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BC is burning, and I saw this post on Facebook.
Nah, climate change isn't real.
Don't worry, glorified golf course sprinklers will save us!
I know, this is jaded for a solar punk post, but we don't need sprinkler defense - we need megacorps to stop producing 50% of global emissions
Somewhere, some day, a billionaire will see this and tell someone to make this happen around his private doomsday bunker/spa retreat to weather out the totally normal summer temperatures to come. Just until the Mars colony is up and running, of course.
I love how they snuck "commercial" into the post, too. Like, obviously it has to be commercialized, can't fathom having any poor peoples' homes saved, after all.
Technical limitations? Bah! That's a typical poor people argument, they always lack vision!
They said "commercial sprinkler systems", i.e. stuff you can easily buy, there is nothing about housing (all residential areas). I agree it's dumb, but at least get the facts right.
I agree with the overall sentiment in the post, but it's also undeniable that we need to invest on disaster preparedness, given that extreme weather events are more and more common now.
I was thinking the other day, we need to get drone tech caught up to the point where we can use it in forest management to catch fires early.
I know forests need to burn, but we need to be able to control them, and manage them with prescribed burns.
(As you may already know) The problem with "forests need to burn" is, while it is technically part of natural forest cycles in some areas of the world, it is also true that natural cycles were relatively stable and worked before human-caused climate change. Now that climates are unstable and shifting we are getting crazy amounts of wind, heat, and drought that are accelerating fires in unpredictable ways, including in areas where forest fire was not the primary mechanism for recycling and regrowth.
Fun times 😂 especially when there are still people out there refusing any degree of responsibility who just want to be mad and hurt people for fun. Ugh.
Oh, we've completely fucked ecosystem balance. That said, that doesn't mean human managed ecosystems are bad, or that actively managing ecosystems is bad. It's just a lot of work, and you have to figure out what you want that ecosystem to look like and what function it will have.
Arguably, self sustaining (e.g., natural) ecosystems are ideal soley because we don't have to manage them.
There is also value natural ecosystems because that's how they evolved, and everything fits nicely, but we've long since impacted all ecosystems to some degree so the point is kind of moot.
I agree with you but trouble is of course that without good policy, the cost of infrastructure will just get dumped on the bottom 99% while the benefit will be corrupted and skewed to unfairly benefit the 1%.
That's obviously already true of a lot of other infrastructure. People can barely afford basic fucking maintenance as is. Without undoing the dynamic already in place it'll just keep happening with new disaster infrastructure.
This is obviously total bullshit, given the amount of water and maintenance required would lead to a staggering cost. But it wouldn't even work. If just a bit of water could stop a wildfire, they wouldn't be an issue. The water would simply evaporate under the intense heat. Another big issue is embers flying over on the wind, landing on top of something flammable (like roofs of most North American style buildings). Once the fire clears the obstacle, it's done for.
Usually with forest management fire breaks are incorporated. A clearing large enough so a fire on one side doesn't easily cross over. These are often combined with access roads for fire trucks. However when a wildfire is large enough, the heat and embers are easily able to cross over. Especially when the wind is involved. Once a fire gets to that scale, it's very hard to fight and some sprinklers in the ground ain't going to do shit.
It's not total bullshit, the fire department tends to use this sort of technique to help contain wildfires. They roll out long hoses with sprinklers on it to create a "stopline" that helps prevent the fire from crossing over.
It's not perfect and doesn't make firemen redundant of course, but it does work to some extent at least. But probably not at the scale the original post intends it to.
Yeah true, the biggest difference is they decide when and where to do such a thing. If the conditions are right and they have the water and logistics to do such a thing, they can try something like that on exactly the location for it to work. It's also often one of the tools in the toolbox that gets used in combination to work.
Just use even more water! Cover the entire region in sprinklers! Obviously we should be building more desalination plants because we have a coastline.
Depressingly close to suggestions I have actually heard too.
but... but... Think of all the data centers you could power with all that water!
(/s)
Hydro power? Woke. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Please implement my slop image as policy, my corporate sycophant agrees it will work
Doesn't matter if the emissions are stopped now, still need damage mitigation because the planet is already hot (we should also reduce emissions of course)
Also the whole megacorps pollution thing is about as problematic as the personal carbon footprint idea. If you think the companies are causing all the pollution, it's easier to keep consuming the fuel and goods that those companies oil and energy produces. Like for example if you live somewhere in the western world and think that one of the world's largest polluters, China Coal, isn't affected by your consumption habits, unfortunately you're pretty likely wrong.
Yeah people keep on thinking there's going to be some easy policy to implement that will make global warming go away.
Nope. The CO2 is in the atmosphere. Even when we get to net zero emissions that CO2 will still be there. It will be around a hundred years to remove it and that's 100 years after we start removing it from the atmosphere. We haven't started yet.
It's just a more moderate kind of climate change denial to think that the problems we're experiencing right now will somehow go away as soon as someone else fixes the problem somehow. How things are right now is how it will be for the rest of our lives.
And yes it's everyone's responsibility to do something about this. It's weird that the same people that understand that supply side economics don't work and that the war on drugs is stupid because drugs sill somehow be supplied as long as there's demand for them. Suddenly when the topic is global warming it's 100% about the oil companies (the suppliers) so there's nothing that the people that create demand for fossil fuels need to do. Yes the government and industry needs to do their part, but we all need to do our part too.
The best time to have done something was 20 years ago. The second best time to do something is right now. Everyone should think about what they can do about global warming and do it.
I agree with a lot of what you said.
We are pretty boned though. Look at COVID - it was actively killing people right in front of our eyes and we still bickered about what the right approach was and squabbled even when we knew it.
Climate change is a slower poison, unfortunately, and humans don't do well with things that are tomorrow's problem
Don't worry about what other people are doing so much. Think about what you are doing more.
and the idea will get cut as soon as someone says it means higher taxes
The Botanic Garden in Australia's Blue Mountains has just finished installing one of these around the perimeter. All going well will it will protect it against the next big fire. Added bonus of watering the trees when required.
Having pipes and reservoirs full of water just because maybe it could possibly help some things and people not burn on the off chance that there happens to be a fire in that area would be an insane waste of a resource data centers desperately need right now.
Uh they have many many water systems in Kelowna already.
Commercial watering systems exist already and have been used to fight fires already.
If anyone wants local Kelowna news, search for castanet and if you can get past the extremely ridiculous amateur design, you can see news directly from that area
Also lake okanagan is huge, the cost of water is nothing, the equipment to use it is a different story
better keep the fire away from the naquadria deposits.