Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi demonstrated her ignorance of science and reality the other day.
“Mother Earth is angry,” Speaker Pelosi says, discussing wildfires burning in California. “She’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, whatever it is...the climate crisis is real and has an impact.”
What's wrong with this picture?
- For a start, there's no such thing as Mother Earth. Earth is a planet, not a person, and no amount of anthropomorphism or personification will change that.
- Next, hurricanes on the Gulf Coast (or anywhere else) have been around since long before the human race arose. They'll probably be here long after we've gone.
- As for the climate crisis, look at the historical record. The climate is always changing. It happens in the short (e.g. El Niño or La Niña) or the long (e.g. geologic time scale) term, and everything in between, locally, regionally or globally. The record visible in nature tells us that. (Admittedly, climate change may be happening faster now than in past times, thanks to various factors.)
- Finally, the fires out West aren't just a natural phenomenon. We know why they're so destructive at present - because for decades, good forest management practices have been stymied by environmentalists and politically correct hacks.
Besides natural factors, people - both arsonists and those who accidentally ignite fires - are a primary cause of the problem. One study claims that up to 84% of wildfires are human-ignited, with arsonists responsible for up to 21%. The evidence to support that statement is massive and undeniable. I note that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in Oregon have stated that there's no evidence Antifa or Black Lives Matter, both responsible for most of the riots and unrest in that state, have deliberately started wildfires. In the absence of hard evidence I'm prepared to accept that. Nevertheless, arsonists - whatever their political beliefs - are indeed starting many of the fires. A Web site is correlating and aggregating news reports and other sources about arson and the current wildfires, and it's horrifying to read. Click over there and see for yourself.
What boggles my mind is that when the primary solution to the problem - better forest management practices - is so well understood, there's still such enormous opposition to it from environmentalists and the politicians they control. This isn't rocket science: it's basic stuff. Remove the fuel, and the fire can't burn. If our forests were properly managed, even arsonists couldn't cause nearly as much damage or as many casualties as wildfires do now. Yet, every year, there are screams of outrage from the enviroloonies whenever someone points out the truth. They don't believe in science at all, but in some weird fantasy that allows them to deny truth and impose their falsehoods on the rest of us - and people are dying because of it.
No, Ms. Pelosi. Mother Earth isn't angry. This is our fault, for allowing idiots to set policy and mismanage our world.
Peter
18 comments:
The damage that Smokey the Bear did to the US is almost incalculable. I don't know if you've been in the states long enough to have seen the cartoon bear with the, "only you can prevent forest fires" commercials, but they were a staple on TV when I was a kid in the 60s and for a long time after. It made sure the undergrowth and fuel was never cleared out, turning small, annual burns into major conflagrations.
Fire is part of the ecosystem. It takes meddling by environmentalists to really screw things up. Add in more people moving into those forests and you get really dangerous fires and people killed.
Boy Scouts used to be taught proper fire and forest management. Then at some point they stopped being allowed to have camp fires at all. The educational and cultural damage has been in progress for a long, long time.
The timing of the FBI's "NO Antifa was NOT involved in the arsons" was a bit odd. The fires in question were just getting started and I doubt the FBI Promptly opens a case on every wildfire in America? So with in hours of the "Antifa and other no gooders have been caught setting fires" THIS Absolute Statement?
I WISH the FBI was so prompt in ID'ing and shutting down Known Arsonists in our cities like say Antifa and BLM?
Sounds like Deep State COVER for their street army.
Hard disagree.
Making sure that you don't leave your campfire going is just good practice, because you don't want to get caught in a forest fire that resulted from your or someone else's carelessness.
Unfortunately, this morphed into people's minds as "forest fires=always bad."
Why?
There is hard evidence that the FBI has deliberately under played / counted Islamic attacks in the US.
Why not Antifa?
In the era of proven falsehoods such as the politically correct gas lighting “mostly peaceful protests” and violence by Antifa in Portland “is a myth”, I am skeptical.
> In the absence of hard evidence I'm prepared to accept that.
I wish I could have a $25k freezer filled with $10/pint organic ice cream and tell others about environmentalism.
If the Fibs are saying Antifa is not to blame, then clearly, Antifa is in fact to blame.
Read a report today that ALL fires in Washington state started Monday were arson. Maybe a bit extreme, but blaming power lines when somebody has been sabotaging power poles is rather cynical.
https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/paywalloff/governor-asks-people-to-use-caution-to-prevent-fires/article_729ec846-f229-11ea-aa6f-e3ad6a6ebc0b.html
As I keep saying, the climate has been changing ever since our planet has had an atmosphere.
Sorry, but you are incorrect. I've been a firefighter for over 42 years in the NSW Rural Fire Service and concurrently worked in a senior position for the organisation for 13 of those years.
The 2019/20 season was by far the largest, most intense, long lasting and damaging series of fires ever experienced in eastern Australia.
The conservative press and politicians trotted out the fuel management and arson reasoning as well.
The facts are, there was a massive reduction in the number of arson or accidentally caused ignitions and the vast, vast majority were caused by dry lightning strikes. The implementation of hazard reduction activities (i.e. fuel management) were at record levels prior to the season, yet wildfires were nuking over areas that had been fuel managed only a few months previously. In fact, large fires were strongly burning in closely mown lawns without even slowing down.
All firefighters witnessed fire behaviour never experienced before.
The difference, we have been experiencing increasing temperatures over the past few years, droughts are now more common and severe and the fuel is getting drier. This means the fuel is more readily ignited and more intense when it burns.
The argument that "the climate has always changed" is only telling half the story. It has changed in the past due to massive volcanism events, changes to the sun's activity, large meteorite impact, ocean current changes, and continental drift etc.
None of these are currently in play and yet atmospheric temperatures have increased to unprecedented levels and rate. The only plausible and properly researched explanation is the concurrent increase in greenhouse gases produced by human activities.
I'm sorry that this matter has been so politicized as a left-right argument, but it's been both my job and lived experience to look at the facts.
NSW, Australia, experience, while certainly valuable, does not necessarily translate to the wildfires ongoing in Oregon and California. I would suggest not discounting the reports of people on the ground in those locations. While the climate is certainly changing, that has been the case throughout all the earth's history, and to suggest that humans can account for all that change is, in a word, precious. I suggest you go back to the "facts" you've received, and re-examine them for assumptions. All climate change data showing an impending catastrophic change has been dead wrong for the past 25 years. When can we get skeptical?
I dunno about sabotage, but PG&E has not been replacing/upgrading their hardware.
How do I know? Suffice to say that a picture of one of the components crossed my desk. Most 'hard' iron/steel/aluminum stuff can't stay up forever -- you have to replace it every 30 years. What I saw was a component that had CLEARLY been up there a bit longer. Like, say 80+ years.
I'm not going to lay all the blame at PG&E's feet though, knowing the astonishingly stupid regulations they've labored under. Hard to replace hardware when there are no roads or trails and regulations forbid cutting new ones.
The Left are such crackpots, they created their own Cargo Cult....
Well there have been some fires set by antifa...
https://www.facebook.com/LMPD.ky/videos/294942308445291/
None of these are currently in play and yet atmospheric temperatures have increased to unprecedented levels and rate.
What makes you think the sun activity isn't changing? Everything I've seen says it has.
@Nate Winchester
Regarding the sun's activity, I don't know where you get your information from. Since 1978, solar irradiance has been directly measured by satellites, with very good accuracy. These measurements indicate that the Sun's total solar irradiance fluctuates by +-0.1% over the ~11 years of the solar cycle, but that its average value has been stable since the measurements started 42 years ago.
So, if the average amount of radiation isn't increasing, yet we are getting both an increase in the average temperatures (up to 0.46F increase per decade in the USA) and a persistent number of record highs (130F Nevada 2020) you have to ask what else could be causing these outcomes.
@Tom
You are like the metaphorical frog in the warming water......so far so good as far as you're concerned.
Yet nightly you can look at your TV as see that countries in both the northern and southern hemispheres have experienced unprecedented megafires in the same year, we have both experienced an increasing frequency of record-breaking droughts, both our countries recorded their highest ever temperatures in the past year, heavy rainfall and floods worldwide have increased by more than 50% in the past decade, sea levels are rising at an average 1/8 inch p.a. in the USA, etc etc.
So what's the logical basis for your skepticism?
Mark, your brainwashing is showing. Prettty much all of the benchmarks you are reporting are in dispute, NOT settled issues. Extreme weather is not a firm indicator of any particular trend. The problem is that the AGW advocates have muddied the waters to the point that most of us just laugh at your faith in statistics.
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