Don’t Blame Global Warming For Killer Wildfires
The Spaniards didn’t know whether the smoke came from the campfires in the many Native American villages in the basin or from the wildfires in the hills that had been started naturally by dry lightning – just as they are today.
When I was growing up, we had wildfires in the hills and the Santa Ana winds fanning them every year.
It’s one of California’s seasons. It’s like Florida’s “Hurricane Season,” only we call it “Fire Season.”
Back in the 1950s, the wildfires up and down the state mainly burned dry brush, grass and dead foliage, not homes and small towns.
But in the last 70 years, as California’s population exploded, we’ve built hundreds of thousands of new houses where they shouldn’t be.
Today wildfires still happen in the same places they used to, but the difference now is that hundreds of homes get destroyed.
If you’re living in a rural or suburban area with a million dead trees around you and a wildfire starts from dry lightning, a downed PG&E power line or an arsonist, don’t be an AOC and blame global warming.
Blame government stupidity.
For a hundred years federal and state forest managers have practiced a wrong-headed policy that quickly suppresses wildfires.
That policy, which has been criticized for decades, allows enormous amounts of fuel to build up on the forest or canyon floor so that when future wildfires start, as they will eventually, they will burn so fiercely they can’t be stopped.
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Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
