I'm assuming I'm like lots of people in seeing the fire damages in Hawaii and feeling really sick to my stomach. The stories coming out of there are awful, and much of the awful comes from state police, local police and military groups supposedly there to help the locals, not to make their lives harder. I wasn't aware of some of the aspects of this as a story about perhaps major land grabbing going on until I watched videos #1 and 2 in this group at 90 Miles From Tyranny - including (in #1) the idea that Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) were being used to destroy things on Maui to drive current property owners out.
I don't want to say it's all just nonsense because of the record conspiracy theorists have of being right almost 100% of the time through Covid and about the J6 protests. I do want to point out something I've seen that I know is wrong embodied in this Tweet.
While I don't know offhand what the picture on the left is, the one on the
right is a longer-than-typical exposure of a
Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in May of 2018, taken so that the rocket's trail left a light streak across the sky. The illustration comes from Eric Berger at Ars Technica, and while I'm
not very fond of how he's written this piece, he published the picture
on the right and knows it better than any of us. To me, the picture on the left looks like an explosion, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bombing photo from any recent war.
Even I recognized the Falcon 9 picture the moment I saw it. I'll wager that those of you who talk about having worked at Vandy or spent time around there might well recognize the scenery faster than I did. If you look at the very top of the clip, you can see the bottom of the phrase, "Vandenberg, most likely Falcon 9." Whomever @taramspatriot is, she apparently had in front of her what the picture was and chose to use it to imply the rocket launch was a directed energy weapon. Posting for clicks.
Everyone who has used a laser pointer or even seen one in use knows they don't leave visible trails in the air like both images imply, so why should I expect a DEW to leave one? The few pictures I've seen of DEWs have been radio frequency sources that are used for crowd dispersal - those are completely invisible. Of course, anyone who has actually worked on DEWs is welcome to drop observations in the comments. My bottom line is that with the almost ideally bad weather conditions they had, they don't need DEWs to explain things - at least things I know about. A powerline blown down or some other ignition source that would have been trivial in better weather, coupled with the strong winds across the region due to a high pressure system to the north and a low system to the south, and any fire is going to spread, pardon the expression, like wildfire.
A larger look at the SpaceX photo from May of '18. If you know what to look for, this has long exposure written all over it. The line of clouds the rocket goes through as well as the clouds its liftoff created are blurred from motion as are all the swells or waves in ocean. Pictures like this "light streak" are far more common from here in Florida than out at Vandenberg.
If laser beam has sufficiently high power density, it can flash air into a plasma, which emits broad spectrum light so you can see it. Similar phenomenon to a lightning bolt - you're not seeing the electrons, you're seeing light emitted by the air flashed to plasma.
ReplyDeleteThing is, you also heat the air with the laser beam, especially when you make plasma, so the laser beam will self-focus (or defocus) and steer itself randomly, depending on what was just heated or vaporized (e.g. an errant pollen grain a little off center). This is a big reason lots of laser labs, not just the really large ones (NIF, Bella at Berkeley, etc.) send their laser beams through a vacuum pipe. It's also a reason the Airborne Laser was airborne, rather than a ground installation. Apart from longer line of sight it put the laser above most of the atmosphere.
Back in the early '90s, I had an office mate who had worked for one of the contractors that was working on laser weapons, he told me about the random steering caused by heating the air, like trying to point a light through boiling water only it's boiling air.
DeleteThese DEW people are the same idiots who can't understand that the Chapparal in the Southwest also burns at a high temperature especially when stoked by high winds.
ReplyDelete"Oh, there's no tall trees so it must be aliens or energy weapons or HAARP!"
Yeah, like scrub vegetation and tall grasses have never burned and caused massive damage before.
And anyone who's ever been in Hawaii, no matter what island you've been to, can attest that not including hotels and major commercial buildings, building codes are rather lax. And vegetation is everywhere, right up to and into many structures.
Add the huge numbers of urban outdoorsmen (homeless) and the lax attitudes of the homeless and the rampant excessive drug use by the homeless, well, easy wildfire starter right there.
Not to mention the number of arsons tied with the various Green and Climate Change organizations.
Then there's the people who are saying this was a plot by rich people because you can see that the rich people's houses survived. No, the rich people's houses survived because they have their houses in the middle of big cleared spaces, you know, no fuels lying around, and their houses are built to or exceed building codes and usually because the places are very expensive there is attention to things like fire safety.
Simplest answer is usually the answer. People in Hawaii are stupid and don't pay attention to little details like building codes and fire safety codes. There, solved it in less than 10 minutes.
Nailed it on all counts, Beans. Anything BUT "Climate Change", which the Libtards are trotting out before the embers are even cooled.
DeleteBeans is correct about Chapparals burning fiercely, I've seen smaller version in the Yakima Valley during ill advised "controlled burns" and some of my older fence posts can attest to that.
ReplyDeleteHanlon's razor is a saying that reads:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
However, it is a sad commentary that developers that had been trying to buy out these folks are busy before the ashes cooled trying to buy at pennies for the dollar rates.
The AAR I've read shows like the California fires that poor state controlled electric poles were the suspected source of the several ignition points noted. And the loss of electricity trying to resolve the situation eliminated the water pumping for the firefighters' efforts.
That along with the near total failure of the Emergency System to even give an emergency alarm before the power went down insured many would never know until the flames arrived that they were in danger.
Terrain didn't help given the only two ways out were coastal roads quickly overrun by fire.
A bad situation aided by stupidity and aggravated by real estate developers eager to grab prime land on the cheap.
My standard modifier to Hanlon's razor is that malice and stupidity are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to be both.
DeleteIt is interesting that they chose the same acronym as that previously used for the DEW line during the Cold War!
ReplyDeleteNow you are in my wheelhouse. Having spent several decades putting out fires of all sorts, I have a bit of experience here. Hawaii was just shown a lesson that Florida learned about 25 years ago. Firefighters call the sort of fire that Hawaii just had "wildland urban interface fires." We used to put out every brush fire, because that is what firefighters do.
ReplyDeleteIt turned out that this was a bad idea. As dead vegetation piles up, its fire behavior is dictated by how dry it is. As humidity drops, this dead vegetation becomes more likely to burn. If this debris burns off, the fires stay small. By putting the fires out, the debris piles up until the fuel load becomes heavy. If conditions are perfect, these fires can become unmanageable. That's what happened in Florida in 1998. We had been fighting fires for so long that when the winds and humidity were just right, there was no way to put out the fires.
It looks like the same happened in Maui. A downed powerline from the 45-70 mile per hour winds they had that day provided the ignition source. The flames were fanned by those same winds, and the heavy fuel load from years of fighting those fires completed the perfect conditions for a fire storm.
A fire under those conditions will advance faster than you can run.
Why did the expensive homes survive? Well irrigated, manicured lawns create a defensible space that contains nothing for fuel but living plants with high moisture content. Those don't burn well.
Couple that with the fact that construction in Hawaii is so expensive that many people live in houses built 70 years or more ago, and those houses haven't been repaired or updated in decades. My wife lived there for two years. The house she lived in looked like a shack, despite the fact that it is "worth" a million dollars.
Nice to agree about real world issues. I've fought brushfires assisting the professionals.
DeleteControlled burns are needed to prevent the massive uncontrolled one.
Thanks, Divemedic. Excellent background info.
DeleteI've heard that the geography of the island leaves natural wind blocks and channels the wind in different places. Where the property was located downwind of those channels played a part in what burned.
I would add that the fire danger index for the day was a 76, because humidity was low, it was sunny, it had been weeks since there was any rain, and winds were high. That is a perfect condition for a fast moving wildfire.
ReplyDeleteExplain how there is a book on Maui fires and climate change one day later? Explain why the guv has rushed in to say we are going to buy all this land, no need to ask? No, i'll remain in the camp of "conspiracy theorists" until the very first one is found wanting- hasn't happened yet. Kennedy? 9/11? Libya? Iraq? Covid? Da vaxx? Weather modifcation? Unelected WEF planning all manners of dystopian BS like bug eating? Yada yada. No thanks I will attribute to malice all i like until such time as that is NOT the prevailing mode, everywhere every time.
ReplyDeleteYeah I'll
Oh and this little tidbit- blocking people from leaving Lahaina. Sure that happens all the time nothing to see here folks move along.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/unhealthytruth/status/1691958123446042781
This is the kind of stuff I was referring to in my second sentence in the post. The stories coming out of there are awful, and much of the awful comes from state police, local police and military groups supposedly there to help the locals, not to make their lives harder.
DeleteThis looks similar to the Marshall fire in Colorado, fuel and high wind. The critical difference was timely evacuation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Fire
ReplyDeleteThe one I loved was the comment from the idiot that pointed out the big circular rings of fire and said "This is proof! How can you get circles of fire except with a laser weapon?"
ReplyDeleteI wanted to reach through the screen and throttle him. This is exactly what any fire does as it burns outward through equally-flammable fuel. There's even an entire branch of mathematics based on it!
We have aliens flying around watching us very carefully, because we are a dangerously stupid species and there's no telling what we'd do if we discovered how to get between stars...
There was a meme some time ago about a space alien reporting that the natives were trying to change the weather by eating bugs, so they were nowhere near ready for contact.
DeleteI like the one about the aliens making sure the doors on their UFO are locked whenever they fly by Earth.
DeleteIt would be much easier to believe that somebodies used the conditions to start some development renewal fires. The initial reaction by the powers that be are either galloping incompetence and/or racketeering. In today's climate both are believable.
ReplyDeleteI'll take Galloping Incompetence for a thousand, Alex...
DeleteWould certain people deliberately start such fires to serve their agenda? Without a doubt. But this "space laser" nonsense is sheer insanity. Why go to all that effort requiring a LOT of people to do the job...some of whom might talk. All you need is one evil person and a box of matches. But considering all the dead vegetation, the high winds and the precarious condition of the power lines and poles it's a virtual certainty this fire was caused by crappy infrastructure and dangerous winds. Just like the Camp Fire in 2018. But low IQ people, of which we have no shortage, prefer to embrace easily believed BS rather than employ critical thinking.
ReplyDeleteThe science of forest and wildfires is well established, as that of fire in general. The Fire Trangle is easy to understand. The tree huggers and morons dictated an end to long established practices of controlled burns and eliminating buildups of debree and underbrush. This is the latest result. Of course the Communists rant “its climate change”. No. Its stupid humans.
ReplyDeleteLong before the controlled burn nonsense, there was the multiple use concept of logging, grazing, and making profitable use of the land. Locking it up as virtual wilderness has caused more and growing more deadly wildfires.
DeleteMaybe the land-speculating arsonists can't afford a space-based laser, but can afford a cigarette lighter and a can of diesel? Look over here at the space lasers, not over there at who is making a huge profit from buying the distressed properties.
ReplyDelete30+ year fire guy here. I concur with the previous comments regarding wildland urban interface (WUI) and prescribed fires. The terrain and code observations also match my experience and observations.
ReplyDeleteWhat has me concerned is that the death toll is 100ish as of this writing, and in the firefighting trade news, officials have remarked that they hadn't at that point begun to search the buildings. I fear the worst. The death toll may be higher than today's number by many multiples.
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I'm sure it's unspoken among the others here with experience. 1000 wouldn't be that surprising. From what I've heard about people running to the beach and then being driven into the water by windblown fire, I can imagine some number that will be listed as missing persons.
Delete