Paul Driessen
& Duggan Flanakin
“We are all born ignorant,” Benjamin Franklin once
said, “but one must work very hard to remain stupid.”
Greens are incensed over suggestions that
anything but fossil fuels and climate change might be turning green California
and Australian ecosystems into black wastelands, incinerating wildlife,
destroying homes and killing people. The notion that they and their policies
might be a major factor in these fires gets them so hot under the collar that
they could ignite another inferno. But the facts are there for all to see.
PG&E certainly failed to maintain,
upgrade and repair its transmission lines and towers, leading to sparks that
caused multiple fiery cataclysms. However, California now has over 129 million dead trees in its
forests – and a long history of refusing to thin them out, clear brush or
permit others to do so. Fuel levels in Aussie forest, brush and grasslands
areas have likewise climbed to near-historic levels in
recent years.
The total area burned in New South Wales
and Victoria is now approaching the area burnt in Victoria back in 1851, Australian
scientist Dr. Jennifer Marohasy notes. 2020
summer temperatures in Australia may get as hot as they did back in 1938-1939. US
climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer agrees.
In both California and Australia, people
bemoan the loss of eucalyptus trees in fires. But many don’t want them removed
or even thinned out. They don’t know (or won’t accept the fact) that fallen
eucalypt leaves and bark create vast expanses of flammable material, while
their spicy-smelling oil is highly flammable. A spark can ignite an explosive firestorm in air
laden with gasoline-like vapors, followed by horrific crown fires among the
trees and ground fires in the dead leaves and bark.
Rainy winters in both places cause rapid,
lush plant growth that is aided by rising levels of atmospheric plant-fertilizing
carbon dioxide. Long, hot, dry summers – or prolonged droughts – can follow,
drying out the trees, brush and grass, and setting the stage for catastrophic
wildfires.
Environmentalists, politicians, regulators
and judges say removing trees and brush will damage habitats. But when the
inevitable conflagrations hit, habitats are cremated and obliterated, down to
soil organisms and organic matter. Subsequent downpours and snowmelts wash the
remaining soil away. What habitats?
Some recent fires could be called
“historic” or “unprecedented” – especially if monster fires of a century or
more ago are left out of the calculation; or if conflagrations elsewhere are
not included. Few people know about the
Great Peshtigo, Wisconsin Fire of October 8, 1871, even though it killed
1,200-2,500 people, many of them turned into little piles of ash. The Peshtigo
debacle was overshadowed by another big fire that day: the Great Chicago Fire,
which burned 98% less land and killed far fewer people.
Yet another fact demolishes the all-too-typical
claim that recent Australian fires are due to manmade climate change. Many
(perhaps most) of those fires were caused by humans – some accidentally, but many deliberately. More
than 180 alleged arsonists have
been arrested since the start of the 2020 bushfire season, with 29 blazes
deliberately lit in part of southeast New South Wales in just three months!
At least two dozen people have died in
Australia’s fires, along with thousands of sheep and cattle, over 2,000 koala
bears, and several hundred million other animals. US wildfires have likewise
exacted horrific death tolls. A few years ago, Duggan hosted a benefit concert
for the families of the Fallen Nineteen, the 19 City of Prescott firefighters
who died battling the 2013 lightning-ignited Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona.
Now, the Washington Free Beacon reports, “a
media outlet affiliated with ISIS has been instructing the group's radical
adherents to set forest fires in the
United States and Europe to cause mass ecological disasters, according to posts
on an internet forum dedicated to the terror group.” The Middle East Media
Research Institute has flagged four posters published in the pro-ISIS Quraysh
media outlet. The first said (English translation): “Oh monotheists [followers
of ISIS], ignite fires in the forests and fields, and we are addressing
especially those who live in Europe and America, for the fires are painful to
them.” The fourth poster got more specific: “Ignite fires in the forests of
America, France, Britain and Germany, for they are painful to them." Might
some ISIS follower have viewed Australia as equally deserving of ecotage?
A recent report by
Pulitzer Prize winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bettina Boxall may make greens
even hotter under the collar: “Human-caused ignitions spark California’s worst
wildfires but get little state focus,” the headline reads. Her key point is
damning: “It doesn’t matter how dry the vegetation, how fierce the winds or how
high the temperature; if there is no ignition, there is no wildfire.”
Noting that the 2019 California fire
season was far less deadly than that in 2018, when the notorious “Camp Fire” destroyed the town of Paradise and
killed 86 people, Ms. Boxall attributes the comparatively mind 2019 fire season
to actions PG&E took to shut down power to many Californians, often for
days. She quotes Stanford University researcher Michael Wara, who testified
before a Congressional committee that Pacific Gas & Electric’s inspections
of wind damage to its lines and equipment made it clear that, without
preventive shutdowns, “we would have had a significant number of utility-caused
fires” in 2019.
Boxall found that all of California’s 20
most destructive wildfires were human-related, with half due to power line or
electrical problems. She also noted that a study of US records from 1992 to
2012 found that human activity (power lines, carelessness and arson) was
responsible for 84% of wildfires and 44% of acreage burned nationwide. That’s
the ignition factor. Two other
factors are equally important.
Even if there is ignition, if there is
insufficient fuel, there will still
be no wildfire – at least not monstrous, deadly conflagrations. Thin the
forests, remove dead trees, control brush and grass levels, especially in dry
seasons and arid regions. It’s basic, intelligent land management; the Boy
Scout motto: Be prepared.
Preparation also
means maintaining fire breaks and access roads into forest, brush and grass
lands; building and maintaining sufficient escape routes and warning systems,
and making people aware of them; ensuring that each family and community has an
escape plan; and having enough trucks, airplanes, helicopters, other equipment
and personnel to respond to average fires and
worst-case scenarios. It means educating children and adults about how to
prevent fires, put them out, and get out of their path.
(California public schools offer multiple courses
on climate change. Cool California lists even more. But as long as politicians
and even industry leaders keep spreading the false gospel of climate change as
the principal cause of wildfires, the need for personal and political responsibility
will be ignored.)
Third, actual response to a fire means ensuring the political, social, financial
and institutional support to get sufficient personnel, equipment and water to a
fire before it turns into an uncontrollable inferno.
Do all that, and the recovery phase –
rebuilding homes, businesses, habitats, wildlife numbers and shattered human
lives – will be far less extensive, costly and traumatic. Difficult recoveries
will also be minimized by not wasting scarce time and money on fashionable,
politically correct, “woke” issues like how many fire fighters are of a
specific ethnic or sexual identity group.
People and animals in the path of a roaring inferno care only that first
responders are prepared, equipped and on time. So should politicians.
Every one of these vital matters is within
our power to control – if we can muster the political willpower to take
appropriate action. None of them involves climate change.
It doesn’t matter if Earth’s or
California’s or Australia’s average annual or summer temperature is 0.1 or even
1.0 degrees warmer. Or that a drought is a day, month or year longer than X. Or
whether the climate and weather fluctuations are driven by human or natural
forces. Or that America, Australia, Britain, China, India or Indonesia is “not
doing enough” to curb fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions.
Climate change did not cause 129 million
trees to die in California – or prevent the state and feds from removing the
dead trees, thinning the forests, and clearing overgrown brush and grass. Ditto
for Australia.
We must play the hand we have been dealt.
That means acting responsibly and intelligently to prevent and respond to
wildfires under whatever climate, drought, diseased and dead trees, or other
conditions exist, wherever and whenever we live. Ben Franklin would be proud of
us.
Paul
Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow
(www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy,
climate, environmental and human rights issues. Duggan Flanakin is CFACT’s director
of policy research.
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