Comments on: California wildfire threatens Wilson Observatory

By: Max

Max — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 00:17:20 +0000

The latest word is, as the fire got to close, firefighters used bulldozers to clear out vegetation. Back fires were set to preserve the hilltop.

By: wayne

wayne — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 05:13:55 +0000

LocalFluff–
Yes, on top of a mountain–watch the video-link on the Bobcat fire to get a sense of the geography. (some times, my links are worth clicking! :) )

By: Max

Max — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 20:07:10 +0000

To amplify Col Beausabre and Edward’s comments;
I worked for the BLM in the late 70s as part of the summer YCC program in high school.
We would use two dozers pulling a battleship anchor chain between them to rail down 2 hundred foot wide strips of forest (cedar and Pine trees in southern Utah) as a fire break.
The land would be seeded with grass for deer and cattle to increase the fees for grazing rights and hunting permits.
People would cut up the trees for firewood or sale, and use the cedar trees for fence posts/cedar chest/fancy closets because it would naturally resist rotting and insects.
All the environmentalists could see was ugly human caused devastation. You should see it after a fire clears out the entire mountain side.
In some cases, the environmentalists won’t even let you remove the dead burned trees because you might run over the fragile new vegetation, if any.
It reminds me the stories I’ve heard of buddhist priests who oversees every construction to remove ants and worms so they won’t be harmed.
Bacteria is living too, I wonder if they take antibiotics? (anti-life)

By: Col Beausabre

Col Beausabre — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 17:31:45 +0000

To amplify Edward’s comments, the lack of controlled burns has resulted in the underbrush being a tangle of dead, dried tree limbs and other material that is perfect tinder for wildfires. And it’s not like this is a surprise, I live 3000 miles away on the East Coast and have been hearing comments about how lack of proper management has turned the West’s forests into tinderboxes for decades. Fire is a natural part of a forest – it clears out the debris, releases nutrients into the ground and they and access to sunlight provide for a new generation of trees. Unfortunately, Bambi and Smoky have a lot to answer for.

By: Edward

Edward — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 04:15:26 +0000

LocalFluff asked: “The telescopes are presumably on a hill top. How hard can it be to cut down nearby trees and burn the bushes in a controlled way to make it safe?”

Physically? Not hard at all. Politically? Impossible. This is California, where our fearful leaders are so environmentally correct that they will not let anyone remove even the dead trees, much less the living ones. Controlled burns are considered so terrible that they are very limited, too. The fire fighters have a different viewpoint, but they are not the ruling class and have little say in the matter.

The globe has not warmed in two decades, yet global warming continues to be blamed for various problems that have been caused or exacerbated by bad policies, policies that we have known for decades or centuries to be bad. We know how to successfully run a country or a state, but many places keep reelecting people who do the opposite. How smart are we?

By: LocalFluff

LocalFluff — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 20:55:03 +0000

The telescopes are presumably on a hill top. How hard can it be to cut down nearby trees and burn the bushes in a controlled way to make it safe? “Leaving the telescope?” 100 years ago an astronomer would never do that!

By: Max

Max — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 20:40:14 +0000

Everything is burning down because of climate change… 5min
https://videos.utahgunexchange.com/watch/leftist-arsonists-set-fires-in-california-while-blaming-climate-change-trump_vkUKxIiSefqMVmm.html

Lots of videos of arsonist on this ugetube including a person in a hot air balloon filming themselves dropping gasoline bombs on the forest.

By: wayne

wayne — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 18:21:35 +0000

this captures the magnitude quite well–>

Sept 13-14th, Bobcat Fire, east of Mt. Wilson Observatory
>time-lapse film
Hans-Werner Braun
https://youtu.be/eFmJqdatbpo
1:48