Originally Posted by
Helmet Head
The energy required to sustain the lives of 6.6+ billion people on this small planet, regardless of what we use for personal transport is mainly at fault. And I don't see any way to remedy that, short of drastically reducing the human population. The fact that some tiny fraction of the population can manage to use walking or bicycles for some of their short-trip transportation is hardly relevant to this issue.
And as far as the CA wildfires showing that there is something wrong with the way we plan our communities, that's silly. First, the wild fires would be burning out in the wild regardless of how the communities are planned. And regardless of how the communites are planned, at some point there has to be an edge between the wilderness where the wild fires start and spread, and where the communities, however they are planned, begin. And unless you build cinder block walls several hundred feet high at those edges (though other more practical methods can mitigate risk at the edges) , the hot/large embers are going to fly into the communities, regardless of how they are planned. And the buildings in the communites, regardless of how they are planned, are going to catch fire, unless you encase them in steel, cement, brick and similar noncombustible materials.
The problem here is short-term profits verses long-term planning. These conditions were known, and modeled, several years ago:
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/news...rniafires.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1024103856.htm
The paper is titled
Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California by Christopher B. Field, et. al. Here is one quote from the June 23, 2004 paper:
Fig. 3. Statewide change in cover of major vegetation types for 2020–2049 and 2070–2099, elative to simulated distributions for the 1961–1990 reference period. ASF, alpinesubalpine forest; ECF, evergreen conifer forest; MEF, mixed evergreen forest; MEW, mixed evergreen woodland; GRS, grassland; SHB, shrubland; DES, desert. Increasing temperatures drive the reduction in alpinesubalpine forest cover and cause mixed conifer forest to displace evergreen conifer forest in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the North Coast. Mixed conifer forest in the South Coast expands because of increased humidity and reduced fire frequency.Because of drier conditions and increased fire frequency in inland locations, grassland displaces shrubland and woodland, particularly in the PCM simulations, whereas warmer and drier conditions under HadCM3 cause an expansion of desert cover in the southern Central Valley. (see:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abst...?view=abstract )
Automobiles have allowed us to colonize, or develop communities, in areas previously inaccessible, and which had fires in previous years. Now, with drought (another predicted event), these areas were very vulnerable to fires. There are some places we should not build upon. This would include ridge tops with that great view, but which can be horrible places to be when a fire comes.
As with the rest of the nation, my heart goes out to those who have lost so much in California. Their experience is not unique. This country has allowed the development of areas which should not be developed, such as the Tillamook Spit, and the City of Bay Ocean Park, a community on the Oregon coast in the early 1900s, and now does not exist. Here is that story:
http://oregoncoast101.com/articles/g...om_a_dream.htm
John