That guy publishes a LOT.

Fucking hive minds

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.

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.

https://jmccartygeo.org/

This is my best guess without googling it or her.

Those who are deemed "Lit" in academic language.

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.

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.

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 think I would rather this happen to me than just about anything professionally, the withdrawal from that high might actually kill me

It's a reminder than people that have always been in a privileged position often don't realize they do.

When a given demographic is a dominant presence in a given area (not necessarily work, it can be anything), there is a tendency for they demographic to start making assumptions about other demographics.

In most places, men are the dominant presence, and in most of the "western" world, they will also be white.

In this case, the individual who a white male was doing what's called colloquially, "mansplaining". He was correcting a woman when not only was the woman right, but was the very source he was using to correct her.

This is a consistent and very unpleasant fact of the world that white men will treat anyone of any other demographic as less than equals.

In this specific case, I suspect that the person making that post was pointing to the prejudice and stupidity of the person indirectly insulting her being a systemic issue arising from both gender and sexual entrenchment along with the privilege that allows the dominance of the white male demographic despite their being no quantifiable factor for that group to be dominant other than that privilege.

She, in other words, was pointing out a systemic issue by using an anecdote. Which can be a bit difficult to accept as evidence. Or would be if there wasn't a good century or so of giant piles of anecdotes from real people pointing to that systemic issue not only existing, but being something that holds everyone back.

Truth? Yes, women and people of color are going to assume they're right and whoever they're talking to is wrong just like any humans will. But white dudes have been pulling that crap for multiple generations, and anyone that isn't both white and male get sick of the bad behavior.

It's not obvious? Because white males as a demographic are the most privileged people on the planet and not coincidentally also the ones most prone to petty, oblivious arrogance, tantrum-throwing, and egotistical man-splaining. The latter was demonstrated by the one in this NASA scientist's anecdote.

Being white is a huge risk factor for unearned confidence. So is male. Being both just multiplies the chances.

In the US it's all about skin colour

Even then you don't go "you don't understand x!". You make an actual point about something in the presentation, usually with enough self-doubt to state it as a question.

If the whole presentation is trash in your opinion, just leave.