The worst thing about cretins like QAnon gibberers, genuinely out-there, conspiracy theorists, is that they play so easily into the Establishment’s hands. It’s not enough that there’s plausible evidence of something bad going on (rich and powerful celebrities trafficking in underage porn, for instance): no, these twits have snatch the megaphone and scream at the top of their lungs that it’s even bigger than that! They’re harvesting adrenochrome from children’s bodies in Satanic rituals in pizza parlours! PIZZA PARLOURS!!
To borrow from their own nutty conspiracy tropes, they’re so unhinged that it’s hard not to suspect that they’re crisis actors planted by the establishment! Because all they really achieve is to discredit anyone even remotely associated with them and give the mainstream media lickspittles just the wriggle-room they’re looking for. Oh, you think Covid vaccines might be unsafe and ineffective? YOU ALSO BELIEVE 5G INJECTS NANOPARTICLES, TOO, DON’T YOU!
And just like that, any chance of a sane discussion evaporates.
If they really were plants by the establishment, what would they do any different? It’s not such an implausible possibility: it’s a matter of record that the FBI planted agents to discredit radical groups in the ’60s, by being even more dementedly radical. The German and Canadian government in the ’90s planted on-the-payroll neo-Nazis into anti-immigrant groups for the same reason.
Writer David Cole dubs the thought-leaders of such nuttiness “JURMCO” – Jones/Unz/Rogan/Musk/Carlson/Owens (which may be a little unfair to at least Musk and Rogan). The JURMCOs’ latest bugbear is, unsurprisingly, the Los Angeles fires.
Now, there’s lots to pick apart in these fires, from decades of catastrophically inept Democrat policy, to the string of arrests (so far) of various arsonists, from climate activists to illegal immigrants (who may have started some of the worst fires as a cover for looting rich folk’s homes in the Palisades). But, that’s not nearly enough for the JURMCO types. Hell, no.
Now JURMCOs have declared themselves thee [sic] experts on fire. Mind you, they have no actual expertise in the fields of arson investigation, forestry, fire science, firefighting, etc. They don’t need it. These dumbasses have noticed that in the aftermath of the LA wildfires, there are trees standing unburned next to the charred remains of houses. The photos are similar to those of California’s 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85. Foundations of wiped-away homes sitting right next to unmolested trees.
If you’ve ever spent much time dealing with wildfires (former volunteer rural firefighter, here), you’ll recognise this as pretty unremarkable. The same as with a video I saw on X, of someone trundling along on a quad bike, spraying a jet of fire into the undergrowth. No, it wasn’t some deep-state arsonist, it’s what firefighters call ‘burning in’. Find a natural break, like a road, just ahead of the main fire and light it up. The new fire rushes to meet the big firefront, leaving behind lots of already-burnt ground that won’t go up a second time.
But not if you’re a conspiracy theorist.
How can this be, JURMCO asks?
“Directed Energy Weapons,” of course! The fires were started by space lasers that targeted only houses while leaving trees alone. Nothing else can explain it. Viral posts among JURMCO cultists make it clear: Those unburned trees mean lasers.
The DEEP STATE, or OBAMMER [sic], or the Zionists, are using space lasers to destroy houses so that they can be TAKEN OVER by BlackRock or Biden or Baron Rothschild, I guess, because his grand plan of world conquest hinges on owning a desolate rural trailer town in Butte County (where the Camp Fire occurred).
As Cole points out, look at any old photos of wildfires, even in Los Angeles (the MSM, as dumb and memory-challenged as any conspiracy theorist, seem to have no concept that similar massive fires have ripped through LA’s wealthy districts before).
The Bel Air fire, for example. 1961. We weren’t even on the moon yet (oh, wait – JURMCO sez we never went). Photo after photo of unburned trees next to burned-down homes.
California, as you probably know, is overrun with exotic Australian eucalypts. Eucalypts are an incredibly fire-prone species. In fact, they encourage fire, because they need it to reproduce: to crack the seed pods open and provide lots of ash fertiliser for the seedling. Everything from their oil-rich foliage to their long, hanging strings of bark, has evolved to encourage fire.
‘The bush loves a good burn,’ as my grizzled old brigade captain used to say.
Now, it would be kind of counter-productive for a fire-loving species to burn to nothing in a wildfire. So, healthy eucalypts can live right through all but the most intense fires.
To be fair to the JURMCOs, Cole gets a couple of things wrong.
First, trees are on average 50 percent water (depending on the tree, as much as 66 percent). Healthy green leaves are 90 to 95 percent water.
Second, bark on a healthy tree is not immediately flammable; it’s fairly flame-resistant.
Put those two things together, the high water content and the resilience of bark, and you have something that generally can’t be ignited by a simple ember. And wildfires are spread by wind-blown embers. Dead growth is a tinderbox. But blow a hot ember at a healthy tree and that tree will not immolate like flash paper.
Third, many times a fire will not reach a tree’s canopy. Fires pushed by wind-blown embers tend to move laterally, not vertically. If you look closely at the postfire photos, you’ll see that the bases of the trees are indeed blackened. The fire touched the base but didn’t rise higher.
Some of this is true enough, but, in the case of eucalypts, some is dead wrong. The bark on a eucalypt has evolved to encourage fire. What’s more, it’s evolved to indeed carry fire all the way up to the canopy: that’s why ‘stringybark’ hangs from the trees. In a big fire, ‘crowning’ is the dread of firefighters. Once a fire crowns, it acquires a whole new, terrifying momentum.
But, here’s the thing: I’ve personally watched trees burst into the sort of fireballs Moses would have taken off his sandals for. Within minutes, though, the fire burns out, leaving a green, fresh-looking tree. The fire cleans out all the dead stuff and leaves the green behind (all that water in the leaves, remember).
The end result, though, is exactly what’s got the conspiracists’ foil knickers in a knot: healthy, unburnt, trees standing in the middle of otherwise devastation.
So, by all means, take the stick to Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass for their idiotic policies which have almost undeniably contributed heavily to the devastation. But keep it sane, for God’s sake.
