California's largest fire burns homes as blazes scorch West

These fires will be devastating for those who lose their homes and livelihoods to them. I hope they are getting support.

I wonder what the USG spend more cash on - military gear or fire and flood mediation.

I doubt anyone is ever going to invade the US. But climate change will do this to it at an increasing rate over the coming years.

But then most governments spend a fortune on anti-terrorism, when far more of their citizens die in RTAs than at the hands of terrorists. We all deserve better governments.

Looking ahead, some parts of the world will cease to be viable for residential and agricultural use. If your summer is already hot, it's going to become a lot hotter.

Is this the real reason why the borders are being closed and travel restricted: To stop people migrating to safer places. With covid a pandemic, and on both sides of every border, there is no virological need to deploy movement restrictions across man-made lines in the ground.

Perhaps nation-state regimes are building borders to control their own turf as climate change sets in, because a global effort to mediate it is politically and economically unpalatable to them. And, as Desert Tortoise had explained, vested interests simply will not do the right thing if there is cash at stake.

Wakarimasen and Perry are right- California is a desert and they knew the risk of leaving all that dead wood and brush. They serve as tinder so once fires start, which they do every year, they spread quickly.

No, not all of California is desert. Only the regions to the east. The north coast is temperate rain forest. The Sierra Nevada used to get 20 to 30 foot deep snow packs in the winter and near daily thunderstorms in the summer. It was once a very wet environment. Most of So Cal were prime grazing and farm lands before they were urbanized. The soil is dark and rich, beautiful for growing things. Same in the San Francisco Bay area. The soil in San Jose is almost black. Before it was urbanized it was all farms and orchards. Much of the San Joaquin Valley was inland lakes and big estuaries teaming with fish, birds, beavers, bears and elk before the land was drained for farming. Now big dams impound the rivers that used to feed those inland lakes and estuaries sending most of their water to the farms that replaced those estuaries, leaving little water to flush salt water out of the Sacramento Delta or for salmon and steelhead to survive in. The little water left in the rivers is often too warm for salmon and steelhead to survive. They die before they can make it to the ocean or on the way back to spawn, threatening the west coast salmon industry. The problems in western forests arise from poor forest management on the part of the US Forest Service combined with sloppy logging practices permitted on Federal lands are the root cause of the problem. Since these are Federal lands the states have absolutely no control over what happens on them.

Wakarimasen and Perry are right- California is a desert and they knew the risk of leaving all that dead wood and brush. They serve as tinder so once fires start, which they do every year, they spread quickly.

Exactly, But the far left extremists in California don't want to take responsibility for they inactions.

If you understood water politics in California you would know it is big agriculture in the districts of Kevin McCarthy's and Devin Nunes that are causing much of the problems. Find out what the Westside Water Distric is and their history, including their non-payment of the 40 year bonds they agreed to pay for to connect to the State Water Project, their failure to pay for a drainage system to remove agricultural water so the soil doesn't accumulate salt and selenium and their financial crisis because their water rates didn't cover their expenses. No left wing radicals here, just big business and Republican, cough cough, governance at its best. McCarthy has been trying to get the Federal government, in other words the rest of the US, to pay for Westside Water District's problems.

California has been pumping non renewable water in many areas (if you visited California and know the States, you know what I am talking about, most visible ex : Hoover dam)

Number one, the water level in Lake Meade has nothing to do with groundwater depletion in California. Lake Meade captures the flow of the Colorado River long before that river touches the California border. The whole of the Colorado River basin, which extends into Colorado and Wyoming, has been in drought for over two decades.

Number two, find out what the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is. This is a California law passed in 2014 that requires all groundwater basins to achieve a balance between water use and natural recharge by 2040. Groundwater sustainment plans had to be submitted to the state by January 2020 for approval. That gives water users 20 years to implement their plan. Some of these plans were pie in the sky dreaming and were shot down by the state. In other cases they are leading to ugly lawsuits that will probably result in a court taking over the groundwater basin and managing that resource until the locals learn to be civil and share their scarce water. I am living through one of these disputes now. Agriculture uses 80% of the fresh water in California. Farmers pump what they want and most farmers are simply defying the state, basically daring the state to stop them, never mind the land is sinking in places to the point where even the irrigation canals are starting to back up because their slope has changed due to the subsidence. Groundwater levels in the San Joaquin Valley have dropped more than 50 feet due to over pumping. The ground itself has dropped 20 to 30 feet in places. The state is attempting to force groundwater users to come up with ways to bring their pumping down to no more than natural recharge. They are the only state in the west doing this btw. If you want an idea how contentious this process is, read up on the "Mojave River Adjudication" and a similar lawsuit in the Antelope Valley. There are lawyers who will spend their entire careers from graduation from law school to retirement litigating these cases. Our valley will soon join them as the farmers will not give up water even as they use three times as much water as natural recharge.

Funny how climate deniers will twist themselves into increasingly idiotic arguments that this is not a global issue beyond the scope of any one entity.

Different habitats have different caps of population that they can support. Arid places cannot sustain the needs of large population.

Yet the US politicians still can't see this simple truth and invented the climate change nonsense

Jonathan PrinToday  12:18 pm JST

What about soil management from authorities ?

Exactly, But the far left extremists in California don't want to take responsibility for they inactions.

What about soil management from authorities ?

I remember speaking to a californian whose job was in water management before fires were the headlines. He said at that time it was already a shipwreck.

California has been pumping non renewable water in many areas (if you visited California and know the States, you know what I am talking about, most visible ex : Hoover dam)

Just to be able to play golf and have swimming pools, and get unsustainable populated areas.

Many cities don't have plan to guarantee the supply of water in the long term (what renewable sources confirmed at disposal ?)

The weather pattern has changed, extraordinary heavy rains have been pouring over places unexpectedly. Why?..

Heat. London recently experienced record heat. Then a low pressure system full of moist air passed over London. Convection did the rest. The hot ground made that moist air rise rapidly. As the air rises it cools and water vapor turns to liquid water. All that heat accelerates the process greatly leading to a huge thunderhead and torrential rains. Anyone familiar with the summer monsoon rains of the desert southwest in the US knows what this process is about. We live with it. Humid air comes up from the Gulf of California, passes over that hot desert and rises. We get these massive thunderheads many tens of kilometers wide that unleash huge flash floods in the desert. If you have that same process over a big city it causes a disaster like we just saw in London.

Years of California neglecting flammable leaves and broken trees.

Explain the larger fires in other states? I will give you a hint. Most of those flammable leaves and broken trees are in National Forests. No state has any authority to do anything with Federal lands. It is up to the Federal Government to manage those forests. The state of California controls 3% of the forested land in California. The Federal Government controls around 45%. Yet California spends more on forest management and brush clearance than the Federal Government does in California. About 50% more in fact. None of those fires are burning on state owned land. They are all burning on US Government property that states have no control over. Much of the problem is traceable to logging on Federal lands. A varied forest of old trees that tend to survive fires and provide enough shade to keep underbrush from growing wild or drying out is replaces with a monoculture of equal age trees spaced apart to aid logging. There is not enough shade, underbrush grows up and logging waste is left on the forest floor to dry out and become kindling for the next fire. Combine that with fire suppression efforts to save trees for logging and years of drought and you have the recipe for huge forest fires. Don't blame that on any state. It is Federal forest management that is to blame.

Actually, climate change science, that predicts increasingly fierce and more frequent fires just like this, which is happening, isn’t true, according to our right wing posters. So even though this is happening, it isn’t happening.

As huge California fires ravage, London is hit with flash flood as torrential rain turns roads into rivers in UK capital :

Flood (flash or otherwise) has suddenly become very fashionable, many countries are facing unusual flooding threats. The damages caused would be beyond counting..

The weather pattern has changed, extraordinary heavy rains have been pouring over places unexpectedly. Why?..

KentarogaijinToday  11:17 am JST

More boldness here..

I guess it takes bravery to stray from the CNN narrative.

Years of California neglecting flammable leaves and broken trees.

And seeing people's homes burn with all that has shaped their lives is a real heart breaker...

Another example of Californian incompetence driven by dumb policy

California is not the only state where enormous fires are burning on the West Coast. It may be that people in other areas perceive the PNW, just north of California as just the place to escape climate change but we are doing exactly the opposite of what so much of the rest of the still 'wet' world is doing. We are drying out and we are burning. If this becomes a 'thing', the whole West Coast may well become a desert coast as we find on other continents. Go East, young person! if you're a fan of water. All we have here now is drought, an overdue and highly anticipated Richter 9.0 plate pop with accompanying coastal tsunami obliteration, sleeping and not so sleeping volcanoes, and, oh yeah, VERY expensive earthquake insurance riders with deductibles. Texas seems happy to see new citizens...but if you'd like to VISIT the PNW, bring money and a return ticket, we're friendly, at least. Most of the time...

In 2020, 70% of the nationwide acreage burned by wildfires was on federal lands.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf