Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337
New gel lets us spread flame retardant before wildfires start
The last few years have seen horrific fire seasons in California, resulting in destruction, deaths, and economic damage. And with climate change continuing unabated, things are set to get worse.
Prevention is better than firefighting; avoiding carelessness is one way to reduce the huge number of human-caused wildfires. But a paper in PNAS this week reports a new option for wildfire prevention: a fire retardant-carrying gel that coats vegetation in a thin film, keeping that vegetation safe from fire long enough to see it through fire season. If it is demonstrated to be safe, it could allow us to spray high-risk areas at the start of fire season and keep protection through until heavy rains start.
[...] Stanford materials scientist Anthony Yu and his colleagues wanted to figure out a way to get a retardant to stick to vegetation long enough to make it through California's fire season. They used nontoxic substances that are used in food and agricultural products—silica and cellulose—to make a carrier for a fire retardant that's already used in current formulations. The new gel makes the retardant stick to the vegetation for longer periods of time.
[...] The gel's longevity means that it could be sprayed at the start of wildfire season, and last long enough to offer protection until the first heavy rainfall. Once the heavy rain starts, wildfire risk starts dropping anyway.
The gel can be distributed using standard pumping equipment, so it should be quite easy to apply. And it wouldn't need to be sprayed everywhere: human-caused fires often start in high-risk places like roadsides. So, reducing wildfires wouldn't mean coating everything in retardant—focusing just on the high-risk zones would make a big difference.
Obviously, there's more testing needed before this option can be widely used, but this could be a beacon for a world facing ever more extreme wildfires.
Wildfire prevention through prophylactic treatment of high-risk landscapes using viscoelastic retardant fluids (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1907855116)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 07 2019, @05:46AM (2 children)
Excellent. So it's also a dessert topping?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday October 07 2019, @03:24PM (1 child)
Heh. And of course those feel-good ingredients only apply to the gel - not to the fire retardent the gel is holding in place. The real question is, is the fire retardant itself, that would otherwise rapidly end up in the ground rather than on leaves, safe for wildlife to eat in large quantities.
Given the general toxicity of fire retardants, I somehow doubt that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10 2019, @07:07PM
Yeah, these motherfuckers are full of shit. Chemical companies will poison anything to make a buck and the whore ass politicians make sure they get a way with it. At some point people will start getting shot for this shit and they'll deserve it. Why don't you whore politicians hold the power companies responsible for setting all the forest fires the media whores keep blaming on camp fires (yeah, fucking right).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @05:57AM (7 children)
It will kill all the birds and insect that need to fly.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 07 2019, @07:45AM (5 children)
It may kill the vegetation itself.
You see, that surface you are suppose to cover with the gel, those leaves yes. They are used by the plants to breath and eat - unless you manage to create a transparent gel that is also permeable to the oxygen and carbon dioxide, you may end in just starving the vegetation. If you get there, I suspect that direct deforestation will get the same result but be cheaper than vast amounts of special gel and the cost of applying it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @09:25AM
I'm sure Dow Chemical can restart production of Agent Orange for that purpose.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday October 07 2019, @03:28PM (3 children)
That is definitely a concern worth investigating, but probably not actually a major issue - as I recall plants typically breathe through the underside of their leaves, while fire retardant would be applied from above. So long as it wasn't windy when it was applied, very little should reach the underside of the leaves to clog the breathing pores.
Of course, if that's not a universal trait of plants, it might wipe out some kinds, with an unpredictable domino effect on the ecosystem.
(Score: 2) by qzm on Monday October 07 2019, @11:24PM
You mean like the undersides of all those conifer needles?
It seems about as smart as releasing GM mosquitos without a basic understanding of evolution..
Oh.... damn.
Expect airdrops next week.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday October 08 2019, @05:40AM (1 child)
so cutting off ~50% of the plants ability to breath is not a major issue?
I gather from your opinion that you still have both your lungs.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Wednesday October 09 2019, @06:23PM
I fyou breathe through your mouth, how is painting your back going to effect that?
Same things with leaves - if they breathe through pores on the underside, painting the top isn't going to effect that.
The tops and bottoms of leaves are in fact *functionally* different, at least in most species.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 07 2019, @03:04PM
Idea to save the birds and insects.
Have ground crews apply a permanent flame retardant foam that hardens and sticks to all trees and vegetation. Similar to foam that might be applied to steel beams in buildings to protect from flames resulting from aircraft impacts.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @06:17AM
Sorry, you can't have good things.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 07 2019, @07:20AM (3 children)
An observation.
The white man wasn't here 1000 years ago, with his records-keeping. Why do we presume that wildfires are "ever more extreme wildfires"? That phrase, and the article we find it in, is just another example of the climate change scare tactics.
https://depts.washington.edu/propplnt/2003guidelines/group1/Smoke%20Infusion.htm [washington.edu]
Obviously, some species are well adapted to regular exposure to fire. Have fires actually grown more "extreme"? Or, alternatively, has man simply put himself in the way of a normal cycle of burn-and-regrow?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 07 2019, @08:03AM (2 children)
Your very categorical assertion of "is just another example of the climate change scare tactics" puts you under a burden of proof (which you could have avoided if only abstain from using "just (another example)" or admit to a dose of subjectivisim - like "I feel/think/believe")
Now, from the very "personal experience" for a tree or bush, it isn't more or less extreme - when it burns it burns, only the (adapted) seeds remain behind to repopulate the area.
From this point of view, your "species are well adapted to regular exposure to fire" doesn't demonstrate "extremity" and neither the lack of it - just that species are adapted to a fire cycle (so your citation, as informative as it may be otherwise, neither supports nor contradicts your argument)
As an example of "measure of extremity": do you have any information about the area affected by a single fire? Perhaps the frequency of such events?
Are you sure you use the same meaning for "extreme" as the authors which you accuse of "just scare tactics"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @02:44PM (1 child)
You're wasting your time trying to convince Runaway. He "knows" much but understands little.
--
We need to eat the babies! - some conservative at an AOC townhall meeting
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday October 07 2019, @11:12PM
Modded you Touche for the sig
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @08:24AM
People burn all the time in fires thanks to smoking in bed and similar things. So we need to apply this to people so they don't burn.
For the forest, we already know the solution. Rake the fucking forests!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CGQv8IDAWw [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stevegee58 on Monday October 07 2019, @10:33AM (2 children)
The problem isn't fires, it's fuel. Our policy is to suppress fires when they flair up but that only makes the situation worse. Fuel continues to build up worsening future fires and fire risk.
Let fires burn out and stop building where fire risk is high.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @12:15PM
Get some aborigines from Downunder, they know where and how to burn.
Even thick skulls as the libtards white men can learn to do it [abc.net.au]:
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday October 07 2019, @03:31PM
Actually it's both - combined with a lack of vast herds of animals that would normally be eating that fuel.
Most wildfires are started by humans, so if we "just let them burn" then the region will be hit by wildfires of a reasonable intensity, but far more often than anything evolved to handle, and it would still be a problem.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 07 2019, @02:11PM (1 child)
The real story is its kinda a lame paper for a couple reasons:
1) Its really old idea massively commercialized to sell fire retardant gel to residential and commercial property owners in CA to protect their individual infrastructure. So this is kinda the academic equiv of a business methods patent that having the .gov spray roadsides to prevent fires starting is "innovative"
2) Basically a wealth transfer from people who live in sane locations to pay the costs of people who live in insane locations. Like endlessly rebuilding after regular periodic flooding, or government subsidies of urban city life.
3) My guess is much like dioxane seemed like a nice dust cutting oil for gravel roads until whoopsie doozie its not kosher anymore, this slimy stuff just has the feel that in a couple decades we're gonna regret that it turned desert lizards into godzilla or whatevs. I mean, stop living on a pile of kindling, nah thats too obvious, why not F with the ecosystem on an industrial scale to levels never tried before, like what could possibly go wrong?
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday October 07 2019, @11:45PM
You are almost certainly thinking of dioxin [britannica.com], not dioxane [wikipedia.org]. The former is the toxin made notorious by the Times Beach crisis.
Also, the dioxin was incidental to the dust suppression; it just happened to be mixed with the oil that was the active ingredient. (Not that spreading used motor oil on the ground is a good idea, either...)
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 07 2019, @04:01PM (3 children)
If the fire-retardant gel doesn't kill the wildlife or the vegetation it's being sprayed on, it could be another useful tool in controlling wildfires. A lot of terrain in the mountains is too rugged to clear a traditional fire-break, and the retardant they already dump on fires doesn't stick around long enough.
Personally I'm a bit torn about fire suppression policy. Timber is valuable and essential to the economies of many of America's states. So you don't want it to go to waste. Also, more people are building homes and communities in areas that were once untrammeled, so there are concerns of lives and property that need to be protected. On the other hand fire is a part of the natural cycle for forests and might be helpful in controlling other threats to timber and habitat like the pine beetle (which has killed huge swathes of coniferous forest in the Rockies).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 09 2019, @06:28PM (2 children)
> Also, more people are building homes and communities in areas that were once untrammeled, so there are concerns of lives and property that need to be protected.
Or you know - people could stop building houses in once-untrammeled wilderness where the geography make reasonable fire management impossible. Fire comes through? Evacuate. House burns down? Collect the insurance money. Nobody would insure your house because it's built in the middle of a fire trap? Good for them, and tough F'ing luck you idiot - you never should have built/bought a house there in the first place.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 09 2019, @07:05PM (1 child)
That's a fine idea, except today's firetrap so often turns out to be tomorrow's suburb or ex-urb.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 09 2019, @08:49PM
Doesn't change the fact that it's a firetrap