As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles
As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles
After the Bobcat fire, the area no longer felt safe.
So they moved to North Carolina lol. The text acknowledges this but I feel climate refuges are somewhat of a myth.
Also, there are many neighborhoods in LA that are much safer from wildfires. You have to evaluate your risk in a more granular way.
It might also be possible to construct our houses to make them much more fire resilient. I haven’t seen the details but I’ve heard that Australia made some big changes to their design standards in recent years but California has not.
My favorite is "cellulose insulation" used in attics. It's basically literally shredded magazines. So you have this fire-starting material chilling in your attic waiting to turn your roof into the Statue of Liberty's torch. Attics has soffit vents to let the fire motes in, and Bob's your uncle. Foam stuff isn't much better. Fire resistant material like fiberglass should be mandatory.
Cellulose insulation is usually treated to be fire resistant, meaning it will not spread the flame.
Unfortunately I don't think this is a mandatory treatment.
The issue is that in times of climate instability arid areas swing wildly into heat, drought and cold (not to mention catastrophic flashfloods and fires) because there is no water in the regional climate system to moderate those swings.
Don't take my word for it, look at vanished civilization after vanished civilization especially in central and north america...
This isn't going to get better, this isn't the time in human history to live in an arid area, it is dangerous as fuck. Leave if you can, you have no idea how bad it is going to get because frankly not even the scientists do.
I keep giving this warning to people in the US but unfortunately I think we are headed for a mass heat death event (5000-10000 dead) in Phoenix Arizona or a similar city from widespread power outages during a brutal sustained heatwave.
Leave the desert now, I implore you, this is the wrong moment in history to be a desert dweller and ESPECIALLY get any loved ones with precarious health or that are elderly out NOW.
I wish this was hyperbole but it really isn't..
Well first of all most of California is not a desert. It’s a Mediterranean climate. This is part of what makes fire so common. We normally have warm dry summers and cool wet winters. The winters allow vegetation to grow and the summers allow it to burn. At least that used to be the case, but regardless, it’s likely we’ll continue to have periods of healthy vegetation growth interspersed with extreme fire weather.
Desert climates are actually among the safest environments from a wildfire perspective because there is little vegetation to burn.
On the flip side, they are very vulnerable to extreme heat, as you allude to. But Mediterranean climates tend to be very mild in terms of heat—in fact many people in California do not even have air conditioning because there is no need for it where they live. Now, that doesn’t mean California won’t have issues with extreme heat—indeed, the lack of historical heat means we don’t have strong protections against it. But heat issues here are far less serious compared to Phoenix, the Deep South, and many other parts of the world. California is not projected to be among the areas where lethal heat is a regular occurrence.
So you are combining multiple catastrophes that don’t coexist in California to paint a worse picture than actually exists. And you are ignoring that extreme heat is actually more dangerous in humid climates, as are hurricanes and other catastrophic storms.
Climate change is a global phenomenon that will cause disruption and disaster everywhere. It is up to each community to act decisively to develop social structures and infrastructure to evaluate and adapt to the coming challenges. In fact, I think mass migration is more likely to make this more challenging by cutting social ties and loss of local knowledge.
To be clear, some migration will likely be necessary and part of this adaptation will be accommodating this. But these narratives that everyone needs to flee to somewhere safe do more harm than good. There is nowhere safe except those places that we render safe.
Compressed sand houses with metal rooves are pretty fire resistant. A large firebreak around your house requires that you own a bunch of land around your house but these are rich people in some of these areas so they can afford it.
Perfect for fallout 2 season
Assuming we even get it before the fall of the empire. They stopped production because of the fires and we werent even getting it till 26 even before that.