California Fires Raise Numerous Questions That Need to Be Addressed and Climate Change Is the Least of It!
Guest Post by Craig Rucker of CFact.
Thousands of Californians have been burned out of their homes. The danger is not yet over. It’s hard to breathe. People lie dead in the ashes of their American dream.
For people of good conscience, this is a time for empathy, prayer, and whatever aid is needed to keep survivors safe, help them rebuild, and improve government’s ability to prevent and respond in the future.
For climate kleptocrats and ideologues, every crisis is an opportunity to increase their wealth and power.
Climate campaigners are “weaponizing every weather event,” is how CFACT’s Marc Morano put it on the radio.
Bogus “attribution” has become the woke-climate campaigner’s favorite weapon. Whenever tragic weather strikes, the media parrots campaigners’ claims that climate change makes extreme weather “more likely.”
How much more likely?
If the media was doing its job, reporters would vet these claims by following up with, “how meaningful was the climate change impact on this event?” This would force campaigners to concede that the impact was minimal, or not present. Particularly, if opposing analysis was fairly included.
We posted an explanation by data prodigy Chris Martz at CFACT.org.
“To a hammer,” the saying goes, “everything looks like a nail.” To Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, everything looks like a pretext to expand the power of government.
Sanders, predictably, jumped on X, attributed the fires to climate and demanded that “Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis it is,” i.e, submit to the UN climate regime.
Chris Martz was having none of it.
“Hi there Colonel Sanders.” Chris tweeted. “Do you like facts? I hope you do, because you’re about to be sacked with some.”
Take a look at the epic sacking that ensued. Chris laid out the hard, historical weather data with detailed support from the high holy peer-reviewed scientific literature on California, fire and climate.
To sum up, the Santa Ana Winds blow hard every year. Past fires have been almost universally attributed to human causes, not how you use energy. Fallen power lines are frequently to blame, along with other accidents, and arson — which is no accident at all.
This current round of fires became a blast furnace when the Santa Ana winds reached hurricane force at the same time the fires burned. No amount of wind turbines, solar panels or electric vehicles could have saved the day.
Better forest, water and emergency management might have minimized them, and certainly would have mitigated their impact.
The Pacific Palisades have burned before. That is historically normal. What is new is the billions of dollars of development that has occurred since the last time they did.
How meaningful would the impact of better, smarter government have been? Very meaningful.
Pray for those whose lives and homes have been lost.
Lend them your helping hand.
Take action to ensure California is better prepared next time.
Editor’s Note: These fires are raising many questions. They may be summed up in one, though. Is it even possible for there to have been this much incompetence?
A mayor is warned of the severe fire danger and takes a trip to Ghana anyway.
The reservoir there to provide water for protection is emptied at the worst time.
Water from other reservoirs is refused to be pumped into where most needed.
Fire hydrants are not inspected. No one calls out the National Guard when first needed.
Fire trucks sent in from out of the area are parked for inspections before being employed for emergency use.
Biden flies in immediately and creates a no-fly zone for helicopters trying to help put out fires.
No one cuts the underbrush as required on a regular basis and brush cutting inspections are foregone as well
The Fire Chief appointed by the Mayor says she's not getting what she needs from the Cuba-loving Mayor who cut her budget by $17.6 million as Newsom also cut the state fire-fighting budget
Insurance companies are forced to pull out of the state just prior to all this.
Arsonists appear to have set some of the fires.
Some of the Fire Department’s equipment was sent to Ukraine.
Just as in Maui, something is terribly wrong here. Is it just massive incompetence or far worse? It's an open question, it seems to me.
Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C.,
#California #Fires #Climate #CraigRucker #PacificPalisades #SantaAnaWinds #ClimateChange
The questions won't be addressed. West coast wildfires have been raising the same obvious questions for 20 years, and nothing changes. Politicians continue to stop normal forest management, continue to allow suburbs to expand into the forests, continue to encourage homeless camps that start some of the big fires.
As long as California continues to vote for woke Democrats, the anti-human incompetence of the Climate Cult will lead to human suffering. "Don't blame us. Our systems aren't designed to fight wildfires." The systems HAVE TO BE designed to fight wildfires, because they will happen again!