et. al
I wouldn’t mess with her, she contains multitudes!
What does “human drivers of fire” mean?
Well I’m here so I guess I’ll answer.
There are many human drivers of fire, the first and foremost being, well you know, lighting a fire. And boy, do humans light a lot of fires.
Take for example, here is a map of active fires around the globe, right now:
First order human drivers of fire are things we actively or accidentally do to light a fire. Ignition is a fundamental for fire to happen, and humans cause WAY more ignition events than nature does. Things like a cook fire, burning brush or downed debris for management purposes, infrastructure like power lines or fueling stations, car accidents, lit cigarettes being thrown out etc… etc… The timing and frequency of these events directly influence the frequency of fires.
Second order drivers are things like vegetation management, home placing and construction, and other biophysical drivers. For example, introduction of invasive species like bromus tectorum, which burns very readily, represents more fine fuels in the environment. Yadayadayada more fires. Other things around vegetation management would fall into this category, such as the suppression of fire, or the psychical thinning of fuels in forests, or prescribed burns.
Well I’m here so I guess I’ll answer.
Are… are you McCarty et al., TropicalDingdong?
No no no, I’m an et al, just no any of those particular et al. I focus on wildfire risk and have read much on the topic. I’ve read McCarty and many more when it comes to understanding wildfire and wildfire risk. Some of my research focuses on wildfire risk, and spatial features as they relate to wildfire risk, so drivers becomes pretty important when it comes to wildfire risk modeling. I have taken several courses through NASA on the matter even though I don’t focus on drivers directly.
This is the kind of thing I’m working on:
The nodes are features, the edges are weights. In this case I’m just looking at structure:structure risk.
Take for example, here is a map of active fires around the globe, right now:
By “fires” do they mean fores fires? Controlled fires to burn crops, or burn land to clear it for crops? House fires? Bonfires? Campfires? Fires in fireplaces?
Ignition is a fundamental for fire to happen, and humans cause WAY more ignition events than nature does.
A car causes hundreds of ignition effects per minute. But, I’m guessing you mean a certain kind of ignition?
The timing and frequency of these events directly influence the frequency of fires.
The timing and frequency of things like lighting a fire directly influence the frequency of fires? Do you mean the frequency of out-of-control fires? Because otherwise that seems like a pretty obvious conclusion.
I use geospatial science and data to document, analyze, and predict complexities of wildland and human-caused fire, from individual to global scales. I have a particular interest in fire emissions and modeling, regional food security, land-cover/land-use change, and the Arctic. As a mom, I am concerned with helping children and future generations have better lives.
The only acceptable use of generative AI is to get the shit posts out faster
I think it’s a great use, but not only.
Resume building, cover letters, aggregating open text responses, summarizing complex texts, and so on.
While the AI can’t be left alone to do these things and if you do it’ll be clear it’s AI but it can reduce the time to do them significantly.
I firmly believe this is like the age of the computer before it. Those who fail to become AI natives in knowledge work will become under employed or unemployed in 10-15 years.
So I encourage you to make an excuse to learn it and get good at it.
It means she’s a trouble starter, punkin’ instigator, fear addicted, a danger illustrated.
Probably just the totality of human influences on wildfires. This can include a wide range of activities and factors including climate change, forest preservation or cutting, changes in wild or domestic mammal herbivory, accidental ignition events, controlled burns, irrigation or diversion of streams, damming rivers, invasive species introductions, etc.
Found an article referencing McCarty as a “fire scientist” which is a really cool title. Seems like human drivers of fire is exactly what it sounds like, motivations and causes for why humans set fires.
She is McCarty for sure but I doubt that she is et al too …
Taking credit for the work of people who are barely even credited in the first place is… a way of responding. If only she had disappeared behind the curtain for a moment, re-emerging with everyone there with big hair and guitars and eye shadow and screamed “we are McCarty and the Et Als!!!”
Oh well; next time.
Alright Allen Iverson… Or is it just Al. Can’t tell with damn LlIi
Oh, that reminds me:
l ll ll L
I always roll my eyes whenever I see a “you can’t do that because you’re a woman” character in a show, and then I’m always reminded that these people actually exist
these people actually exist
The way it’s been explained to me is that so much of the negative interactions in life come from a tiny, tiny number of offenders who manage to be shitty to dozens and dozens of people. So anyone who has to interact with many different people will inevitably encounter that shitty interaction, while most of us normies would never actually behave in that way.
Of the literally thousands of times I’ve interacted with a server or cashier, I’ve never yelled at one. But talk to any server or cashier, and they’ll all have stories of the customer who yelled at them. In other words, it can be simultaneously true that:
- Almost all servers and cashiers get yelled at by customers.
- Very, very, few customers actually yell at servers or cashiers.
In other words, our lived experiences are very different, depending on which side of that interaction we might possibly be on.
When I talk to women in male dominated fields, basically every single one of them has shitty stories about sexist mistreatment. It’s basically inevitable, because they are a woman who interacts with literally hundreds or thousands in their field. And even if I interact with hundreds or thousands of women in that same field, just because I don’t mistreat any of them doesn’t mean that my experienced sample is representative.
I wouldn’t say very few. I’d say a solid 10% of people are routinely rude, impatient or entitled in a retail or restaurant setting. Even higher in some places.
I think you’re right. People want to believe that humans are good but in reality a huge number are deeply broken.
Fixed an autocorrect in edit.
Maybe in some places. But when I go out to a restaurant, I’m often surrounded by a few dozen other diners, and no one is acting up or shouting at waiting staff. I have seen customers be obviously rude to staff but it’s very rare compared to the number of “normal” interactions. Sure not everyone is friendly and totally polite, but entitled, shouting or just being an ass is an absolute exception, like less than 0.1%. I also worked as a waiter in a couple of different restaurants over a two year period, and don’t remember any incidents either to me or my colleagues.
When I read comments like this it makes me wonder if I’ve been lucky enough to live and work in decent places, and the USA is just an nightmare hellscape, or if the reality there is much more normal and we just hear an unrepresentative sample of it.
I think you’re right that only a tiny minority are directly responsible for the negative interactions, but as someone within academic science, there’s also a much larger chunk of people who don’t challenge the assholes or the systemic fuckery when they see it.
Minorities who face oppression are much more likely to be ignored if they report inappropriate or offensive behaviour; I directly know people who have been made to feel like they are the problem for highlighting a problem. This is especially common if it’s an established and respected academic who makes the iffy comments, because there’s a tendency to them like a senile grandparent at Christmas. If they’re a professor emeritus, there’s a sense of them not really being relevant anymore, even if they’re still respected, but it can feel tremendously isolating to see no-one step in to challenge the comments, either at an individual or institutional level.
It’s understandable to not want to rock the boat, but abstaining is easier for some than others.
I agree.
I point out that pretty much everyone in that group experiences it, so even those who aren’t in that disadvantaged group should show some empathy towards the experiences of others, that we may never directly encounter ourselves. Part of that empathy, of course, is to provide support and structures for reducing the likelihood that these things happen, and mitigating them when they do happen.
I seen first hand examples of something happening like women being interrupted by men and they go on about how everything is sexist and they were mistreated. But in that exact same meeting multiple guys talked over multiple other guys. It just happens, not everything is sexist but a lot of people claim sexism when it isn’t.
And then everyone applauded..
But seriously if I witnessed this, I might actually applaud because that is a pretty badass bit of trivia to get to whip out.