As I write, people and environments surrounding my home are in crisis. In the recent past, wildfires purged and tore through much of the area, decimating lives, killing people and animals. This is not a new occurrence to Southern California. In fact, our climate is classified as a
Mediterranean climate, which is a type of dry subtropical climate, characterized by seasonal changes in rainfall—with a dry summer and a winter rainy season—but relatively modest transitions in temperature.
All that is to say that in L.A., it’s warm and dry. Not only that, but many plants found throughout the region are pyrophile, which means they actually need fire in order to propagate.
Fire is a natural part of living in and around Los Angeles. Responsible land owners and cities take precautions to plant fire and drought resistant plants to help keep people and animals as safe as possible.
Fire can be devastating; what comes next can be worse.
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Fire in and around Los Angeles county historically occurs in the parched heat of the summer or in the cold and dry early winter, just prior to the rainy season. It’s after these fires, the cold dry winter fires, that can cause the most damage over all. Understand that during a wildfire around Los Angeles, the hillsides are stripped of all the ground cover, bushes and trees whose roots hold the soil in place. Then, instead of fairly solid hillsides you have loose, crumbly topsoil that is not very deep. Then the rains come. What happens next to the families who live in areas that have recently been decimated by fire is truly tragic. Because then the hillsides are liable to come rushing down, flooding their homes and killing more.
When I learned earlier this week that LOS ANGELES had recently seeded our skies in order to increase rainfall during a drought all I could think was how could they?!?
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Here are the facts: In January to February of 2016, the Los Angeles county Board of Supervisors voted to go ahead with cloud seeding in hopes to create more rainfall, ostensibly to increase the water table and help Los Angeles survive the drought. By March, mudslides were wrecking havoc in and around L.A. and the question that begs to be asked is could the mudslides have been avoided with a natural amount of rainfall?
Is it possible that mother nature in all her wisdom may have given Los Angeles only the amount of rain she could handle? The truth is we will never know because we allowed our government to change the amount of precipitation we received. Nature is nature and therefore challenging and difficult to predict; my heart goes out to people negatively affected by these ‘natural disasters’. However, I do not feel that attempting to force nature to bow to our desires is the answer.
When I wonder what exactly is being sprayed over our heads on a daily basis; when I attempt to imagine how governments can possibly weaponize the weather to use against unforeseen enemies, cloud seeding feels like a ‘light' issue. In actuality, cloud seeding rests comfortably at the core of Geoengineering. It’s the most ‘acceptable’ kind of Geoengineering and therefore the most dangerous.
Don't let complacency take the place of truth
As always, keep questioning, keep looking up, keep Steeming!