California Governor Jerry Brown blamed climate change for the California fires that have devastated the state this fall during a visit to assess the damage in Ventura County on Saturday.
“This is the new normal,” he said, as quoted by the Orange County Register. “We’re facing a new reality where fires threaten peoples’ lives, their properties, their neighborhoods and cost billions and billions of dollars. We have to have the resources to combat the fires, and also have to invest in managing our vegetation and forests and all the ways we dwell in this very wonderful place — but a place that’s getting hotter.”
However, climate scientists are more skeptical, noting that climate change could be one of a variety of factors.
A comprehensive look at the question by Southern California Public Radio — hardly a conservative outlet — found that there was considerable debate about the factors that made this year’s fires particularly bad.
One factor was high winds, whose connection to climate change is “still up for debate.” Another factor was the state’s recent drought, which persisted in the part of Southern California where the Thomas fire — now in excess of 150,000 acres, with only 15% containment — struck. (Ironically, last winter’s heavy rains caused brush to grow rapidly, giving fires plenty of fuel to burn.)
An important factor in the fires of the past week was that people are building homes in areas that are naturally prone to wildfires, or where naturally dry conditions mean that the kinds of building materials and vegetation that people prefer to use in cities and suburbs are a fire hazard.
Brown has frequently cited climate change as the cause for natural disasters before, only to be corrected by scientists, who suggested he was guilty of “noble-cause corruption” — i.e. distorting science in service of a cause that many scientists support.
Last year, both Brown and then-President Barack Obama falsely linked wildfires across the western United States to climate change. And last month, Brown told a conference at the Vatican that the world needed “brain washing” on climate change.
Aside from the Thomas fire, firefighters have made significant progress in their struggle against some of the other fires burning across the region. The Skirball fire near the 405 Freeway, which brought traffic to a standstill in Los Angeles on Thursday, was at 75 percent containment as of Saturday afternoon, according to Southern California Public Radio. The Lilac fire, which killed several dozen horses on Thursday, was fully contained by Saturday evening, according to the Register.
“The Creek Fire was now 80% contained, and the Rye Fire was 65% contained” as of Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Officials say there have been no deaths associated with the Southern California fires.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.