Imagine all of the Carbon that is being dumped into the atmosphere from the California fires. Tons and tons of this so-called Deadly Gas is being dumped into the air.

Would I be out of line if I said that someone needs to find out how much is actually being dumped into the air and tax California accordingly?

What is amazing is the silence from environmentalists. Is the Global Warming movement really just a cover for a war against fossil-fuels or is it truly a legit argument?

The argument I've heard is that the fires are beyond their control. I beg to differ. According to environmentalists nothing is beyond our control. We can control weather changes. That is what their argument is based on.

In Germany they pay government funded Forest Rangers to manicure the forests. They clear the dead fall which decreases the possibility of fires and decease. They have beautiful forests in Germany as a result and forest fires are almost non-existant. Just a thought.

Any ideas?

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

Living in southern California, we've been affected by devestating wildfires twice in the last five years. They do, regardless of what "environmentalists" say, get out of control.

Just because you have forests doesn't mean you're going to have forest fires. The climate in California is very different than the climate in Germany, and that has a major effect.

Your post seems to be laying the "blame" (if there's blame at all) on those who are part of the glabal warming movement, and that's just stupid and without merit.

Yeah, there's a lot of shit going into the air and, from what I can tell when I turn on the evening news, everyone is worried about it...

Unlike the rest of your OP, which can only be called "Mudwhistle" , this is actually not a bad idea.

I'm not sure it could be done in California given the amount of forest we have here, but it's certainly worth looking into. Are you prepared, though, to spend the extra public money on doing it?

BTW, burning wood doesn't add net CO2 to the atmosphere. This is part of the carbon cycle. As trees grow, they remove CO2 from the air; as trees burn (or rot), the return CO2 to the air. The amounts balance. Fossil fuels, however, represent carbon that was taken out of the carbon cycle ages ago and sequestered underground. These are trees and other plants that never rotted or burned, but were instead transformed into concentrated carbon compounds by geological pressure. That sequestered carbon has become part of the current carbon balance, and humans hauling them out of the ground and burning them returns that carbon to the balance, increasing the net carbon balance. A forest fire could do the same thing if it resulted in permanent deforestation, but I've never heard of that happening.

Not sure what your "point" is, mud.

If you're suggesting that there aren't forest fires in Germany, you should probably have done your homework before creating another inane thread.

German Authorities Warn of Forest Fires After Hot, Dry Weather | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 30.04.2007

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Whan they come, Ah sall staun mah grun
Staun mah grun, an be na afraid.
Thochts ae hame tak awa mah fear
Sweat an bluid hide mah veil o tears.

I don't know, I'd say the increase in fires in our time is a direct result of overgrowth due to the moronic 'cut one, plant two' policy when trees have a much better survival rate than 50%(at least in the Black Hills where I've discussed this with forest rangers and fire crews). Maybe the smart thing for the environmentalists to do is institute programs to keep woodlands to a manageable level of growth.

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During the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every profession is chosen as a means to an end but continued as an end in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent act of stupidity.
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and his Shadow

All good socialists have villas in Southern France. That's not the point.
-Eurosocialist

Actually the environmentally correct thing to do is to LET forest fires burn. This generally clears the underbrush like you say they do in Germany. The poliicy of putting out the "little" fires, which only burn the underbrush and don't have time or heat to burn the big trees, real quick allows big ones to get started, since years of built up undergrowth allows the fires to get hot enough so the big trees catch too.

And yeh, forest fires are just putting carbon back into the atmosphere a little quicker than rotting wood...uh..would, so there's no real net carbon "footprint" to these fires at all.

I think, Mud, you are barking up the wrong burning tree here

So, California only has " little fires" as you term it?

No, that's just the point, CA is now having big fires because they didn't let the little fires burn in the past years.

Or at least that's the latest thought in regard to other places. Now CA, well, they're really a special case all around. CA is mostly a desert, fire is always present in deserts, especially in the summer, when it's really hot. It wouldn't be a problem in a natural desert but in CA you have all those homes.

And that's another problem, CA is almost unique in being one of only two places in the world that has a true Mediterrenean climate, where the winter is the rainy season. So the summers are hot AND dry, the vegetation gets almost explosive.

As regards the title, maybe the "left" is smart enough to see the difference between different types of pollution sources and concentrate their concerns on things that can be more easily controlled. Or maybe they know from experience the "right" will use the FLIMSIEST, non-existent excuse to criticize them.

That's as valid an argument as "That guy just ran a red light. Must be a lefty."

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

Five years, you say? Hey, that's during Bush's presidency!
Then George Bush is directly responsible for these wildfires! Impeachment's too good for him.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

The California fires are primarily brush fires.

But regardless, it seems to me that there is an element of discrimination being used here. Only the right kind or Politically Correct kind of carbon is allowed to be released into the air which to me weakens your case.

My understanding was that we were on the precipice and any more CO2 of any kind would force us over the edge at least that is what they have been saying. The argument that CO2 is screwing up our oceans because all they are is a big CO2 sink. Is this fear mongering or is it reality because it seems to me that any CO2 could push us over the edge, not just the wrong kind. That is why I suggested cleanup and removal of the brush in California. I would be willing to pay for a permanent program to do that. You said yourself that California is prone to brush-fires because of the weather. Why not do some fire prevention. We have the same problem in Montana where I was born. Dry summers and plenty of fuel to burn. We don't have the revenue there to handle a cleanup program so it would have to be federally subsidized.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

CO2 is not a pollutant and the labeling of it as one has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. Mother Nature cannot tell the difference between CO2 that comes from burning wild fires, your car, or from you exhaling. The danger of wild fires, besides the property damage and deaths, are the particulates sent into the atmosphere. It appears that these particulates, many of which are carcinogenic and can cause health problems and can lead to atmospheric cooling, which we see with volcanos. The focus on automobile exhaust should be on the particulates, not CO2. At the same time it must be recognized that while it may be easy to cut the generation of particulates (or any gas that is naturally present) by half or even 75%, it becomes extremely expensive, if not impossible, to eliminate all of a given substance. CO2 is a requirement of plant life. If you really want to minimize your carbon footprint, stop breathing.

tashi deleks,

M

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"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?

First, you'd need to explain how anyone knowingly ALLOWS for wildfire-produced carbon to be released.
Second, to make your position valid, you'd need to show that it IS indeed being allowed.
Third, you need to show how "the left" is in ANY way allowing this to happen or discouraging the effort to extinguish these fires.

It seem to me every available person in the state, and surrounding states, is trying to STOP these fires. And I don't think political ideology enters into this battle in any way.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

I think you took the word 'allowed' in the wrong context.

Prevention would be my goal. Lesson the number of fires and you lesson the amount of CO2 being released from another source, not just from fossil-fuels. Shouldn't that be the goal?

But my original point was the double-standard being used here. Fossil-fuels are being attacked but natural releases of CO2 are being ignored.

To get to the point, anything man-made is deemed to be bad and anything that nature does is good to some.

I hope you get the jist of my argument.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

Absolutely. A reduction in ANY component part of a problem lessens the whole problem. Even me quitting cigar smoking would lessen the total amount (admittedly by an immeasurably small amount). Which now makes me curious as to how all the sources are broken down, percentage-wise. I may have to do a little searching later.I got the point. But most naturally occurring CO2 sources are beyond human control so the environmentalists are focusing their energies on things that CAN be controlled.

I liken it to flood control. In an area that gets a lot of rain, it's more effective to put your resources into safely redirecting the water after it hits the ground, because you have no control over the rain itself and trying to stop the rain is a waste of time, money and effort.To some, perhaps. But not to most. Not everything man-made is bad nor is everything natural good for people. Like NASA learned the hard way when they tried to send up a plywood Saturn V. I think most folks get that, just as most folks are concerned about the environment but don't go around spiking trees set aside for logging. I would even go so far as to say the majority of the idiot sheep out there have plenty of concern for things like the environment, global hunger, overpopulation etc. They just think their politicians will make it all better for them without the need for them to lift a finger in their own lives.
In fact, I'm doing my own bit for my fellow humans. I just bought a new Kawasaki 650. I bought it strictly because of low emissions and it's 50 MPG.

Well, that's what I told my Wife. She didn't buy it either.
But, now that I think of it, it DOES help a little bit, and I get a shitload of fun in the bargain. Too bad we can't apply that thought to other things in our lives.


I do. It's just that the title of the thread threw me off.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.