California Dems Fight Trump While State Burns

By Daniel Greenfield , @ Sultan Knish Blog 

As President Trump took office, top California Democrats lined up by the Capitol building in Sacramento to form a healing circle.

Not healing for those killed in the fires burning up parts of Southern California, or those who had lost family members, homes and prized possessions, but to protest Trump taking office.

Surrounded by flickering candles arranged on the steps and piled on the podium, the lawmakers, despite their promise to form a ‘healing circle’, stood in more of the traditional press conference line, and vowed to protect illegal aliens from the Trump administration.

The candles were not there to mourn the dead, but to mourn the results of the 2024 election.

Meanwhile a new fire had broken out which quickly consumed 8,000 acres. That was followed by another fire which forced thousands more to flee their homes. But such concerns were entirely distant from the ‘healing circle’ where none of the wildfire victims could be heard.

“Now more than ever, we must come together to organize and show this president that we are not backing down,” Assemblyman Mike Gipson vowed.

“We do not let Trump harass, intimidate, and push our immigrant community,” Sen. Susan Rubio threatened.

There was no actual healing to be found at the healing circle while the state burned, just rage, threats, warnings and an obsession with protecting their illegal alien majority.

“The California Legislature will be there for our immigrant community,” Assemblyman Alex Lee assured.

The American citizens fleeing the latest fire caused by Democrat mismanagement, political corruption and woke policymaking had no such assurances.

No amount of fires could shift the attention of California Democrats away from illegal aliens.

Even as the worst of the fires blazed, Gov. Newsom and Democrat legislators convened an illegal special session to divert $25 million to fighting efforts to deport illegal alien criminals.

Republicans requested a special session on the wildfires instead of on fighting Trump.

Speaker Robert Rivas appeared to be caught in the headlights when he was challenged by KCRA 3 correspondent Ashley Zavala who asked, “is now the right time to have a special legislative session on allocating money to fight Trump?”

“People are trying to understand what’s going on and are worried about disaster relief, worried about the ability to get homeowners insurance, your chamber gaveled into a special legislative session to prepare for Donald Trump in a way that you are already able to do without a special legislative session. So again, is now the right time for that?” she asked.

Rivas replied by claiming that Democrats were acting with “great urgency” but the greatest urgency was reserved for partisan agendas and protecting illegal aliens in the name of that agenda. And even while the state claimed it didn’t have the money for wildfire relief, it freed up $50 million, double Gov. Newsom’s original request, to wage war on the new administration.

“This funding agreement cements California’s readiness to serve as a bulwark against Trump’s extremist agenda,” Senate Budget Committee Chair Scott Wiener bragged.

California Democrats might not have the readiness to fight fires, but they could fight Trump.

During his first term, California Democrats had sued the federal government 123 times at an annual cost of $10 million. Inflation under Biden has sent costs soaring so this time around, Gov. Newsom wanted $25 million just to ante up at the lawfare table.

Attorney General Rob Bonta, who still hopes to replace Newsom as the man to run the state into the ground for the next four years, was quickly out of the gate with a lawsuit defending citizenship for second generation illegal aliens. “The president chose to start his second term by knocking down one of our country’s foundational, long-standing rights and disregarding our nation’s governing document,” he complained, referring to the 14th Amendment.

Bonta, a Yale Law School graduate, appeared unaware that the 14th amendment came about 80 years after the Constitution and was not “foundational” in any possible sense of the word.

He also appeared unaware that most Californians wanted the attorney general, a Newsom appointee, to fix problems like massive crime, rather than file lawsuits for illegal aliens.

But what they may not have understood was that the special session had less to do with Trump or with illegal aliens than it did with the political fortunes of Newsom and Bonta. Gov. Newsom had secured $25 million in taxpayer money to promote his presidential prospects and secure Bonta’s role as his successor. While California burned, its top officials ignored everything to fight Trump, protect illegal aliens and exploit opposition to Trump to maintain their political power.

California Democrats might have claimed that they couldn’t manage wildfire relief on their own, but they had millions aplenty to advance the crooked political careers of Newsom and Bonta.

The corrupt nature of California’s resistance was not only rooted in protecting criminals, including the drug cartel and gang members who are the leading targets for Trump’s deportations, but in the integration between the party, activists and political careerists.

In Sacramento’, Biden’s old advocacy director flew out from D.C. to stage a rally at the Capitol.

“We are here to defeat, delay, and dilute Trump’s extreme agenda at every level, including the state and local level,” Schifeling, who had jumped ship from the Biden White House to head the ACLU’s advocacy operation, ranted.

California might be on fire, but the state and its major populated regions had always been on fire in one sense or another. Runaway crime and homelessness, the collapse of the retail sector and the educational system, were all crises that were ignored by the Democrat ruling class.

Democrats had spent the first term of the Trump administration on lawsuits instead of on fixing those problems and as Trump’s second term arrived, they made it clear once more that they would watch the state burn to the ground before they would change a thing.

Or give up power.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. 

Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left tells the untold story of the Left's 200-Year War against America And readers love it.

Hello Hollywood, Welcome to Reality, Part III

 By Rich Kozlovich 

 

Yesterday I posted Part II, and I did what I'm doing a lot more now, and that's linking followup articles as updates at the end of my commentaries in order to make sure the whole story gets told.  But the number of commentaries about this became so large I decided to eliminate those links and use them, and a lot more besides, to create a second piece, a third piece, and at the rate this is going, there will most likely be a fourth piece.    

Last Saturday in, P&D and the Week That Was,  I stated:

As for the L.A. fire disaster, which my first article covers, as this unravels it's really gonna get ugly as these misfits finger point and blame each other, and even some will condemn the Democrat party.  Many I'm sure will try to project their blame on Trump, Republicans, conservatives, etc.  

Well, that's what's happening and it didn't really take much insight to conclude that what was going to happen.   One Democrat Senator claims this is just a preview of what's to come under Trump blaming big oil, global warming.

Okay, supposing that has any resemblance to reality, then one has to ask, why is it happening now? Biden has been President for four years, and the entire administration has breathed the fumes of the fever swamps of global warming activists and have acted accordingly.  If that's so, and it is, then can he explain why this isn't the fault of California Democrats, and the Democrat party and Biden?  

If they really believed climate change is responsible for all of this, and given California's wildfire and wind history they should have known this was a major possibility, so why weren't they prepared?  Where were the firebreaks?  Why wasn't brush cleared out?  Why were the reservoirs empty in spite of record rain fall? Where was the maintenance on the fire hydrants?  Even if they didn't believe in global warming given California's history that should have automatically been standard operating procedure. 

Mad Maxine knows who really is responsible. It's the rich.  The usual leftist meme:  Blame someone else for their failures. Gavin Newsome blames local leaders, and as it turns out....according to Newsome, he's blameless and demands answers, and besides it's really all Donald Trump's fault.  Yet it wasn't the local authorities or Trump who cut $100 Million from California's fire prevention budget in 2024, it wasn't local officials who fought the Trump administration that tried to stop the misdirection of water to alleged save any number of fish species.  It wasn't local officials or Trump who removed four hydroelectric dams that by their very nature were water reservoirs.  It was Newsome. 

Here's the one I really like.  FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell blames global warming....well... they all know the planet isn't warming so they've changed it to climate change.  The department that played politics ( Here and Here), with a history of throwing Americans under the bus, you would think their concerns would be fixing what they're doing that has been so disastrously wrong!  But it isn't, in spite of all that, it's real challenge and concern is disinformation.  (More Here)

They failed miserably to care for hurricane victims in North Carolina, claiming they didn't have sufficient funds to help them, and as it turns out FEMA's resources were going to illegal aliens. (More Here and Here)

 (End of the American Dream)—What we are witnessing in the mountains of North Carolina says a lot about where we are as a nation.  The federal response to Hurricane Helene has been absolutely abysmal, and hardly anyone is really surprised by this because the federal government can’t seem to do anything right these days.  

And it gets worse as this piece shows how politics was paramount with the Biden administration, not duty.   

A clip from a FEMA disaster preparedness meeting has sparked fresh outrage, shedding light on the Biden-Harris administration’s politically motivated handling of disaster response efforts. The footage, recorded in March 2023, shows FEMA Emergency Management Specialist Tyler Atkins prioritizing the needs of LGBTQIA+ communities over broader disaster relief efforts.

So, why am I bringing in all this FEMA stuff?  For the best reason in the world.  It demonstrates a pattern of activity.  A pattern of corruption and stupidity.   FEMA just kicked out 2000 hurricane survivors out of temporary housing into snowstorm and freezing temperatures.  What FEMA was and is doing,  is what what California has been doing.   

The reasons for California's failure to control this fire is nothing more than a demonstration of what the left are doing all over the nation.  Corruption, incompetence, stupidity, politics over duty and responsibility.   The Democrats have handed conservatives a major gift, and this may become a major turning point in American politics.  

The Fire Chief says her diversity push had nothing to do with this disaster.  Okay, I'm willing to accept that if she's willing to accept her incompetence and stupidity played a large role in this disaster.  She was part of the program that caused a lack of resources.  She knew fire hydrants would not work, she knew the reservoirs were dry, or not working, and she was responsible for that failure because her focus was on hiring more women and spending what resources she had on DEI training instead of fire prevention and control.  

California has rewritten the laws to make penalties for crime as painless as possible as a result looting is rampant, and now people are outraged, imagine that, so now there's a recall movement for Karen Bass.   Make no mistake, as Governor DeSantis notes, if Newsom, or for that matter Bass, were Republicans the media would be tearing their heads off.  But have no doubt the people of California and L.A. will elect someone just as worthless as these nitwits.

The people of California, totally supported by a corrupt media, elected Newsome twice and supported him against a recall.  Whether all that was fraudulent or not, he's their guy, and now they have to pay the price.  Schadenfreude.

Hello Hollywood, Welcome to Reality, Part II

Barr and Newsome:  Are they guilty of negligent homicide, or depraved indifference?

By Rich Kozlovich

This is from the 1964 speech "A Time for Choosing" given by Ronald Reagan who became Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. 

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream – the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order – or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

How could California go from Ronald Reagan to Gavin Newsome and sink into such depravity?  On January 11, 2025 Todd Gregory and Erik Gregory posted this article, Newsom, Bass guilty of negligent homicide, outlining in the article the monstrous history of socialist tyrants.  Socialism is the mother philosophy of fascism, and communism, it's children, two sides of the same coin, along with all the other ism manifestations, such as environmentalism.  All of which are misanthropic. 

"Negligent homicide is a criminal charge brought against a person who, through criminal negligence, allows another person to die".

"Depraved indifference is a state of mind in which someone acts with a reckless disregard for human life and the value of human life.  In the United States, depraved indifference is a legal term that can be used to describe a type of murder known as depraved-heart murder. Depraved-heart murder occurs when someone acts with depraved indifference to human life and their actions result in death, even if they didn't intend to kill."

 

He went on to discuss the monstrous horrors Mao imposed on the people of China, including outright murders and planned mass starvation, and his brand of DEI where farmers were told they were going to be surgeons and surgeons were forced to be farmers.  

California is America's Maoist China, as the authors go on to say:

In modern America, the closest thing to Mao’s and Obama’s progressive Utopia is to be found in the sad, violent, debauched state of California.,...How can California’s voters continue to vote for the likes of DEI mayor Karen Bass, a dyed-in-the-wool racist who idolized Fidel Castro and shrugged off warnings of imminent fire danger in Los Angeles in order to go party in West Africa on the taxpayers’ dime? ..........

Newsom’s decidedly unscientific fantasy about apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming..... the smelt fish lives while people die in preventable, government-caused wildfires......because Gavin Newsom keeps flushing trillions of gallons of rainwater out to sea rather than building up and maintaining California’s reservoirs to fight fires

The articles goes on to make what I think is a really cogent observation asking:

What about the idealistic if misguided waitress in South Central LA who donated a hard-earned $50 to the Kamala Harris campaign, only to see Kamala give that money to billionaire Oprah Winfrey or other celebrities from the progressive Überklasse?  Is there some cognitive dissonance for the waitress, or will she mindlessly vote for Karen Bass for mayor again, and Kamala for governor in 2026?

These are radical leftists who are directly responsible for billions of dollars in damage and the death of over a dozen people.  I can only image how horrible those deaths must have been.   

Will all this cause Californians change the views and habits? I don't think so, but the rest of the nation is watching, and it seems clear Americas are finding it inconceivable how anyone in a leadership position can be so incompetent, so stupid, so vile, and so self serving as these nitwits in California have been.  This disaster could very well become a major turning point in American politics.  This drives home the reality of what leftism is and has always has been; irrational, misanthropic, and morally defective.

So, are they guilty of negligent homicide or depraved indifference?  They're guilty of something that merits punishment, and which ever carries the most punishment gets my vote.  Gavin Newsom must be held accountable, A mere resignation is not enough.

One more thing.  Has anyone  seen an explanation as to why Mayor Barr was in Africa in the first place, and was she there on the public's dime?    

This isn't just California, this is leftism, this is the insanity of the Democrat party in America. 

Hello Hollywood, Welcome to Reality, Part I

By Rich Kozlovich

It appears Hollywood has received a "warm" welcome to the world, the world they helped to create, one they lovingly embraced, the secular religious world of leftism.  Everywhere else that embrace represented disaster, and we have over 235 years of history to prove it.  No lights in Cuba, no water in L.A. and after sixty years of communist control of Cuba a third of their houses are in ruins, and they've supported all of this insanity everywhere.   So, yet they're not all warm and happy? 

Instead they're outraged, outraged I tell you, ranting and demanding the resignation of these people in charge in California (Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here,) And these are the same kind of nitwits Hollywood wants running the nation.  Imagine that!  

And just because it's their ox that's being gored, or in this case their houses being destroyed with all the things they treasure, they're outraged.  Remarkable.  Well,  I say.... schadenfreude!  They brought this on themselves, but this will help prevent this from being brought on the nation. I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that.

Will Hollywood, and California abandon their leftist dipsticks, and turn MAGA? Nah, I don't think so because there's always a lunatic like Jim Jarmusch who knows those really responsible are ‘climate deniers’, i.e., conservatives, whites, along with traditional Christians and Jews, and it wouldn't be long before the invertebrates in Hollywood and the rest of the leftist nutrolls would follow suit.   Bernie Sanders, who thought the Soviet Union was paradise, also claims global warming is the cause, but scientists are finally bucking this mass scientific hysterical fraud say, climate change isn't the cause.   

But, hey, c'mon man, we really know who's at fault.   It's the Jews.  Radical Left-Wing Code Pink Links California Wildfires to Gaza Conflict.  What would these poor insane leftists do if there were no Jews to blame for their failures? 

Believe it or not, there is an upside to this, and perhaps we should all stop picking on these politicians and officials in California.  They’ve provided an incredibly important service to the nation, and the world. So, let me explain.

Let's take a look at the official incompetence of the unelected leadership.

1. L.A. Fire Captain: Some Supplies Aren’t Designed for Firefighting
2. Firetrucks Use Garden Hoses From Residential Homes to Fill Up Water Tanks as Hydrants Run Dry (VIDEO)
3. Environmentalism-Obsessed LA Doesn't Have Enough Water to Fight Fire Effectively
4. LA Fire Chief Warned Budget Cuts Would Impact Responses to Major Emergencies Weeks Before Fires
5. Years Before LA Inferno, Commiefornia’s Fire and Water Management Policies Raised Fears of Catastrophe
6. Last Year a Fireman Told Joe Rogan That With the Right Wind and Fire, LA Would Burn to the Ground [VIDEO]
7. Firestorm of incompetence in Los Angeles: Water company admits their big reservoir to fight fires was bone dry 
8. Marlow: LAFD Prioritizes Diversity over Preparedness…
9. L.A. Officials Complain There Aren’t Enough Firefighters – After Firing Hundreds Who Refused to Take COVID Vaccine

Official incompetence and stupidity was universal, and on going, and in spite of all the history and warnings about California's fires and "devil wind storms", stupidity was embraced as wisdom.... an all too common thread for leftists. 

For years there’s been a lot of rhetoric back and forth between conservatives and leftists, but conservatives no longer need to argue.  California has in so many ways provided proof leftism, represented by Democrats and RINO’s in America, is a failed secular religion ruled by historically ignorant, emotion mongering brainless nitwits, incompetent fools, and corrupt misfits.  See, definition does lead to clarity!

Now a look at the incompetence level by the elected officials.

1. LA Mayor Karen Bass Was MIA in Africa While Her City Burned
2. Maybe That's Why Mayor Karen Bass Kept Her Mouth Shut About Her Absence in Handling the LA County Fires 
3.  Dem Rep. Sherman: ‘Political’ to Blame L.A. Fire Budget Cuts for Impacts of Fire
4. Newsom on Water Situation: ‘Local Folks Are Trying to Figure That Out’
5.  Palisades Fire Incinerates Future Career of Mayor Karen Bass, Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Aspirations 
6. Watch: Gavin Newsom Thanks L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Away in Africa, for Help by Phone During Fire 
7. 'Never enough diversity': Watch as L.A. Fire Department spent years pushing super-woke policies
8.  No Water, No Mayor, But Plenty Of Diversity
9.  MADDENING: Watch Adam Carolla Explain How He Applied to be a Los Angeles Firefighter But Was Turned Away for Being a White Male (VIDEO)

Amerian Thinker puts out a Weekly Digest, and Andrea Widburg made some extermely cogent observations:

The Democrat politicians they trusted to protect them from reality’s consequences failed. Obsessed with social justice, climate change, DEI, CRT, LGBTQ+, ..... Gavin Newsom cut the fire remediation budget, although he did make free medical care available for illegal aliens.........

Mayor Karen Bass (a Maoist who once believed in violently overthrowing the American government) found money for a trip to Ghana after cutting the fire department budget.  As for the fire department itself........ The fire chief, Kristina Crowley, believed that her priority as chief wasn’t dealing with fires; it was getting more women on the force......Kristine Larson, the “Equity Bureau” chief, had tough words for men foolish enough to find themselves physically incapacitated during a fire with only women firefighters available to help out: 

“He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”

What about the California Republicans?  From what my conservative friends from California involved in CAGOP say (who are not on the leadership's happy list) the party leadership is filled with RINO's and act just as corruptly as Democrats to hold on to power. They share in this fiasco just as sure night follows day. If what the author is asking for is going to happen, there would have to be a massive revolt in the CAGOP. We'll see, but given what they've tolerated, their anti-conservative biases, along with their TDS issues, I'm inclined to think holding your breath until that happens really isn't a very good idea.

So, back to my point about thanking California, and the reason why we need to thank Californians, even the dead ones, for continuing to vote  for these misfits.  We can now assuredly say if California is doing something they think is really great, we know it's really a bad idea.  So, now anyone choosing to do the opposite to what they're doing in California can be confident they're making the correct decision.   That's priceless, and it's incontestable history!  So, from now on all conservatives have to say to ranting leftists is, “tell me about the water in L.A".

Thank you California, and keep up the good work!  I thank you, the nation thanks you, and the delta smelt thank you also. 

Update:  

•  L.A. Descends Into Chaos as Looters Exploit Wildfires
•  National Guard deploys to stop looters.
•  Newsom, Bass guilty of negligent homicide 

The Deadly Impact of Government Incompetence

August 21, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Mostly because politicians focus on the seen rather than the unseen , I’ve unfortunately had several reasons to write about government policies and premature death.

 

• Government-run health care
• Pandemic lockdowns
• FDA regulation
• Gun control
• Anti-vaping rules
• Bans on organ sales
• Pharma price controls

Today, we’re sadly going to add to this list.

Why? Because the Hawaii government’s short-sighted incompetence contributed to the deadly fire on the island of Maui.

The Wall Street Journal opined about its deadly blunders, most of which were driven by climate alarmism.

…one culprit that seems to be emerging is the tradeoff the local utility had to navigate between power grid safety and the government-mandated green energy transition. …If Hawaiian Electric’s lines did ignite the fires, it would echo the problems of PG&E, the California utility… What both utilities have in common is that they prioritized growing renewable power to meet government mandates over hardening their systems and reducing fire risk. In 2015 Hawaii lawmakers required that 100% of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2045. …Every dollar the utility spent on subsidizing solar and connecting renewables to the grid was one less dollar available for strengthening equipment and removing combustible brush. …Not until last year did the utility seek state approval to raise rates for wildfire-safety improvements, which it still hasn’t received. …Grid upgrades to achieve the net-zero promised land will cost another $2.5 trillion by 2050, according to a Princeton University study. Something will invariably give. And as we’ve seen in California and Hawaii, it may be safety.

Politicians and bureaucrats also failed in other ways, as explained by Connor O’Keeffe in his column for the Mises Institute.

Human choices, land use, and government policies play a big role in how harmful hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, flash floods, and wildfires are to the affected communities. …it’s becoming clear that government failure did much to make this disaster worse—and possibly even started it. While the so-called experts are blaming climate change—and in the process demanding that government grab even more power and authority ostensibly to someday give us better weather—the destructiveness of this fire was the product of an all-powerful and all-incompetent régime. …To review, a power company shielded from competition by the state placed electrical infrastructure among highly flammable state-owned grass fields above the historic city of Lahaina, which the government was twice warned were highly susceptible to fire. And once a fire broke out, a combination of defective water infrastructure, terrible communication by government officials, and only one escape route doomed the people of Lahaina to the worst wildfire experienced in this country in over a hundred years. This was government failure through and through.

In closing, government screwed up.

That being said, I’m not going to pretend to know what share of the blame should be assigned to politicians and bureaucrats.  After all, disasters happen and it may be impossible – or excessively costly – to preemptively deal with all contingencies.

But some humility and repentance by government officials would be a silver lining to this dark cloud. After all, I hope we can all agree that human lives matter more than the alarmism of left-environmentalists.

 

Wildfires And Climate Change: Narrative Ever More Detached From Actual Evidence

June 16, 2023/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

 Here in New York during the past couple of weeks, we had some days where the air was rather incredibly smoky. At times, you could barely see the Empire State Building from where I live (about one mile). The smoke was said to originate from wildfires in the Canadian forests, mostly in Quebec but some farther West.

Getting such a large amount of smoke around here from wildfires in Canada is quite unusual. Indeed, I can’t remember it happening previously, at least to this extent. So something must be different. Could this all be the result of — CLIMATE CHANGE????!!!!

Of course, the media have been filled with articles making the wildfires-to-climate-change link. You probably saw as many of these stories as I did. Here is a small sample:

• From the Washington Post, June 3, 2023: “It’s already a wildfire season for the record books in Canada, with the blistering heat of summer and howling winds of fall still ahead. . . . The rash of blazes, intensified by record heat in many areas, is an ominous sign of the ill effects of climate change, which are not confined to Canada.”
• From Carbon Brief, June 9: “Huge clouds of smoke from the blaze have blown thousands of kilometres down to the eastern US, shrouding cities such as New York and Washington DC in an orange haze and causing levels of toxic air pollution to reach record levels. Scientists have been quick to make the link with climate change. The hot and dry conditions resulting from rising global temperatures are known to make wildfires more extreme. Many US commentators said the fires should act as a “wake-up call” for climate action.”
• From CBS News, June 12: “One month in, Canada is on track to have its most destructive wildfire season in history. Climate change-driven extreme temperatures and drought have created a tinderbox.“

And don’t forget our ever-authoritative Senator Chuck Schumer (quoted in The Hill, June 7):

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the Canadian wildfires “truly unprecedented” in floor remarks Wednesday and warned of the ongoing damage caused by climate change.

The link between wildfires and climate change just seems so intuitively obvious. Who could be so uncouth as to question it? But do real world data show a correlation between climate change and wildfires that could potentially be an indicator of a causal relationship?

My friend Joe D’Aleo (he’s a member of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council that is the plaintiff in our DC Circuit litigation against EPA) runs a website called ICECAP where, among many other things, he regularly posts various research and data in a section called “Climate Alarmist Claim Fact Checks.” On Monday June 12 he posted this piece, with the title “More on the Recent Smoky Days.” Joe’s piece collects data from actual authoritative sources as to numbers of wildfires and acres burned by year.

There is much interesting data in Joe’s piece, all of it contradicting the simplistic “climate change causes wildfires” narrative. I’ll give a few examples. Here is chart of acres burned by wildfires in the U.S. from 1926 to 2017:

This chart was originally compiled by Danish environmentalist author Bjorn Lomborg. There were two main sources: something called the National Interagency Fire Center for data 1960 to 2017, and the Historical Statistics of the United States for 1926 to 1970. The two data sources overlap for the 10 year period 1960-70. D’Aleo describes how the two sources were combined:

Bjorn Lomborg overlapped National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) annual US fire data with the Historical Statistics of the United States – Colonial Times to 1970. There we have statistics for area burnt since 1926 and up to 1970. Reassuringly, the data for 1960-1970 ‘completely overlap.’ “This is the same data series.” Professor Lomborg said.

While these data may be far from perfect, there is no mistaking that the major trend is a dramatic decline in fires, with most of the decline having taken place from about 1930 to 1960. The recent uptick still leaves the amount of acreage burned annually in the range of one-fifth what it was in the early twentieth century. These data are rather obviously inconsistent with a narrative that wildfires are on a rapidly increasing trend due to warming temperatures from “climate change.”

An even more interesting chart reproduced by D’Aleo originates from a 2014 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research with the very long title “Spatial and temporal patterns of global burned area in response to anthropogenic and environmental factors: Reconstructing global fire history for the 20th and early 21st centuries.” The authors, Yang, et al., are a group associated with the Canadian Forest Service. They put in a massive research effort to determine the acreage burned by wildfires worldwide from 1900 through 2010. The following chart comes from the Yang, et al., paper, with a separate line showing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 superimposed by Gregory Wrightstone of the CO2 Coalition:

Atmospheric CO2 goes continuously up; acreage burned in wildfires goes continuously down. How can that negative correlation be explained? Yang, et al., have many theories as to causation, some of them contradictory. But this one may be important:

CO2 can suppress fire occurrence by retaining more water in the soil [Nelson et al., 2004] through reducing transpiration [Ainsworth and Rogers, 2007].

In any event, whatever the underlying causal mechanisms (which may be complex), there is no denying that the simplistic “climate change causes increased wildfires” narrative cannot be right.

The remarkable thing about this is the extent to which the Washington Post, CBS News, Chuck Schumer, and dozens more of like thinkers just repeat a narrative that is clearly wrong, and see no need to ever look at actual data to try to understand what is going on

Fight fires with facts – not fake science

Eliminate fuel, prevent ignition, stop arson, end irresponsible land management policies

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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California's Environmentalists Endangered the Environment

Posted by Daniel Greenfield 3 Comments Wednesday, January 30, 2019 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Jerry Brown, California’s outgoing governor, wants environmentalism to be his legacy. It’s certainly a better legacy than the 3 people murdered in his final month in office by illegal alien criminals whom his sanctuary state law protected from ICE detainers. But Brown’s environmental legacy is equally terrible.

Governor Brown earned the nickname ‘Governor Moonbeam’ for his soliloquies about Spaceship Earth.

"My own belief is that California has a unique place on the planet. It's been a place of dreams. We can pursue a path of benign energy," he rhapsodized, early in his political career.

Brown’s environmental fanaticism has wrecked California’s agriculture and helped cause a drought by diverting water supplies and failing to make any serious provisions for water preservation and reclamation. As a pseudoscientific notion about carbon causing global warming took hold, he vowed a carbon crackdown. California, he ordered last year, would go “carbon neutral” by 2045.

Doing so would require eliminating California’s oil and gas, outlawing cars, plastic cups and what’s left of its manufacturing and agriculture. Electricity would become unaffordable to all except the very wealthy.

And it wouldn’t matter because Brown’s forest fires and droughts would raise carbon numbers more than all the cars on all the freeways or the air conditioning in the homes of the people he had targeted.

The Department of the Interior estimated that the 2018 wildfire season produced 68 million tons of carbon dioxide. “This number equates to about 15 percent of all California emissions, and it is on par with the annual emissions produced by generating enough electricity to power the entire state for a year,” the press release noted.

The environment, as usual, ‘pollutes’ itself far more than the entire human race ever could. But the fires that devastated California had a little help from environmentalists and their tree-hugging cult.

"There's too much dead and dying timber in the forest, which fuels these catastrophic fires. Proper management of our forests, to include small prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, and other techniques, will improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfires, while also helping curb the carbon emissions," Secretary Zinke had warned.

The sanctity of the tree is a fundamental tenet of the environmentalist creed. Saving the planet, they believed, required fighting loggers who wanted to chop down the trees and harm the environment. But trees, like every other lifeform, will either have their numbers managed naturally or by humanity. When people don’t harvest trees, forest fires naturally burn through and stimulate new forest growth.

California’s efforts to protect trees led to massive forest fires that claimed the lives of men, women and children, that destroyed thousands of homes, and also burned countless numbers of trees.

While natural wildfires regenerate forests, the lack of forestry management caused a rebound effect leading to severe fires that not only destroyed massive numbers of trees, but limited tree regrowth.

Environmentalism has its roots in a romanticist cult that arose in opposition to industrialization which refuses to understand that the environment operates in cycles, rather than existing in a fixed utopian state until human industry disrupts its natural functioning. Political influence has vested the cult with the trappings of pseudoscience fed by researchers willing to say anything for government grants.

Placing ideology ahead of science proved as debilitating to California’s environment as it did in the USSR.

California’s Air Resources Board however remains committed to ignoring the impact of its policies in much the same way that Soviet officials ignored their impact of their environmental catastrophes.

The ARB has chosen to score only carbon emissions produced by industry and direct human activities, not those produced by environmental policies. That allows the ARB to claim victory over carbon while ignoring the actual amounts of carbon emissions in California.

ARB’s spokesman insisted that it “can only regulate what can be controlled.”

The wildfires turned so historically devastating as a result of California’s environmental regulations. Brown and his environmental allies however blamed the wildfires on “climate change”. But if global warming really caused the wildfires, then why not count the carbon emissions from the fires?

The answer is that the environmentalist policies are a political hoax. And imaginary carbon targets have to be met through fake numbers for fighting a fake problem by ignoring environmental catastrophes.

California won’t actually reduce its carbon emissions. Instead it will go on raising electricity rates, gas prices and outlawing basic necessities, such as plastic bags, while declaring victory over carbon. The actual emission numbers will be buried in a wave of carbon trading scams, in which African countries will be paid to reduce their industrial output to atone for California’s industrial sins.

Carbon trading, when legitimate, impoverishes the Third World, eliminating jobs and industry, causing famines and crushing social mobility, putting money in the bank accounts of governments and not in the hands of the people, but mostly it’s a scam that can’t be meaningfully verified or confirmed. There will be more carbon than ever and Californians will be taxed more than ever, while the profits will go to, the green tycoons handling the carbon transactions while donating to Democrats, and to African warlords.

And when environmentalists admit the existence of the carbon spike, they falsely blame it on industry.

The Peoples Climate Movement claimed that a national 3.4% carbon rise proved "we can’t trust unregulated market forces to save us from climate change". Its solution is "federal, state, and local level" government intervention and a "Green New Deal".

But it’s federal, state and local level government intervention that caused rising carbon numbers. Market forces would have prevented the wildfires and lowered those dreaded carbon emissions.

And not just in California.

National Geographic reported that climate researchers found that the western drought had led to an extra 100 megatons in carbon emissions or the equivalent of adding 1.4 million cars every year.

California had become more dependent on hydroelectric power, which is far more reliable than the trendy, but erratic solar and wind, and is loathed by environmentalists. As the artificial drought worsened, California had to revert back to fossil fuels, raising carbon numbers.

The artificial droughts, caused by the diversion of water for environmental purposes and a failure to construct dams and harvest water resources, had reduced the use of hydroelectric power. Instead of building dams and reservoirs, Brown, Obama and other Democrats, had exploited the crisis to impose drastic rationing and increase environmentalist spending. But water mismanagement for environmental reasons led to higher fossil fuel use and higher rates of carbon emissions.

And there’s no sign that this cycle of environmental catastrophes caused by environmental regulations is about to change. California wildfires are projected to increase as the environmental cult continues obstructing realistic forestry management and viable timber industries. And the failure to maintain and expand water resources will go on causing droughts. These will increase carbon emission rates.

Environmentalists have made fossil fuels into carbon villains, but the latest national numbers show that even as coal plants closed, carbon rose anyway because of a cold winter, leading people in New England to heat their homes. Even as the war on coal was working, “emissions from residential and commercial buildings… for heating and cooking) increased by 10% in 2018 to their highest level since 2004.”

Once again, the environment had defeated the environmentalists.

Environmentalists spend a great deal of time claiming to study the human impact on the environment, but have a very poor grasp of how the environment works on its own terms, and how it impacts people.

Obama and Brown’s carbon cutting goals are impossible, not just because they would destroy the income and quality of life of ordinary Americans, but because their tactics obstruct their goals.

Environmentalists can’t fix the environment because they don’t understand how it works. Environmental policies cause environmental catastrophes making environmentalists the biggest threat to the environment.


Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine at the above link.

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