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The libbruls are burning down Los Angeles, it seems.
…mismanages forests and brush, and fires firefighters for refusing an experimental vaccine?”
President Musk steps right up.
Aren’t they just hilarious?
Tip Jar
The libbruls are burning down Los Angeles, it seems.
…mismanages forests and brush, and fires firefighters for refusing an experimental vaccine?”
President Musk steps right up.
Aren’t they just hilarious?
Before it was inundated with people, it didn’t matter if the L.A. basin burned to the ground (and still doesn’t as far as I care), but with more people (always with a percentage of stupid ones) comes the need for more preventative measures. It’s not the conservationists, it’s the greedy capitalists and their not caring one bit about wise management. I won’t say either one is mostly responsible, because the calculus of that is unknown. I’s mostly a political issue at this point.
Musk talks of a “root cause.” Here it is: combustible things burn. It doesn’t follow that climate change has no effect, but the mighty dipshit has spoken. The guy who’s sci fi fantasies spew thousands of tons of burnt rocket fuel into the atmosphere regularly. Of course the idiot climate deniers are blaming the libtards — particularly the ones who’s vanity projects are partly to blame. Did we think he would remain silent? HAHAHAHAHA
The listicle from Libs of TikTok has several legit complaints on it, things that absolutely could have helped alleviate or even prevent some of the fires now raging. Pity there hasn’t been enough political will to increase taxes and government regulation to pay for and require all those changes.
Since climate change matters and since the science of climate change is important:
Whenever there is a cold snap or a snow storm some will inevitably quip “so much for global warming” and use one weather event as an excuse to ignore the settled opinion about climate change. They are very wrong to do so.
It is equally wrong to point to a drought event, a drought-caused fire, or indeed a hurricane, and suggest that it is due to climate change, or even to suggest that climate change has made those events much more likely. We don’t know enough to know that. After all, California is a semi-desert and prolonged droughts are normal for California (Bristlecone pines show this over eons).
Now, climate models do suggest that the likelihood of a severe Californian drought should have increased, owing to AGW, but only by about 30 percent or so. And this is a really hard thing to model. At this level of prediction, such models are not really verified by data. The model uncertainties are about at the same level as the predicted effects.
Such models also predict that hurricane frequency and intensity should be increasing (global warming => more energy in the system). The problem is that the data don’t show this. So that means that there is a lot that we don’t understand about the formation of hurricanes (which is not a surprise, we know that we don’t know).
So is climate change increasing drought likelihood in California? Well, maybe, but we really don’t know that. We don’t have a good-enough record of data to answer that directly, and we need to bear in mind the limitations of the models; it is wrong to overclaim.
Note that uncertainties in whether climate change is increasing drought likelihood in California is a very different matter from whether climate change is happening globally (that is settled, yes it is). That’s because it is way easier to model the global response to things like CO2 and the global climate as a whole than it is to then reliably predict local fluctuations in one small part of the system (such as Californian droughts).
As I said, understanding the science of climate change does matter and it’s important to avoid overclaiming (and hence: “this drought is caused by climate change” is as dubious as “this cold snap refutes global warming”).
And by the way, since the post mentions everyone’s favourite villain de jour, Musk is a science afficionado and is well read in many areas of science, and likely knows all of the above, which you can factor in to interpreting his tweets. And he has explicitly stated that climate change is real.
He does know that; it’s what Tesla is for… He’s just doing that because the MAGA crowd thinks climate change is funny and he wants to fit in. I’m honestly not sure if that’s worse or not.
The rest of it is more a case of things are complicated. It sure would be nice if during an ongoing disaster people wouldn’t just go around on social media saying “This is obviously caused by my pet issue and it’s all those bad people’s fault.” Rather than dealing with what’s on our screens it’s more fun to pass the popcorn and screech at our screens… are we not entertained.
We know a lot of the factors involved (midwinter drought whose likeliness is increased by climate change, high winds, overforrested Mediterranean climate, high winds, tree to building proximity, etc), but presumably we’ll get some investigations later.
Adding on to that is that certain kinds of fire planes are shared with Australia and Canada and it’s Australia’s fire season.
Well Coel, his eleven word post on X doesn’t lead me to think he’s very well read (in science or anything else) or maybe it’s a comprehension problem)) at all. Has he explicitly stated that climate change is real? Then why wouldn’t he think that climate change is a factor in the intensity of the fires, and instead make claims about climate change not being a “root cause” only to point fingers at political opponents? He could have not even weighed in at all on the subject, but he thinks everyone needs to hear his opinion on everything. I personally couldn’t give a shit less if he never said anything in public again, but here we are. He shows his ignorance constantly. Your post is far more erudite than anything I have ever seen Musk say. You need to stop defending his stupid ass.
The back-and-forth on climate change/anthropogenic global warming is kind of funny: It misses the point, entirely. AGW is just one symptom of the real problem that has caused places like the LA basin to become death traps:
Ecological overshoot.
And you won’t ever ever ever hear anyone talking about that.
I kind of want to guest post Coel’s comment but I don’t want to look like a suckup.
I think Coel has an excellent post, except for the Musk admiration, obviously. When it’s good it’s good.
Except for ecologists. And no one listens to us. After all, we’re experts, so we must be part of the Deep State and never to be trusted.
Thanks for saying this, Mike B. I’ve been saying it for years – global warming is the FEVER that diagnoses an underlying DISEASE. But like fever in a bacterial illness, global warming has the potential to destroy us.
[…] a comment by Coel on Brought to you […]
twiliter – well, he said “By the way” at the start of the final para so I took the liberty of omitting it. A compromise.
Ecological Overshoot is right, and me being from the Central Valley, the efforts to pump water from NoCal to the L.A. basin have been extremely destructive to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area. It’s not likely it will ever get better, the population of the L.A. basin is ever increasing. The California Aqueduct has caused much damage to the ecology in the Central Valley, but those VIP’s in SoCal don’t care. It’s band-aid after band-aid until the whole system collapses. It’s only a matter of time. The Central Valley of California is the most fertile and productive farmland in the world, but if you suck all the water out of it to hydrate the L.A. basin, then there will eventually be significant consequences.
Ophelia @11 I trust your judgement, always.
ikn–Very impressed I am! I’ve heard you talk about drama, so I thought you were an English prof lol
One of my favorite books is Catton’s seminal work. And I love listening to Wm Rees, Nate Hagen, et al. It’s a hugely interesting subject to me.
These fires did not strike me as anything unusual, because when I look around me all I see is summer weather and summer is fire season. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that I am in one hemisphere and USA is not in it; this is the northern hemisphere’s winter.
Mike B, I was English…but before I had my MFA in writing, I got my Ph.D. in Environmental Science. I combine the two all the time.
twiliter, the Central Valley is the area of the country that generated the saying we in water science have…water always flows downhill…except when it flows uphill toward money.
@twiliter:
You’re right, one eleven-word tweet doesn’t suggest that. To properly understand him you need to be aware of the wider context of all his other tweets and what he’s said in interviews and what people who know him have said. This is especially so since he’s perhaps the most unusual personality in a prominent role, very much out of the normal, and especially since his tweets are usually very terse.
I can quite understand if people have zero interest in making that effort to understand him. This is one of the reasons that he, shall we say, divides opinion.
And yes, in those tweets about Californian fires he is indeed sticking it to the Democrats. He didn’t used to be political (being a sort of default Democrat, up to voting for Biden in 2020), but from the buying of Twitter and the fallout from that and subsequent events he’s become politicised and radicalised. And having a rather obsessive personality, he doesn’t do things by halves.
Jessie Watters is blaming Native Americans; Charlie Kirk is blaming lesbians and an alleged lack of white firefighters; Laura Ingraham is blaming ‘DEI hires’, and so is Musk: Here is a tweet if his on X, supporting another tweet :
“DEI means people DIE”
I am sorry, Coel, since I know you are fond of the man, but I do not think I need to read “all his other tweets” in order to understand that tweet — the fact that the person in charge of the firefighting is a woman and a lesbian, and the fact that it is in direct response to a tweet in connexion with the fires that attacks ‘DEI hires’, whether mediocre or not, provides context enough.
Such irresponsible tweets, which are very many, are strongly connected with the fact that, as you say, he ‘divides opinion’, which is to put it so mildly as to make his behaviour sound innocuous. I don’t think that a ‘rather obsessive personality’ excuses it; or do you think it does – and why?. Should we take that approach to every ‘obsessive personality’ – people who have a rooted hatred of Jews, or black people, or anyone from elsewhere – Haiti, say? There are plenty of people who are fairly harmless who have a ‘rather obsessive personality’, Musk is in a position where he can do immense harm, and he is setting about it and, as you say, not doing it ‘by halves’.
Also, Coel, if we ‘need to be aware of the wider context of all his other tweets and what he’s said in interviews and what people who know him have said’, why were you so anxious to deny any context in connexion with Musk’s tweet about Caesarian sections and big brains – given the fact of Musk’s obsessive interest in birth-rates among, it seems, white people, and IQ?
According to Mother Jones (which I see no reason to doubt):
“Big Tech successors like Musk and PayPal billionaire-turned-arms dealer Peter Thiel have overtly promoted fraudulent race science, with Musk amplifying users on X who argue that people of European descent are biologically superior. In response to another user’s deleted post suggesting that students at historically Black institutions have lower IQs, Musk posted, “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE”—diversity, equity, and inclusion, misspelled.”
Sorry, one more. Do you think ’sticking it to the Democrats’ is all right when it involves blatant lies and misrepresentations, not to mention misogyny and racism, and makes it difficult for the responders to natural disasters; difficult, too, for legal immigrants like those Haitians in Springfield? Or doesn’t it matter, so long as it is Democrats who are on the receiving end?
Im sorry to bother you with all these questions, but, in all honesty, your position does not seem to me to be very coherent.
That’s such an odd way to look at it. I have no particular interest in “properly understanding” Elon Musk. I pay attention to him only because he’s acquired so much power to make such a god damn mess, and because he’s energetically putting that power to use.
Calling him “the most unusual personality in a prominent role” carefully understates the issues. He’s not anointed by god to this “prominent role”; he bought it. He bought it and he’s using it to do hugely destructive things. I don’t care about him as a person, or his career, or his inner depths; I care only about his serial power grabs and the damage they’re doing.
Given the tendency of us Yanks to forget that the rest of the world exists, we can’t complain. Turnabout is fair play and all.
I understand from Coel here that Musk is very well informed about climate change and presumably other matters but too idle to put these into, say, a blog post, or an article – we have to pore over his utterances as if we were oracles reading the ambiguous sayings of a sibyl or from Delphi. If he is too lazy to put these insights into a coherent form (which many MSM media outlets would run), couldn’t he get ChatGPT or something similar to do that? If he prefers an earlier technology, he could hire any number of journalists and writers.
Musk gets attention because he owns a huge media outlet, otherwise he would sound like any other half-baked twitter troll. His power comes from his wealth and control of various technologies eg Starlink.
Here’s an entertaining article comparing Musk to Kaiser Wilhelm II – another powerful inheritor who misjudged his own judgement and constantly made stupid and dangerous remarks.
https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/what-elon-musk-and-kaiser-wilhelm
On a broader view this is another glimpse at how social media is influencing our culture and politics – for the better (as on this site) and for the worse (as with Musk).
Would that be the LAFD assistant chief? The one who thinks it more important for firemen to look like the communities they serve than to be able to carry victims out of burning buildings?
This one?
That looks rather like an attitude that would increase the likelihood of death, yes.
Perhaps you might address this as well, Nullius:
“In response to another user’s deleted post suggesting that students at historically Black institutions have lower IQs, Musk posted, “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE”—diversity, equity, and inclusion, misspelled.”
Could you find the actual tweets? I don’t have a functional X account, so I can’t search and can’t view threads or replies. My first impulse to to doubt the characterization of the interaction. I mean, I’ve certainly said something similar with respect to efforts at “decolonization of the mathematics curriculum” that, several years ago, got a vast swath of blue check-marks seriously advancing the position that 2+2=4 is racist, sexist, and transphobic.
I do not have an X account, functional or otherwise, either; and I have no intention of opening one. If you wish to track down the quotation, simply type it into Google and press the right button. It is very simple. You will find a number of references to Musk’s tweet.
I do not know what the ‘decolonisation of the mathematics curriculum’ and 2+2 not equalling 4 have to do with the matter.
Here’s the url for the tweet:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1744821656990675184
Thank you very much, Ophelia.
Happy to help!
Don’t be an amadán. Finding the original tweet singular is trivial. It’s the original tweets plural that’s more annoying, and that’s what is required, because context matters to your question as asked. But sure, I’ll play along and explain the singular tweet.
Musk’s tweet on its own is inoffensive, as it’s plainly obvious that airplanes fly on physics rather than happy thoughts. Hiring engineers based on their demographic “identities” rather than their mastery of applied physics necessarily comes at the cost of fewer “9s of certainty”, and each lost 9 is an increase in chance of fatal catastrophe. What Musk is saying is simply that it will take seeing the horrible consequences of the practice toplay out in reality for people to really understand—to grok—the problem.
That’s the straightforward interpretation of the tweet on its own.
And it’s exactly the same thing with efforts to undermine math education with decolonization nonsense. It requires math to do the physics for planes and trains and automobiles. Math makes every field of hard science possible. Kids need to learn correct math, not politically correct math. Politically correct math is like politically correct biology, the consequences of which we saw in Russia with Trofim Lysenko and now with gender “medicine”. It took millions of deaths for Lysenko’s ideas to be rejected, and it’s taken the horrific mutilation of thousands of children for gender ideology to lose even a fraction of its status on the Left. How great will the tragedy have to grow before its horror simply cannot be denied or ignored?
Humans often have to learn by doing things ourselves. We have to fuck around before we find out by experiencing the real results of our choices. This is fine when it’s a kid learning not to pick up a hot pan without a potholder. It’s not when it’s a fan of deregulation getting rid of the FDA—or an aerospace company sacrificing competence at the altar of ideology.