I didn't watch more than a few minutes, but I did catch the "I'll shut you down for a minute, Joe" line which owned.

What else happened?

  • TossedAccount [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Trump bullshitting his way through the climate change question by correctly pointing out the accumulation of drywood and forest mismanagement as a proximate cause for the wildfires and weaving through having to acknowledge climate change as an underlying cause. Dude invoked Teddy Roosevelt for a minute and gave the ecofash their vacuous platitudes about protecting the "crystal clean water" and "clean air" while not having to commit to anything. Almost as impressive and awe-inspiring as it is horrifying.

    • TossedAccount [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Also: Trump emphasizing just how unreliable the mail-in ballots are going to be and the likelihood of election rigging by the Dems, but reassuring his base that he'll soundly beat Biden anyway.

      • chmos [any]
        1·
        4 years ago

        I never understand this point. Do they think the earth was constantly ravaged by fire to this degree until people came along with rakes? A lack of preventative measure is not an explanation for why something is happening. It’s like looking at a flooding city and saying the broken levees caused it and not the hurricane.

        • notthenameiwant [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I'm trained in forest management, so I hope this answer will suffice. Trump is partially right when he talks about how fire prevention is shit. The main agencies that manage wilderness were explicitly trained to let things grow unabated in a lot of instances to the point of being powder kegs (think Smoky the Bear). There was no maintenance (eg: controlled burns and brush control) in a ton of areas. Normally things would grow, burn through natural methods, or get maintained by wildlife eating things (or other means). Human interference also altered natural preventions of massive fires. This became a huge issue when humans decided they wanted to build houses and infrastructure directly in or around forested areas.

          Of course this all falls apart when you realize the whole argument is obviously in bad faith and that the factors involved in climate change far outpace anything the NPS or FS is responsible for. Every federal land management agency does need systemic change regardless (especially the Forest Service, since they explicitly exist to serve commerce logging and mining). I didn't watch the debate, I'm just going off his twitter comments.

          Read "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson if you want to learn how incompetent the land management agencies are.