Here we go again.

The Southern part of California and much of the rest of the land west of the Rockies is desert -- either technically or might as well be (in other words, it comes just over said thresholds on official precipitation amounts.)  Add to this that the weather pattern in that part of the nation often produces wild-eyed winds (the gradient between the highlands and lower land, along with the ocean that is right there providing a "sink" for it) along with terrain that creates "funnel" effects multiplying windspeeds and its obvious that if anything gets lit during those high-wind periods you got problems.

As you might expect if you look around at the vegetation that does grow there you'll find fire-adapted things.  Plants that have fire-activated seed, for example.  Nature finds a way, in short, and over millions of years has done exactly that.

Then we come in, we build things in places we believe are beautiful, and are unhappy when that which has been going on for millions of years occurs again.  We claim its unfair, that something is "changing" (often at human fault) and similar.

Well, no.  We're simply in the way and it is we who have to adapt because nature will not.

The same thing is true for living along a coastline subject to hurricanes.  The hurricanes have always come.  Yes, its beautiful 99% of the time.  The other 1% of the time Mother Nature is very angry and throws a 10 or 20' high wall of water and waves driven by 120kt wind at you.  Ditto living in mountain valleys; 99% of the time its nice, the other 1% of the time snow melts more-rapidly than expected or a storm gets blown into the mountain face, the air is forced upward, it cools as that occurs (go hike in the Smokies or anywhere else and note the 10-15 degree difference -- similarly at the Grand Canyon except its even more-pronounced there) and cool air holds less moisture than warm air.  The result is torrential rain that then flows down said mountain, blowing that nice river out of its banks and triggering landslides that cannot be outrun -- you are either not there when it comes or you will be buried by it.  If you look at the topography you can see the scars where its happened before -- and will happen again.

Its just that nobody knows exactly when.

We do add to the risk of bad outcomes in some cases; if there are trees with a fall-line that reaches a powerline then high winds can and will cause the tree to fall and if it does it will hit the power line.  The benign outcome is you lose power.  The malignant one is that this comes during a windstorm when its dry rather than a hurricane or serious thunderstorm (when its very wet) and thus starts a wind-driven fire which, until the wind dies down, can be nearly-impossible to extinguish so long as there is available fuel in the path.  By the way if the wind is howling "in the path" means anything that can burn within a mile as embers will be blown that far -- or further!

We do have defensive acts we can take against some of this risk.  If you live where hurricane winds are likely you can build to code levels that can withstand the wind.  If you're where you can get surged you can elevate the structure on stilts or make the lower level(s) sacrificial with the walls designed to blow out when challenged in this way, and the living portion of the building and systems up above.  If you live where wind-driven fires can occur you can maintain a significant fuel-free zone, clad your structure in things that won't burn and not have openings into the attic and similar where blown embers can get inside (and light the attic on fire), along with putting in a significant-size cistern, run some pipe and have a fuel-powered pump for suppression while keeping the structure and roof wet (note that if you have a pool that's a pretty-large cistern, isn't it?)  As long as you can put the embers out faster than they can light your house on fire and keep doing it until the fire passes you win although the smoke damage may still be quite extreme, especially if the building is poorly-sealed.  In earthquake-prone areas you can build to seismic codes.  We can insist that power companies not allow power lines within the fall line of trees, and put in place both requirements to remove or trim said trees that encroach and pass laws that prevent private or public landowners from blocking that pruning or removal. We can remove available fuel which dramatically reduces wildfire intensity and propagation, either through control burns or simply removing it if you're in an area where burning it during periods when its safe won't work.

In addition as with Maui the LA area has a literally inexhaustible source of water suitable for fighting wildfires: The ocean!  Of course this is non-potable and not suitable for anything else, but for fire suppression -- well?  Stick fuel-powered pump-houses down near the water with fire mains of HDPE running to strategic points and... done.  But nobody did any of this, right?

None of these are proof against a bad outcome, of course, but all do help and might save property.  However, all do damage to the allure many seek; sticking your "beach house" on stilts obviously isn't at beach level anymore, maintaining a 100' perimeter of non-combustibles around your house in a dry wind-prone area is some amount of work and that cistern and fuel-operated pump (so it works if the power goes off first) costs money, as does filling it for what might wind up being a "nothing" of a fire season where it goes unused.  Keeping tree fall-lines away from power lines means cutting down or pruning trees on a regular basis proactively or putting the lines underground and that costs money too. Living in mountain valleys where you can see the flat, fertile and nice-appearing land is rather obviously there because it did flood in the past and the scour marks from previous slides are clear on the mountain when you look -- and there is no actual defense in either of those cases that matters; you're not going to stop a landslide no matter what sort of defensive engineering you apply.  Damming rivers and tributaries can provide serious defense against valley flooding if you let the agencies who propose it do so, which residents of Asheville and Buncombe and surrounding counties infamously did not in the 1960s and 70s when TVA showed up with allocated funds to do so even after the disastrous floods of 1916 and 1940 along with several lesser events.

At the end of the day life is about balancing risks, rewards and costs.  There are plenty of people around here who have built "a cabin in the woods" on or near a ridgeline.  A significant "no combustible material" setback and careful selection of materials for the exterior and sealing possible means of ember intrusion, along with a nice big fat cistern tank and fuel-driven pump and controls to keep the building and immediate surrounding area wet in the event of a fire all damage the ambience folks seek (never mind being a bit expensive) and thus it is usually not done.  That's a choice, but if a fire gets going during a dry period coming up the face of the ridge your house is sitting on there's nothing you're going to be able to do at that point except run and you better do the running before your exit paths get cut off.

There's a lot of yelling going on in WNC right now, particularly around Asheville, on flood map revisions.  They always happen after flood and other serious storm events; post Ivan they certainly did around where I lived in Florida (I rode that one out at the house and it was bad -- however my efforts were successful.)  But the federal government has no control over whether you can rebuild -- that's under State, County and local control.  What FEMA and thus NFIP do have control over is whether you can obtain government-sponsored flood insurance and, if so, at what price depending on what you do when you rebuild.  We should remember that the entire River Arts district in Asheville was so reasonable in cost for people to come in and "redevelop" not that long ago specifically because the prior users of that land, which were industrial, left after the previous flooding destroyed their investments.  Everyone who built there knew this so what's the problem -- you made a decision having either known or you could have trivially determined said history and yet people built there anyway!

The same is true out in Southern California.  Fires aren't new there and the Santa Ana winds are an annual phenomena that have occurred long before the California Gold Rush brought a large influx of humans.  No, humans are not making it worse but we are putting more and more "stuff" of ever-increasing value in the way that can be destroyed.  Couple high wind with dry conditions, given that part of the country is borderline desert, and you've got a high-risk environment with vegetation which reflects that and in some cases actually requires fire to propagate!  Add to that state government policies that do not clear brush (on purpose!) and in other areas do not conduct control burns during the part of the year when high winds do not occur and you've got the natural environment and its oscillations -- including much larger fires simply because there's more fuel available and you refused to reduce said fuel load despite having the opportunity to do so in advance.  Now add deliberate refusal to build out fire-suppression infrastructure (in this case California residents approved a bond issue many years ago to do exactly that but it wasn't done!) and you have all the ingredients for what is now occurring.  If you want to know why insurance companies left they asked for rates that reflected this deliberate neglect and foolish set of decisions by said government agencies and, when you get down to it, the people who live there and kept voting those government agents into office.  The firms had already taken large fire losses as a result and thus they had no evidence any of that would change.  The rate adjustments were refused and thus their only sane option was to withdraw offering coverage and leave.

It sucks for those caught in the middle of it, of course, but as someone who lived in a hurricane zone on the water for 20 years they as I knew the risk, they and I all selected our precise piece of property to own and live in with our own evaluation of said risk or willful blindness toward it along with the expected rewards from doing so, we engaged in (or not) the mitigations we believed made sense on a cost:risk:reward basis and that, as a free person in a free nation, was and is my and their right to do.

But having done so the consequences were both mine and now theirs as well, whether for good or bad.

We're not going to change the natural world; it is we who, through technology, adapt to it and not the other way around.

The remaining question is whether those impacted will force those who had responsibility for said mitigations, in many cases explicitly funded with tax dollars yet they did not act in accordance with their responsibilities and either did nothing or spent the funds elsewhere, to be held personally responsible for any and all of their malfeasance.

There appears to be plenty of that to go around.

Simply put its all the big businesses that screw people without warning.

Take Vail Resorts.  They had a strike over a $2/hr raise by their ski patrol people at Park City.  It snowed like crazy (excellent) but large parts of the mountain was not open -- because they had no ski patrol and avalanche mitigation.  The result was hour+ long lift lines so you paid $300/day to ski and stood around in line instead of skiing.  Obviously with hour+ lines you got three or four runs for $300 and both the tickets (advance purchased) and accommodations are almost always non-refundable.

There is always risk of natural bad things (e.g. no snow, etc.) but Vail Resorts caused this through their deliberate acts (yes, labor disruption is a choice and yes there are two sides) and yet you're owed, from their perspective, exactly nothing despite it being deliberate and avoidable action that led to the situation and an effectively worthless lift ticket.  We're not talking "force majeure" here (something entirely beyond their control.)

Never mind that if you do business with them you are forced into a litigation forum (no matter where you are or the event that occurs is they decided in advance for their advantage, you're barred from class actions and jury trials in most cases and similar extraordinarily-abusive clauses.

How do they get away with this?  They think they can because they're effectively a monopoly provider in many resort areas in America for skiing -- and not just in America either; they also own Whistler!

Oh by the way you should read Section B clause 1(c) and (f) in particular if you have an EPIC (season pass) which basically means if something like this (or their decision to impose things on you that have no bearing on your fitness to actually ski or board) upon you up to and including effectively destroying the utility of the pass entirely such as is now occurring.

The only way you are entitled to anything is if there's a natural disaster, pandemic, terrorism or war that closes basically everything in a given region.  Then (and only then) there is a convoluted formula that in many cases will screw you out of some of the money anyway and in all cases your related expenses are money down the drain.

They are kind enough to permit a refund if you die (along with a handful of other personal conditions.)

And by the way that refund, if any, is your exclusive remedy.  If they screw you and your accommodations and flight(s) are non-refundable that's too bad; you can't go after them for being the proximate cause of your other loss; so says the release you agreed to.

Incidentally 15 USC Chapter 1 makes quite clear that any combination that leads to an effective restraint of trade, price fixing or similar anti-competitive behavior is a felony offense and the imposition of such terms across a large percentage of the available places to engage in an activity on a "take it or leave it basis", all of which disadvantage the consumer in severe ways along with a pricing history showing insane leaps in price over the space of a couple of decades such as is occurring right now is pretty-decent evidence that said combination under one umbrella is in fact anti-competitive and thus a felony offense.

I do enjoy skiing but if you think I'll book anywhere that such a rather-clear "concentrated entity" controls my capacity to actually do what I paid the money for in advance with these sort of terms governing the transaction you're missing a few cans in your mental sixpack.  Further, there is a point where I will bag my participation entirely and thus deny all ski resorts and areas my money both at the area and in lodging, accommodations and other expenses should this sort of thing spread sufficiently that I am no longer comfortable that I will get what I paid for.

At least when it comes to leisure activities I have that choice; in many other areas of our economy no such choice exists because the activity and spending on it is effectively mandatory.

This is an interesting "movement" on civilian nuclear energy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has taken a historic step by voting to issue construction permits for Kairos Power’s 70-MWth Hermes 2, a “low power” advanced test facility comprising two 35-MWth molten salt reactors. “Following the Commission’s vote, Hermes 2 is now the first electricity-producing Gen IV plant to be approved for construction in the United States,” said Kairos Power.

Their design is not what I've talked about although you'd be forgiven for thinking it is since its a molten salt reactor.  Rather than use the salt as a fuel carrier (and thus be able to easily use thorium as the ultimate fuel, although started on either uranium or plutonium) it instead relies on Triso fuel, which is a ceramic pellet-style fuel that is entirely-conventional in its make-up.  Triso pellets have a fairly-decent set of operational advantages but are actually more-difficult to reprocess than conventional fuel pins (and not by a little either), and thus today its a one-time through fuel which sucks from a perspective of nuclear waste handling.

However, there is a forward path that I do like, which is inherently part of using molten salt as a coolant and operating fluid (to transfer the heat); it runs at very high temperatures compared with water-moderated units, and thus is directly compatible with using process heat for things like, as an example, Fischer-Tropsch in a combined plant that produces both synfuel and electricity.  In addition the higher primary loop temperature improves thermodynamic efficiency by quite a bit and thus enables operating these at reasonable efficiency levels where huge volumes of water are not available.

They're not intending to use primary heat for synfuel or similar purposes in what has been licensed but there's nothing stopping them from doing so down the road, nor would it in any reasonable world require any sort of "new licensing" since using the process heat for that purpose doesn't change any element of the actual reactor section (it just taps off some of the heat that then goes to make the steam that turns the turbines and thus make power.)

So yes, this is a step forward toward an actual sane energy policy.  A small and very-incomplete step, and one that in terms of fuel cycle is actually backward and thus bad, but nonetheless deploying more energy resource and one that can be exploited to resolve foreign requirements for petroleum-based fuels is good, never mind that unlike wind and solar spinning generators, no matter the input energy -- nuclear, coal or hydro -- add flywheel mass to the grid which is an essential element for grid stability.

We'll see how this all turns out and whether, on a cost basis, it ultimately proves up as worthwhile for wide-scale deployment, but this is the sort of innovation that does indeed move the ball forward -- even if it has downsides (as Triso fuel does in the fuel cycle and thus waste department.)

Jimmy Carter made 100, but he didn't get to inauguration day.  His passing was not a surprise and one can't argue when you make triple digits on spins around the glowing orange orb.  Not many people do.

He was much-maligned for the inflationary mess of the 1970s -- and lost to Reagan in 1980 largely as a result.  But the blame wasn't mostly his; Nixon and Ford did that and dumped it on him; he got charged with it although he was unable to end it in time to matter.  Of note he didn't turn around and try to slay either Nixon or Ford for it either, as have recent Presidents when things have dropped in their laps -- he just went to work as best he could.

There was also a bad mission to rescue the US hostages held in Iran, but whether you can reasonably charge that to him is an open question.  Weather is always a possible confounder and it was absolutely a big part of why the mission failed.  Nonetheless, if you're in the left seat and the plane crashes, its deemed your fault (whether you put the water in the fuel tank or not) and thus it was.

His most-impressive foreign policy accomplishment during his term was a peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

More-negatively, however, was his Executive Order that killed civilian nuclear fuel reprocessing in the United States.  He firmly believed that civilians could not safely operate power reactors and that his action would shut down the industry.  Time has proved both of these beliefs wrong in that the industry did not disappear and we did not all glow in the dark, but the mess left in terms of spent fuel, which now has nowhere to go and the only safe place for high-level reaction products is to put it back into a reactor and burn it up means as a direct result of his action we have no other sound answer.  Ronald Reagan rescinded that E/O immediately when he took office but the damage was done; no commercial enterprise would risk being dispossessed of billions of investment building out that capacity again and to this day the government hasn't stepped in to do it in their place.

I've been to Carter's library.  Its curious that there is a decent display commemorating his nuclear service before becoming President but not one mention, at least in the public areas, of that E/O and his reason for it.  I looked expecting to find it, but did not.

No matter how you feel about Carter's Presidency, however, he was fundamentally a decent man.  Unlike most recent Presidents who upon leaving office sought to enrich themselves and maintain their political influence when he left office he went out and built low-income housing for Habitat for Humanity.  Not with money grifted off with this or that -- with a hammer.  He also stayed well-clear of going after other administrations almost to a fault; while I don't think he ever voted for a Republican you never saw him campaigning or trying to slam whoever was in office.  It was exceedingly rare to see him comment on the political issues of the day.

What you did see him do post-Presidency was campaign ceaselessly for peace and human rights.  Negotiating on behalf of other Presidents he obtained the release of political prisoners in several nations including North Korea.  He was a leading element in eliminating a parasitic disease in Africa, identified as spread through unfiltered drinking water.  He never shied away from a poor nation or community, whether here or abroad and was building houses with Habitat for Humanity all the way up to 2019, marking 30 years of service helping to build and repair over 4,000 homes.

One thing you can say about President Carter is that he didn't just profess belief as a Christian -- he lived it, both as a Sunday School teacher and through his personal works, rather than seeking personal aggrandizement and money, and was married to his wife Rosalynn until she passed after 77 years of being together.

A great President perhaps he was or was not, but what President Carter was, and this is without dispute, is an outstanding human being.

Rest in peace Mr. President.