New California Replacement Tire Standards [⛔️ ADMIN WARNING: NO POLITICS]

[T800]

Hopefully I won't need tires for a few more years. Though I never mind an excuse to go to Vegas for the weekend since I'm a poker player.

Part of the problem with wild fires: The fire dept.'s aren't allowed to do enough abatement due to the environmental groups. So fires are worse as a result.

Then you have other idiotic issues. There was a fire in W. LA a few years ago. All of the fire hydrants in the area were empty. I'll try to avoid political arguments... though that was the main problem.

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[EasternSierra]

Part of the problem with wild fires: The fire dept.'s aren't allowed to do enough abatement due to the environmental groups. So fires are worse as a result.

Common talking point that's not accurate for our U.S. national forests or BLM lands.

Traditional forestry on these lands was not geared towards fire risk reduction in most cases. The focus was on getting out the merchantable timber, or else clearcutting the forest then replanting with dense, fire-prone stands of young trees all the same age. This worked for decades, mostly, in the cooler and effectively moister climate of the 20th century. (A warmer climate has a much greater capacity to evaporate water from a landscape.)

If you want to clear out the forest understory you need either periodic controlled fires or prohibitively expensive (for millions of acres of land) manual clearing then burning of debris piles. That doesn't pay economically in any immediate sense, despite its great long-term value. It was never in the budget of our land managing agencies, at least not for millions of acres of land. (There were always small exceptions, and they were exceptions.)

Prescribed burns were pretty much not allowed in most places at most times until the last few decades. As someone who was really concerned about our overgrown western forests back in the early 1970s (when the timber industry was in high gear and had been since WWII), it was extremely disheartening in the following decades to see the very slow adoption of controlled fire to manage forestlands. (This was different on private lands in the southeast which are a whole other story).

Here in California the situation was made worse because the EPA counted pollution from controlled burns against states' pollution performance, while wildfire smoke didn't count. That was only changed a few years ago.

California has a combination of terrain and temperature inversions that's particularly effective at trapping smoke in the valleys where people live, yet we had great trouble in getting controlled burns scaled up enough to make a difference even locally because of this problem. People blamed the state air boards and California politicians, but they were responding to federal directives.

So the popular argument is that we're getting a lot more fires because 'the greens stopped something' that largely wasn't actually happening. It's a diversion from facing the reality of what climate change is doing for our forests.

To echo what Brian stated, wildfire is now doing things it didn't used to to, in a wide range of vegetation types. Listen to the firefighters, not to the talking heads on TV or the politicians.

Closing note: Over 40 years ago one summer, I was running a chainsaw in the woods in Idaho doing forest thinning. This was to thin out excessive tree reproduction to get better growth of saplings, not for fire risk reduction. We left the cut down saplings on the forest floor. At the rate we were going it would have taken us over a century to treat the whole ranger district. In other words, a drop in the bucket, like I saw in so many other forests then and now.

 

[23OBX2.7]

Most of those forests burning are in very remote roadless areas and have never been managed, certainly not back in the previous centuries before there were so many fires there.

The forests there are drying out due to a substantially warming climate in far northern areas. That's why they're burning far more than they used to. I know a lot of people don't want to hear that and will assume the worst about my intelligence. Cue the laughing emojis. I don't care.

Remote areas /99.9 % of the country ( land shortages though), where forestry and forst managment occurs where they gave permits to strip all trees incl about 20% which are natural fire breaks that were never replaced and still not.

Part of the colonial British legacy of strip mining every foreign domain haha

As a low price commodity heavily reliant on tax payer subsidies and cash gifts to keep local prices propped up ridiculously high is all somewhat close to varios small towns and logistics

Big business to fight fire any one with 40 yr old choppers and clapped out pilots can bank huge dollars so much that the old wrecks stay around for heliski....as if Id pay $3K day to step foot in 40 year old chopper LOL....most dont know better

 

[Owl]

Well, if you want to see "cycles" look at the studies on the Vostok ice core samples for the last 800,000 years... not 100,000 years, not 450,000 years, but 800,000 years. The earth goes in cycles, and spikes about every 100,000 years.

If you want to read how the native Americans used to manage the forests (better than we obviously have done) get the book "Tending The Wild" by Kat Anderson. Hint -- they did burns and didn't worry a lot about the spotted owls (who figured things out themselves)... and one of the reasons the great minds of today didn't manage the forests very well at all. Let the brush build up, add a little lightening, and poof!

And finally... you put a lot of houses in forests, and you will eventually get a bunch of them burned down. That is what happens. It isn't that hard to figure out.

And after all... one of the theories about the word "California" is that it was derived from phrases that meant "hot furnace"... so what do you expect? That is where we live.

Low humidity, little rain 6-9 months of the year, and forest mismanagement!

(Bringing it back around though... I'm sure those new tires will fix everything!)

 

[EasternSierra]

Well, if you want to see "cycles" look at the studies on the Vostok ice core samples for the last 800,000 years... not 100,000 years, not 450,000 years, but 800,000 years. The earth goes in cycles, and spikes about every 100,000 years.

If you want to read how the native Americans used to manage the forests (better than we obviously have done) get the book "Tending The Wild" by Kat Anderson. Hint -- they did burns and didn't worry a lot about the spotted owls (who figured things out themselves)... and one of the reasons the great minds of today didn't manage the forests very well at all. Let the brush build up, add a little lightening, and poof!

And finally... you put a lot of houses in forests, and you will eventually get a bunch of them burned down. That is what happens. It isn't that hard to figure out.

And after all... one of the theories about the word "California" is that it was derived from phrases that meant "hot furnace"... so what do you expect? That is where we live.

Low humidity, little rain 6-9 months of the year, and forest mismanagement!

(Bringing it back around though... I'm sure those new tires will fix everything!)

Speaking of cycles, those Milankovich cycles should be leading to a gradual cooling over the next few thousands of years, not sudden warming in 50 years.

The spotted owl (and other old-growth forest species) got messed up because too many chunks of old-growth forest got highly fragmented by industrial forestry over tens of millions of acres of landscape. Indigenous burning didn't have that effect. They did maintain limited open areas in forests in some areas, as well as open oak woodlands in the Willamette Valley and elsewhere.

Yes, the Indians were doing a much better job at forest management than the Yale-educated foresters sent out west in the 20th century. Those had been indoctrinated in German forestry and its belief that fire in forests is always bad. That was a huge debate in the Forest Service back in the 1920s, with the anti-fire forces winning out in the end. Add in all the houses in the woods since then, and here we are today.

 

[Owl]

Well... if you watch "George Carlin On The Environment"... that pretty much says it all for me.

George had it right.

If you haven't seen it... please do.

 

[ducksface]

I'd like to worry about ice age stuff and Indians 300 years ago, but we have a slight problem of others people's cows knocking down fences in our neighborhood.
When I get my house in order, then my neighborhood, I'll look into that indian/forest thing I have no control over, nor understand beyond some blurb I heard/read.

I need to be bothered locally.

 

[T800]

Well... if you watch "George Carlin On The Environment"... that pretty much says it all for me.

George had it right.

If you haven't seen it... please do.

Love Carlin! Went to a live show once.

 

[EasternSierra]

Well... if you watch "George Carlin On The Environment"... that pretty much says it all for me.

George had it right.

If you haven't seen it... please do.

George was truly a great and I miss him, but he was really, really over his head on that particular one. Profound scientific ignorance masquerading as common sense.

Let me give an analogy. Would you trust some rando on YouTube for reliable info on wrenching your Bronco, just because he had an entertaining patter as he prattled his nonsense?

 

[Brian_B]

Let me give an analogy. Would you trust some rando on YouTube for reliable info on wrenching your Bronco, just because he had an entertaining patter as he prattled his nonsense?

Seems to be working out just fine for all those Gen-Z’ers

 

[ducksface]

When you all reference a long dead comedian as a voice of authority or if you're going to try to combat how you used him as an authority yet you used him as a source nonetheless,
And you all don't know that you're all already HEAVILY regulated on what tire compounds you can run because of DOT and you KNOW 4x4 life as a hobby will surely end due to some new law you feel you could not possibly adapt to...yet you've adapted to thousands of regulations you don't have an inkling of a clue about...

Historical hysteria:
Catalytic Converters were going to end the world according to 1975 blurb folk
Saftey bumpers were going to end the world according to 1973 folk.
mandatory shoulder seat belts were going to kill thousands of people according to 1968 folk.
Safety rims were an outrage according to 1953 folk.(this why beadlocks are generally not allowed).
Laminated windshields are a death trap according to 1923 folk.

Blurb folk.

 

[Brian_B]

Historical hysteria:

So it’s ok to keep throwing straws on the camel’s back? Because we have previous regulation it’s cool to just keep adding more. Gotchya

Carlin appeals because at some point you would hope Humanity would just start to rely on common sense, and not have to dictate to everyone that coffee is indeed hot and can burn you, the smoking cigarettes is not a healthy thing, and that driving a motorcycle without a helmet may be dangerous.

 

[userdude]

mandatory shoulder seat belts were going to kill thousands of people according to 1968 folk.

I've known several guys (always... guys) that refused to wear seatbelts or would put the shoulder behind them. Because, of course, "the man". Nevermind it wasn't the "gov't man" that got that done, it was the "insurance man". One old friend from college told me it was cuz a friend of a friend of a friend knew a guy whose mom lost a boob in a car accident, sheared it right off! "You'd rather go through the windshield or hit the steering wheel than deal with a burn on your chest?" "Ima die Ima die!" No shit.

 

[ducksface]

So it’s ok to keep throwing straws on the camel’s back? Because we have previous regulation it’s cool to just keep adding more. Gotchya

Some people just have to be kept from themselves.
What prior regulations, based on an education about them, would you dismiss;
And why¿
Really why.

Not want, just reasoned and commendable thought based on facts, not comedic routine of the past.

 

[Brian_B]

Some people just have to be kept from themselves

And that right there is the crux of it

I think Darwin can figure it out better than any regulation.

I prefer to be able to make decisions, be they good or bad.

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