Blaming the California Wildfires on "Climate Change"
An Editorial article last week in the respected news magazine Politico encapsulates everything wrong with the thoughtless obsessions over "climate change" and the almost religious need to attribute natural events and disasters to a deep malign act of man.
The California wildfires are a horrible disaster. Over 41,000 acres have been burned - some 63 square miles. 27 people are confirmed killed. Over 200,000 people were forcibly evacuated. And 13,000 homes or office buildings have been destroyed. And the fires are still burning and spreading.
The Politico author particularly obsessed about LA's liberal Democrats - 80% of whom voted for Kamalea Harris - who blamed natural causes and management negligence, rather than the "danger of climate change" for the wildfires.
The California wildfire disaster is no more about “climate change” than it is about the will of God - or Allah.
First, Wildfires have occurred in the coastal valleys around LA for millennia - a long time before Spanish settlement. They are nothing new.
Second, the human impact was minimal when the local population consisted of 1,200 Chumash Indians - or later the 200 “Mission Indians” attached to the Spanish (later Mexican) missions at the Santa Barbara or Santa Inez Missions. The wildfires were mostly in unpopulated places - not anywhere near people. The Spanish had the good sense not to build the Missions in narrow canyons or hillsides…
Third, the settlement of California with 40 million people over the past 150 years has put millions of people, where no one lived before. The settlement of hundreds of thousands of people - homes, offices, gas stations, etc - in the unstable dry canyons - was a disaster just waiting to happen.
Fourth, add to that cheap wood construction - LA's home construction is overwhelmingly wood - which is already highly flammable - and gets more flammable with age as the wood dries out in the dry climate. Notice how the very few cement buildings are the only survivors in a burned-out neighborhood…
The wood homes aren’t just objects - they are a highly inflammable source of fuel - an accelerant to the wildfires.
Fifth - Bad nature management - For incomprehensible reasons, doing basic forest management is “bad.” No clearing dead trees; no controlled burning; no clearing of piled-up dry underbrush. What happens when you pile up dry inflammatory leaf and branch litter into dry canyons where the hot Santa Ana Winds can vortex through the canyons ?
Sixth - the political decision to short firefighting infrastructure. And this is political: Firefighters are macho guys. Not the California Democrats favorite constituency. That funding shortfall and political hostility is why the reservoirs were allowed to run dry, why reserve firefighters were not called-up or neighboring fire departments not called-in until it was too late; Or why there was no water in the fire hydrants.
When 12 million people are crammed into a dry, scrubby semi desert (the LA basin) prone to seasonal hurricane-force dry desert winds - it amplifies the dangers from pre-existing natural phenomena. That has everything to do with bad planning and political negligence. And little to do with climate change.