In sci.physics, Uncle Al

wrote
on Fri, 24 Oct 2003 12:55:18 -0700
:
"Robert J. Kolker" wrote:

Uncle Al wrote:

Horrible bull**** explicitly contradicted by observation. It is a
mark of the psychotic crank that it cannot be educated with literature
citations.


Al, your retorts are measured and quiet. No vitriol. Are you feeling
alright?

I'm having a pretty good time here. Thousands of acres about 40 miles
to the northeast are burning with 30-50 foot flames. It makes for
great TV. The sun rose deep crimson this morning, making everything
in the neighborhood look like it was in Hell. Enviro-whiners have
"protected" all the dead brush as a fragile and endangered
environment. Now it's payback time. We're talking hundreds of square
miles of fibrous resinous brush and dry wood piled almost ten feet
deep in some places. It's a firestorm and it's going ape****. All it
needs is 40 mph 5% humidity Santa Ana wind promised for this weekend.
The news is orgasmic with bulletins and special reports.

I take it you've got ashfall as well. Fun stuff; I hope you
bought futures in paper breathing filters. :-) (Yep, just came
back from there. Wasn't too near the fires but near enough to
smell the smoke and suffer said ashfall. Fortunately, I don't
smoke. :-) )

And you forgot to mention those specially constructed air-filled
X * $100,000 wooden boxes. (X is dependent on three things:
location, location, and location.)


Threaded throughout the "protected" areas are huge upscale residential
communities where developers successfully bribed pauper rural city
councils to build. $Millions/day are being spent to protect, mostly,
$billions in wooden housing built inside a giant tinder stack.

OK, scratch my last comment. :-)


Everybody will be severely threatened by their Housing Association if
they don't repaint everything dirtied by soot. Fast. Gotta maintain
those property values! It gets better... The heat drives resin into
the ground to form a water barrier. If it is a wet winter there will
be world-class flash floods to utterly destroy the (freshly painted)
houses.

In theory the burned land could be disked to break the seal and and
planted with grass to weave the mess together with roots after the
first light rains. Native stuff would kick in later in the year and
hold the soil in place long term. NO CAN DO! The whole area is
"protected."

I would think the resins include environmental poisons as
well (dioxins, presumably). Disking them, while a good
idea from a general standpoint to protect the ground from
erosion, may poison the ground.


I thus enjoy the delicious sight of $millions/day beings spent to
protect $billions of housing that will all be swept away by February
anyway

February? You're either an optimist (when are the first
winter rains?) or a pessimist (you mean we won't get
rains until February?) :-)

- along with the native endangered Half-Blind Walking Fly and
the squatting but still endangered Patagonian Coughing Weasel. Pray
for record heavy rains.

I'd like some anyway, so that I can drink something
tomorrow morning. :-) (I should note I live up north of
it all, in the "Environmentally Friendly But Slightly
Clueless" San Francisco Bay Area. Of course all that ash
and silt might do interesting things to the reservoirs --
for various values of "interesting".)

It's a disaster -- and we'll see how Arnold "I'm The New
Governor" Schwarzenegger can handle it. (I doubt Davis
will touch it.)

--
#191,
It's still legal to go .sigless.