Another California wildfire, this time in Pacific Palisades.  30,000 ordered to evacuate.  And someone had to take Joe Biden by the hand and lead him away in a different direction.  I have already heard multiple commentators say, “We are seeing this more often…climate change.”  What utter nonsense.

First the facts.  I mentioned this book the other day.  One of the more accessible chapters lays out quite plainly there is no correlation between the changing climate and extreme weather events.  In point of fact, it makes the case that there is no change in the rate of extreme weather events whatsoever.  Now, these SoCal fires are all related to the Santa Ana winds – an extreme weather event.  So, if there is no change in the frequency of Santa Ana events, but there are more brushfires, and there are to some extent:

California’s massive fire seasons the past two years are part of a trend that scientists have traced back for more than four decades. The area consumed each year by fires has increased significantly over that period….

What is causing this increased fire damage??

Well, how about policy changes?  Money for brush clearance has dried up and controlled burns for brush control are forbidden by environmental regulation.  Over regulation of the utilities has resulted in less money being spent on system maintenance, increasing the likelihood of a fire-starting equipment failure.

Oh, and those plans they had to lead Biden away from?  Yeah, that was to lock up a bunch of land into an untouchable zone where the brush could grow and grow – unchecked save by wildfire.

What was it Jesus said, something about taking the log out of your own eye before you worry about the speck in the other guy’s eye.  Spare me the talk of climate change – it’s an excuse, not a reason.

ADDENDUM (the next morning) – I wrote the above last night when there was one fire, and it was bad but not awful.  This morning the devastation is vast in the palisades.  My old neighborhood – miles away – is now surrounded by new fires that erupted overnight.  The suffering is very real, and I do not in any way wish to minimize it, nor mock it.  I have some friends, now retired and moved away, that lived for years in a house that is likely a cinder this morning.  I have friends that are undoubtedly staring at the Pasadena/Altadena fires out of their windows deeply in anxious prayer.

The host has gone on this morning about “not blaming Gavin Newsom” and the inevitability of brushfire in SoCal.  Indeed, brushfire in SoCal is inevitable. something that has to be coped with.  My point in the above is that efforts to cope with it, to minimize the damage and loss, have been abandoned for other “priorities.”  The extent of the suffering and devastation is, in no small part, a result of bad decisions by bad government.