During the vice presidential debate, moderator Susan Page broached the topic of climate change when she asked, “do you believe, as the scientific community has concluded, that man-made climate change has made wildfires bigger, hotter, and more deadly?”
In his response, Vice President Mike Pence mentioned many things to rebut the moderator’s claim, including this tidbit: “With regard to wildfires, President Trump and I believe that forest management has to be front and center, and even Governor Gavin Newsom from your state has agreed we’ve got to work on forest management.”
Pence also offered this important point: “But many of the climate alarmists use hurricanes and wildfires to try and sell the good of a Green New Deal.”
Pence is correct on both counts.
The wildfires that have ravaged California in 2020 cannot be blamed solely on climate change. If this were the case, then why aren’t wildfires breaking out across the nation? They aren’t because unlike California, almost every other state employs forest management.
As Pence said, even the governor of California admitted this.
“There is no question when you look [at] this past decade and look at the past thousand years that we have not done justice on our forest management. I don’t think anyone disputes that,” Newsom said in late September.
According to California’s state oversight agency, “during its review, the Commission found that California’s forests suffer from neglect and mismanagement, resulting in overcrowding that leaves them susceptible to disease, insects, and wildfire.”
In other words, the wildfires that are destroying California are due to the Golden State’s mismanagement, not because of climate change.
Furthermore, many of the wildfires in California over the past few months have occurred due to arson, which of course has absolutely nothing to do with climate change.
According to the Cal Fire San Bernardino Unit, “the El Dorado Fire, burning near Oak Glen in San Bernardino County, was caused by a smoke generating pyrotechnic device, used during a gender reveal party.” Cal Fire suspects other fires have been sparked by arsonists.
However, lack of forest management and arson does not fit the climate change fearmongering narrative that Newsom and many others continue to spout, sans evidence.
“I say this lovingly — not as an ideologue, but as someone who prides himself on being open to argument, interested in evidence — but I quite literally have no patience for climate change deniers,” Newsom said.
“It’s completely inconsistent, that point of view, with the reality on the ground, the facts as we are experiencing. You may not believe it intellectually, but your own eyes, your own experiences tell a different story.”
Another California climate change fearmonger, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), added her two cents: “Mother Earth is angry. She’s telling us, whether, she’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, whatever it is, that climate crisis is real and has an impact.”
Like Newsom, Pelosi offers zero evidence to support her claim.
Yet data show that wildfires are not increasing. According to the Congressional Research Service, the prevalence of wildfires has decreased over the past three decades.
As the report notes, “Over the past 10 years, there were an average of 64,100 wildfires annually and an average of 6.8 million acres burned annually. In 2019, 50,477 wildfires burned 4.7 million acres nationwide, below the annual average for both statistics.”
As 2020 has shown, California does have a problem with out-of-control wildfires. However, it is not due to climate change. Actually, as the data show, it is due to the leadership of California’s dereliction of duty concerning forest management.
Read more at CNSNews
Californian flora is probably more fire prone than the flora of some other states. However, that doesn’t account for all the discrepancy in fire prevalence. Far from it.
Lack of forest management is the single biggest problem and if California won’t address that no amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide reduction would stop the fires.
Actually, that last sentence isn’t exactly true. Reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide will stop the fires if taken to the point where plants won’t grow…
Unfortunately for them, California also has huge numbers of Australian eucalypts that are fires waiting to happen, Our Gumtrees are amongst the most flammable in the world and they thrive in California. Australia also swept the horrific fires of 2019 under the climate change mat, we are as stupid as the Californian authorities. We also neglect our forests so the parallel between the two countries runs true and the cause is exactly the same…the idiotic Greens!
Then lets start putting the Eco-Freaks on the Fires lets see the Tree Hugger’s help douse the Fires which their idiotic lawsuits and ideologies has contributed to
Of course the climate alarmists like Gavin Newsome want to pin the blame on some ill-defined “Climate Change” because it takes the heat (no pun intended) off him. Plus he can blame Trump for the forest fires as if the president hadn’t taken the US out of the Paris Accord and was pushing “Green Energy” there’d be no forest fires.
Actually, if the left has its way in shutting down our use of carbon-based fuels there’d be no planes to drop water and fire retardant, no fire trucks or other large vehicles to get the fire fighters in place, no gas-powered chain saws and other tools to help clear the debris.
Newsom is a idiot a total idiot and Liberal Democrat
California could learn a few things from the Maldives where the government quickly figured out how to profit from climate fearmongering by playing the victim card.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/14/maldives-sinking/