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Global Warming Alarmists Spontaneously Combust
As the search goes on to find the missing, and the dead from the devastating wildfires in Northern and Southern California the blame game has ignited.
Global Warming: California once again is burning, with hundreds of thousands of tinder-dry acres going up in flames. Gov. Jerry Brown says it’s global warming. President Trump blames forest mismanagement. Who’s right?
On Saturday, Trump tweeted (November 10): “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
Brown’s take was, well, different: “Managing all the forests everywhere we can does not stop climate change,” he said. “And those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we’re now witnessing, and will continue to witness in the coming years.”
President Trump is much closer to the mark. Years of neglect, a lack of management of public lands, and in some cases mismanagement of firefighting resources are far greater contributors to the fires in California, and the rest of the American West, than global warming. The flashpoint for wood is about 572 degrees Fahrenheit, and lower for brush filled undergrowth. Temperatures may be rising, but I don’t remember seeing anything on the news about any location in the country reaching 572 degrees.
Governor Brown, and the endless environmental restrictions, and litigants against the responsible management of state and federal lands are the ones responsible for the loss of life, and property damage wildfires cause in California. The constant lawsuits and judgments brought in court by litigants that in many cases have never even seen the land that so concerns them needs to stop.
Removing fuel by clearing dead trees, and undergrowth is the answer to try and minimize the damage done by wildfires.
Global warming is not the problem:
Approximately 84% of wildfires in the United States that required help by firefighters between 1992 and 2012 were caused by humans according to a recent study. Discarding cigarettes, unattended campfires, and losing control of controlled burns were three of the most common manmade causes of wildfires. Unfortunately, the human element of wildfires has caused the wildfire season across the country to lengthen and become even more dangerous than ever before.
In terms of natural causes, wildfires can be caused by lightning strikes on dry ground. This is the most common cause of fires in the southeast part of the United States and in the dry Rocky Mountain region. In California, the Pacific Northwest, and the forests of the eastern part of the United States, manmade causes resulted in 80% of the wildfires. Although places like Florida have a lot of thunder storms and lightning strikes, 60-80% of fires in this region were started from manmade causes.
Manmade causes of wildfire also include arson.
An example of poor tactical planning and lack of management is highlighted in an excellent article from the Oregonian concerning the Canyon Creek Fire.
Published in Environment
Nuh uh, It’s Science! Shouldn’t public policy be based on Scientific Research?
Historically, California weather has been wetter than normal in the 20th century. The recent droughts have only begun to bring it back to the average.
My own study of the problem shows the same. Treated as a time series, forecasting of temperature data shows a zero trend and almost no possibility of showing a significant rise (or fall) in mean global temperature in the foreseeable future.
And that reinforces the scariest thought when it comes to climate change. Humanity’s post-enlightenment development “strategy” has been to shape the world to fit the climate of the past 250 years. What if that 250-year-period was anomalous, and the upcoming climate is simply a return to an older normal?
It would mean that a lot of the big things humanity has built in the past 250 years are potentially located in the wrong places, like all the stuff in California built in a spot that’s supposed to be a desert but has enjoyed unusually high rainfall for the last century.
The climate change orthodoxy is all about throwing blame around for the climate. Throwing blame around is comforting. The thought that “catastrophic” climate change might indeed be coming and also that it’s nobody’s fault and also that there’s really no way to stop it would be way more terrifying.
I’m not saying that’s what I do believe. I’m just sayin’ it’d be a terrifying thought if one were to permit oneself to believe it.
(Note: By “catastrophic” I don’t mean that humanity is doomed. I mean that having to abandon a sizeable portion of the fixed infrastructure of the past 250 years and rebuilding elsewhere would be economically “catastrophic”. Sorta kinda like how Detroit disintegrated due to depopulation.)
Or — and this strikes me as even more plausible — everything north of, say, Atlanta is located in a spot that should be under a mile of glacier, and that we’ll be returning to that status quo ante shortly (geologically speaking).
There used to be an appreciation of the fact that in California there are long periods of drought. That was part of the basis for the water plan developed in the 1950s there that would have built several more reservoirs to catch water coming down from the mountains. This plan has been ignored due to environmentalists for the last few decades, and so now California has inadequate water reserves.
So we’ll build new things in new places. Mankind is remarkably adaptable and resilient.
Besides, if you want to worry about the future consider:
1) The relative global peace since WWII won’t last forever, nor will the Pax Americana. Nuclear weapons keep proliferating.
2) An Ebola-like plague can quickly spread around the globe due to modern air travel.
3) Want real climate change? Wait until the next large asteroid like the one that killed the dinosaurs hits us.
Even if “climate change” is as bad as the alarmists claim it still would barely crack my top 5 list of worries.
I remember people used to drive around Placer County with bumper stickers that read “Build it, dam it!” In reference to the proposed, but never built, Auburn Dam.
Yabbut, it’ll still feel like a catastrophe
whenif it happens. Fifth-century Romans didn’t shrug off their collapse by saying, “oh well, mankind is remarkably adaptable and resilient. People will just move elsewhere and things’ll be back to normal in a few (dozen) centuries.”Again, I mention Detroit, which is the best modern example of a major city ending up virtually abandoned due to changing circumstances. The thought that it might have been unavoidable and the consolation that people were able to start new lives elsewhere doesn’t really help how it feels to see a city fall apart like that.
It’s sorta kinda like the old physics joke about “assuming a spherical cow“:
Sometimes in scientific experimentation and inquiry it’s unavoidable that the researcher has to define terms in the simplest ways possible or else the variables will be so complex that they become virtually incalculable. Defining “climate” as a 30-year-period might be reasonable in that sort of research paradigm.
It becomes a political issue when public policy decision-makers impose those simplified terms on the people as “the way things really are”…
… like passing a law that forces people to assume that cows are spherical.
According to Obama, we are the problem:
So there you go. Answered clearly and concisely, as is his wont.
That’s Mr. C’s Ricochet handle. @sphericalcow.
That is stomach turning. What an arrogant fill-in-the-blank.
Sucks to be Roman, but maybe not such bad news if you were German.
Every change brings winners and losers. Automotive jobs in Detroit didn’t just vanish into thin air; many moved south to right-to-work states. If you own beachfront property and the sea levels rise, one day your property may be underwater, but guess what? One of your inland neighbors now owns beachfront property!
Maybe that’s why today’s global elite are acting so alarmed about Climate Change — as the people on top of the current food chain, they have the most to lose from ANY changes.
I think I saw something that said they were doing a controlled burn in Cade’s Cove; about 300 acres.
So true! I always admired Obama’s direct blunt and honest answers to questions, and his cool emotionless scientific reasoning skills. I also believe in fairies…..