search says likely drier, but no clear impact on tornado frequency and intensity (increased atmospheric instability, but decreased wind shear).[0,1] As I understand it, decreased wind shear follows more or less from lower temperature gradient between equatorial and polar regions. Also, more days over 38°C.

0) https://www.kansasforests.org/resources/resources_docs/clima...

1) http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/conferen/kepc07/Feddema_KEPC.pdf

The local news reports otherwise:

https://www.kansas.com/news/weather/article212365444.html

Also a severe weather analysis for Kansas:

https://www.weather.gov/media/ddc/SWAW_2018_Final_UPDATED.pd...

As evidenced by the "rollin' coal" phenomenon, destroying the environment is a way to signal how manly you are.

Damn, I had forgotten about that.

But really, isn't it just a form of trolling?

> Practitioners cite "American freedom" and a stand against "rampant environmentalism" as reasons for coal rolling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

My god. Every time I think I've seen all the possible dumb shit people do something like this inevitably comes up.

Funny you should say "god". Some argue that environmentalism is inconsistent with Genesis. In that God gave us everything to use as we see fit. But others say that God made humans responsible for managing the Earth. So that environmentalism is indeed Godly. That makes more sense to me, not that I'm particularly religious.

It's interesting - yet eating a single apple cast us out of paradise. Maybe the symbolism here is: Don't take what wasn't yours for the taking (i.e. earth's resources).

For the religiously inclined, consider that this planet earth could become our "paradise". Destroying its resources may just cast all of us out of paradise once again.

Not that it's likely to change anyone's mind, but I do recommend The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist by Gordon K. Durnil (Indiana Univ., 1995).[0]

As I recall, one of the core arguments was the equivalence of abusing a child, and poisoning them by polluting the environment. So if one is evil, why not the other?

0) https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gordon-k-durnil/t...

The Bible is very pro-nature.

BTW: https://biblehub.com/revelation/11-18.htm

"The nations were angry, and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small-- and for destroying those who destroy the earth."

On balance, I agree. But some do quote selectively, to justify all sorts of horror.

The words used in my bible are "stewardship". That is, we're responsible for maintaining this property in the master's absence.

That's an excellent translation!

> a stand against "rampant environmentalism"

That is like randomly beating people up as a stand against "rampant humanism".

Well, you know, that's also a thing.

It makes me very sad to say this, but you are right.

My longhair friends and I were targeted now and again, back in the 60s-70s. For a while, I carried a folding buck knife. But then we all started doing Aikido, which was much better overall. Because defense mostly ends up being verbal, flowing around conflict.

OK, what about President Trump? Does be or his close family have major investments in Lukoil, Yukos, TNK-BP and Surgutneftegaz?

The title is nothing to do with the article

The title here (“The long night that will last centuries...”, in case a mod changes it) is the last sentence of the essay.

and it also perfectly encapsulates the point of the piece.

Well, it made me think the piece would speculate about the climate change effects for the coming centuries. So for me it would have helped with a more straight forward title.

I took the liberty to change the title to the poignant conclusion of the article.

There is some weight behind this; Rob Jackson is Stanford faculty: https://woods.stanford.edu/about/woods-faculty/robert-jackso....

Here a couple more of his columns on SA: https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/rob-jackson/

I've seen estimates which say that up to 90% of wildfires these days are started by humans. So who's starting all of those wildfires in British Columbia?

While likely true[1] I think that's a pretty gross diversion of the topic. However fires start, there remain issues of how quickly they spread, how damaging they become, and how hard they are to control. Those all come down to the overall condition of the land. If somebody drops a lit cigarette or fails to bank a cookfire properly, but that doesn't cause a fire of any consequence because the local plant life hasn't all turned to tinder, that doesn't even become part of the statistics. The problem is that conditions have become so bad that previously harmless human activity can now cause a massive conflagration, and we shouldn't distract from that.

[1] https://www.nps.gov/articles/wildfire-causes-and-evaluations...

Humans put out >> 90% of wildfires before they become out of control.

If humans had allowed the fires to burn, then there wouldn’t be so much fuel laying around in the first place, and fires that do start wouldn’t be so bad.

Just reading into your comment, I'd say that 90% of those wildfires in British Columbia are started by humans.

Bears. It's bears, I'm thinking. Smokey Bear never made it across the Canadian border, as far as I can tell, so I reckon their bears just never got the message!

Scientific American or not, this is just a rant. It's not that I don't share the author's concerns. It's just that there's a large jump from a summer with lots of fires in the Northern Hemisphere to the collapse of human civilization. Maybe if the next summer or two are as bad or worse.

I honestly don't understand how we got to current US policy. But it does seem pretty clear that people who voted for Trump wanted these policy changes. Arguably because it's all become so horribly polarized and confused. Somehow, concerns about terrorism, trade imbalances, immigration, affirmative action, changes in sexual identity and so on have become associated with skepticism about anthropogenic global climate change. It makes no sense to me.

> the collapse of human civilization

I must have missed that bit in the article.

OK, that's my reading of "the long night that will last centuries".

Always worth remembering that the person who writes the article usually doesn't write the headline.

My reading is that climate-change effects have got dramatically worse in the last few years, and are not likely to improve in any foreseeable time-frame. I hope this is hyperbole but it doesn't look good so far.

I don't disagree. But I just hate to see stuff that polarizes the debate further.

It says a lot that it is easier to get China onboard anti-pollution deals than the US.

Chinese will enter most of the deals then either weasel their way out to be compliant with the letter not the spirit of renege altogether. It is common in manufacturing and will be common in ecology as well. (corruption is a symptom of this)

China is pushing hard for electric cars and is building renewable power as fast as possible.

Silly, that's because they want to eliminate their reliance on foreign oil.

China is much more obviously polluted such that ordinary citizens have to deal with it every day.

Most parts of the west aren't so visibly polluted anymore, but that doesn't mean the air is clean.

NOx in particular is a hard problem for all motor vehicles. And they react with naturally occurring atmospheric hydrocarbons to create ozone pollution. Which is hard on lungs, and on rubber products. Also particulates for diesel vehicles.

Well, China does get slack as a developing country. I tend to agree that's fair. But they're clearly better off than most of Africa, for example. But maybe Africa gets more slack. And yes, I could google that, but I'm tired.

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