Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
The L A Times published yet another climate alarmist Ca. wildfire story quoting Gov. Brown claim that the states recent wildfires are driven by man made “greenhouse gases”.
The Gov. offered the following assessment:
“The more serious predictions of warming and fires to occur later in the century, 2040 or 2050, they’re now occurring in real time,” Brown said at a news conference at the state’s emergency operations center outside Sacramento.”
“Brown, who met with top fire and emergency response officials, said the state would spend whatever is needed to combat the blazes. But he said the current conditions are part of a long cycle that began with the rapid rise in greenhouse gases caused by human activity.”
The Gov. has made these flawed claims before as noted below even though the states forest management policy leadership had clearly identified the failure of a century long practice of unnatural wildfire suppression policies that has allowed the built up huge amounts of wildfire fuel materials that were greatly increasing the risks for more dangerous and damaging wildfires.
In October 18, 2015 L. A. Times article wildfire experts unsupportive of Brown’s position noted that:
“Today’s forest fires are indeed larger than those of the past, said National Park Service climate change scientist Patrick Gonzalez.
At a symposium sponsored by Brown’s administration, Gonzalez presented research attributing that trend to policies of fighting the fires, which create thick underlayers of growth, rather than allowing them to burn.
“We are living right now with a legacy of unnatural fire suppression of approximately a century,” Gonzalez told attendees.”
This century long policy of fire suppression and its impact of Ca. wildfires is further reflected in a 2015 University of California Berkeley study which noted:
“National parks and other protected areas clearly provide an important function in removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it,” said Battles. “But we also know from previous research that a century of fire suppression has contributed to a potentially unsustainable buildup of vegetation. This buildup provides abundant fuel for fires that contribute to carbon emissions.”
This most recent L A Times article fails to address these flawed forest management policies largely championed by environmentalists as being responsible for the present wildfire challenges being experienced in the state and instead tries to falsely speculate that man made greenhouse gases are the culprit.
The Times continues to promote its climate alarmism propaganda campaign by hiding the forest management fire suppression policy failures of the state as well ignoring the role played by Gov. Brown and the legislature in these failures.
The L A Times seems incapable of addressing real world issues regarding the states climate and energy policy.
Remember this from 2015 . . .
Federal land management to blame for out-of-control fires, say critics
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/17/poor-steward-federal-land-management-to-blame-for-out-control-fires-say-critics.html
Nature is trying to clean up the mess made by enviro driven mismanagement. Burn baby burn.
God preserve the fire fighters. I hope they get a fat bonus for this.
“Too much of the wrong kind of fire. Too little of the right kind of fire.”
– Fire historian Dr. Stephen J. Pyne
grotesque
ugly
misrule
how can sane man use this enormous tragedy to sell climate change?
There you have it – they’re not sane !
State is going to be sued over their fire policy, so gov is deflecting to climate boogeymen.
Here’s a story about insurance companies suing PG&E.
Lawyers are expensive so insurance companies won’t sue unless there’s a good chance of winning. That said, when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, the insurance companies hired a boat loaded with sophisticated (for the time) sidescan sonar and magnetometer. They also hired a bunch of divers. They were trying to find any uncharted rocks so they could sue the Canadian government.
Worse yet is Brown’s proposal to deflect wildfire damage onto homeowners insurance policies. Seems if the power line sets fire to the trees on a property it’ll be the property owners fault.
I’ve lived in the same CA house for 35 yrs and have seen a few minor fires started by tree branches grazing the wires, but in all those 35 years the power company HAS NEVER been by to conduct maintenance or limb removal, even in the public spaces. The fire brigade will come by and extinguish the tree, then drive off, but carp that its not their job to clean-up the mess. The county has repeatedly been by for streetlight maintenance clearing branches and limbs that interfere with the wiring not underground.
BTW there are restrictions as to what homeowners are allowed to perform regarding tree trimming.
That’s true almost everywhere.
A year or two ago there was a story about an Australian who cut back the trees too far from his house. He was charged. He was also vindicated because the next bush fire his house survived. He clearly knew better than the government expert. I can’t find a link so I don’t know how it finally turned out. Anyway, I’d rather pay a fine for cutting too many trees than be burned out.
Commiebob,
Here is the link.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090212-85bd.html
Thanks Iggie. After a bit of googling, I can’t find any evidence that the family got its money back or that the bumbling bureaucrats were properly punished.
What I read about the royal commission sure didn’t inspire confidence.
🙁
If it is the case I am thinking about, he was also sued by his neighbour because he removed the trees thereby spoiling their “forest view” . His house survived the bushfire, the neighbour’s (the one doing the suing) did not . I understand all the cases were dropped. The neighbour needed the money to rebuild his home and his case would have been laughed out of court given the circumstances and the Council decided not to try it on as they too might have tempted rather a lot of cases from landowners who lost homes because they were not allowed to clear trees close to property in one of Australia’s most bushfire prone areas. There is very clear advice from our CSIRO about bushfire protection which Councils routinely ignore because of tree-hugging fools who don’t apparently realise that trees will grow again. In so far as people may die as a result of these decisions, I would really like to see the officials responsible for refusing to allow amelioration of such dangerous conditions to be charged with manslaughter.
https://amp.smh.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090212-85bd.html
It’s not about sanity, it is about morality.
Sane, evil people do not let a disaster go to waste.
how can sane man use this enormous tragedy to sell climate change?
– Real simple. Another well-known Leftist Rule: “Never waste a crisis”.
Is there ever a tragedy the Left don’t trade on?
Same burn off policies by Green councils in Victoria, same results
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires
None to date.
This just in, the state of California accepts no responsibility/liability whatsoever for the wildfires.
yeah, but Exxon knew 😉
I thought all the greenies, including Gov. Brown, knew that AGW was going to cause hotter weather and more wildfire conditions. Given that, he should have planned accordingly.
The salient characteristic of liberals is that they compulsively spend oodles of money doing the wrong thing.
But always remember their mantra, “if we only had had more funding we could have prevented this horrible disaster”. You always hear it, on the few occasions when a gun is used by a non-drug gang member to commit a crime instead of someone using it to defend themselves. You’ll hear it when they loose an election because their candidate was horrible but they said nothing before when they were winning. You’ll hear it when your local council has city managers and personnel directors making 6 figures and the children are coughing up blood in swamp classrooms. For some reason they never have enough money for disasters and dependents while the D.C. beltway had the most buildings going up and infrastructure improvements on the entire continent before the last presidential election.
Like painting roads white.
OPM – Other Peoples’ Money.
Oddly.
Auto
I think we should all be grateful there are scientist’s out there like Patrick Gonzalez and John Battles who refuse to conform to the conventional MSM hysteria, instead concentrating on their area of expertise, and debunking Brown’s wild claims.
What should be happening, of course, is that Brown be censured for his wilful dereliction in the face of compelling scientific evidence that Californian forests require urgent management.
The town of Lewiston may be the next victim of the Carr fire burning in Shasta/Trinity counties. The Shasta burn was mainly driven by large amounts if brush. Trinity has forest to burn as well as heavy undergrowth. Depending on changes in the wind this fire could jump to a new level and rage until the rains come. Lewiston is a small town to the north east of where I live in Douglas City. The fire is around 1.5 to 2 miles outside of Lewiston as of yesterday afternoon.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=40.64026994661965%2C-122.7037239074707&hl=en&z=12&source=embed&ie=UTF8&mid=1HacmM5E2ueL-FT2c6QMVzoAmE5M19GAf
Hopefully the heavy TPW buildup out in the Pacific will continue to sweep to the east and move in to bring relief on these fires. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=-128.04,36.41,672/loc=-149.420,45.731
That is quite logical. Somehow they’ve gotten into too high concentration of CO2 and are hypoxic.
I’ve been following the Carr and the Ferguson (Yosemite) Fires rather closely and am struck by the different management styles and effect. Real news can be found at InciWeb.nwcg.gov
Just a thought, but wouldn’t more CO2 in the atmosphere lead to LESS burning? After all, CO2 doesn’t support combustion. Suggest Governor Moonbeam buy himself a CO2 fire extinguisher and prove that fact to himself by lighting a small fire and putting it out with said extinguisher. There you go, science in action!
Fire is hot. A warm globe is hot. See … there’s a direct connection between wildfires and a 0.4deg.F warmer globe! Only a stupid denier is too dull to understand this direct connection …
Pay no attention to the stupid people who light these fires, or the entire industry that thrives because of them
Only a goosestepper is malignant enough to deny that correlation is not causation.
So what are you saying? Forgetting my umbrella doesn’t cause it to rain? My computer models disagree.
@Trebla I wonder if CO2 extinguishers are allowed in Cali, (it being a pollutant and all /sarc)Not only is CO2 increasing, but ambient O2 is declining; and, not surprisingly, so is overall incidence of acreage burned by wildfire. So is it just possible that Cali’s problem is due to poor forest management?
By elastic Brownian Climate Logic, fires are associated with higher amounts of carbon dioxide. Therefore, carbon dioxide increases fire intensity. A CO2 fire “extinguisher” is really a flame thrower. No, I am not going to put a \s on this comment.
Jerry knew#. What is wrong with the majority of voters? They are complicit with a criminally deliberate government. Remember the linear fire a couple yrs ago following sparking hydro wires that burned down a community. Brown vetoed a bill that sought an emergency upgrade to the lines a month before. Ill bet Kristi Silber and other trolls will absent themselves on this article. Heck, I criticize sceptics all the time, but the solidarity of these destroyers is sickening.
Most left wing voters can’t see past their next government check.
“What is wrong with the majority of voters?”
The problem may be with people who are ineligible to vote, which California is enabling. There is a new law which encourages moving polling places away from local neighborhoods. That would obviously make it easier to not get caught casting fraudulent votes.
It also allows in-person voting over 11 days. This would make the process of herding voters to the polls much more efficient. It wouldn’t have to be all done in one day.
See http://www.elections.saccounty.net/VoteCenters/Pages/Vote-Center.aspx in regard to the implementation in the county of the state capital.
Why do I see it enabling Vote Early; Vote Often?
You’re Honor; I plead innocent to bank robbery because of … climate change.
You’re Honor; I plead innocent to armed robbery because of … climate change.
You’re Honor; I plead innocent to assault because of … climate change.
You’re Honor; I plead innocent to grand theft because of … climate change.
You’re Honor; I plead innocent to auto theft because of … climate change.
You’re Honor; I plead innocent to burglary because of … climate change.
You’re Honor; I plead innocent to using a plastic straw because of … climate change.
I plead innocent to RAPE … because global warming forced all the young girls to wear short shorts and bikini tops … it’s not my fault that the infidel girls put themselves on display … it’s global warming’s fault
” because of … climate change.”
…and because you’re a racist!!
In the spirit that government doesn’t do anything anymore, except tax, every disaster will be blamed on AGW. Thus relieving that state of any and all financial burdens. More money for cronies and friends to solve a non existent problem.
The mismanagement of wildfire fuels in California is nothing new. I had a great-uncle who was a wildfire crew chief until he retired in the late 1970s and he was complaining about NIMBY environmentalists not allowing control burns in the wet season back then. He always complained that the environmentalist apparently wanted the whole state to burn all at once rather than control the fuel supply.
I was watching a Johnny Carson show from 1980 something. He was telling Jerry Brown jokes.
The man is more ancient and primeval than the old growth forests.
Listen to Dead Kennedys California Über Alles – 1979
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoA_zY6tqQw
I am Governor Jerry Brown
My aura smiles
And never frowns
Soon I will be president…
Carter Power will soon go away
I will be Fuhrer one day
I will command all of you
Your kids will meditate in school
Your kids will meditate in school!
[Chorus:]
California Uber Alles
California Uber Alles
Uber Alles California
Uber Alles California
Zen fascists will control you
100% natural
You will jog for the master race
And always wear the happy face
Close your eyes, can’t happen here
Big Bro’ on white horse is near
The hippies won’t come back you say
Mellow out or you will pay
Mellow out or you will pay!
Now it is 1984
Knock-knock at your front door
It’s the suede/denim secret police
They have come for your uncool niece
Come quietly to the camp
You’d look nice as a drawstring lamp
Don’t you worry, it’s only a shower
For your clothes here’s a pretty flower.
DIE on organic poison gas
Serpent’s egg’s already hatched
You will croak, you little clown
When you mess with President Brown
When you mess with President Brown
Does anyone remember the ads from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and later by “Smokey the Bear”: “Only YOU can prevent forest fires”? Seems that has contributed to the problem.
It’s been over 20 years since research showed fire is a natural part of any natural forest ecosystem. And research since then has only validated that.
Yeah but now they say “only you can prevent wildfire”. Don’t know what the significance is.
Gilbert K. the Arnold,
onistinkons Note, there is no ‘stink’ in onions.
There is no ‘the’ in Smokey Bear.
Yes there is: Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote a successful song named “Smokey the Bear” in 1952 (they added the “the” to achieve proper rhythm). 🙂 Which is probably one reason the “the” entered into popular parlance when referring to Smokey Bear (the official name has no “the” as you note).
Put it this way, everyone knows the character meant when someone says “Smokey the Bear”, so other than as a bit of pedantic trivia, quibbling over the “the” really doesn’t achieve anything.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_July_2018_v6.jpg
Okay the only temperature dataset that both sides trust.
Latest july figures will have the alarmists gloating with a 1.5C increase projected over a century (0.6C over 40 years). Seeing that the anomalies are measured from the 1981 -2010 average my projection is not quite right but close enough. Gloat now alarmists but it wont last. eventually this temp trend will go down. And then you will be saying you cant trust it. But we will all remember that you trust it now. Seeing that every government agency in the world that tracks extreme weather events shows that there are no more now than there ever were, the only evidence you have for global warming that is credible is this UAH satellite temperature data set. So bask in your glory now alarmists; for you will be crying in the blues in the coming months and years. If however you are correct and the UAH temperature dataset keeps going up and up, even I will start to believe in global warming.
And global warming may be real if that is where the evidence leads. But how can one differentiate what is a natural or system effect, and any contributions due to man, if any?
You are right but if the effects are natural then at some point the temp should go down. Unfortunately that may not be until gobs of money are spent on carbon taxes and funding for useless climate studies. I have a feeling that in the next decade we will lose all of the warming we have had. In any case the UAH temp dataset will decide. The warmists have had a reprieve for now. BUT no reprieve for the alarmists unless the temp starts to go crazy which seems very unlikely given that the science for CAGW is not there.
Alan, even if/when the temps go down, the warmist will just redefine “climate change” to mean man is making the planet colder just like they switched from imminent ice age of the 1970s (when the trend was cooling) to global warming in the 1980s (when the trend became a warming one).
R. Hall:
The Earth is naturally recovering from the Little Ice Age cooling (at the rate of .05 deg/C/decade, since at least 1910, up to circa 1975.
After then, the warming per decade accelerated to approx. 0.16 deg C/decade.
The cause of the accelerated warming was the reduction in the amount of dimming Sulfur Dioxide aerosol emissions into the atmosphere due to global Clean Air efforts, which began in the early 1970’s.
In 1975, anthropogenic aerosols totaled 131 Megatons. By 2014 they had been reduced to 111 Megatons, and as a result additional warming HAD to occur.
(VEI4 and higher volcanic eruptions typically spew Megatons of SO2 into the atmosphere, which quickly converts to Sulfur Dioxide aerosols, and causes temporary cooling. When they settle out, temperatures recover to pre-eruption levels, or higher,
simply due to the cleansed air. Thus, man-made actions to reduce SO2 aerosols, will have the same effect, and warming will result)
Most of the present warming can therefore be attributed to the environmental movement!
My t-shirt says “THE GREEN MOVEMENT NEEDS FLUSHING”.
I’ve evaluated the evidence since the 90s—-there is none to support the failed CAGW theory. PERIOD
How can global warming not be real considering the repeating pattern of glacial-interglacial world climates during this current Ice Age (we are now on temperature cycles of about 100,000 year average periods) and the fact that Earth exited the last glacial period only some 12,000 years ago.
Now as to atmospheric CO2 concentration causing—or resulting from—global warming, that is subject to debate and proof.
Gordon you are doing the leftist job of conflating two issues. The world has been warming since the end of the little ice age or the beginning of the current interglacial (depending on the time scale you wish to look at) but man has little to nothing to do with that (most of Man’s CO2 production has been since 1950, long after the warming trend started). No one disputes that warming.
The issue of “global warming” (or “climate change” as it’s been rebranded), however isn’t that natural warming over that time period, it’s over the Anthropogenic portion (i.e. the part caused by man since approx. 1950). As the trend started long before the part attributable to man’s widespread burning of Fossil Fuels and there temp trends since 1950 are no different than before 1950, man-cause “global warming” is not real. It’s nature stupid (to riff on a famous Clinton era slogan).
Massive fires feeding on forest debris are nothing new. In 1870 the then newly-created capital city of Canada, Ottawa, was nearly destroyed by a massive forest fire to its west. Early settlers in the region had cleared much of the land but had left the forest debris lying in situ. A four-month drought and strong winds allowed a brush-clearing fire to get out of control and devastate several hundred square miles, and wipe out towns and villages in its wake. Ottawa itself was only saved by breaching a dam and allowing the water to flood its streets.
Of course, now that the science of climate change is settled, we know that this was the direct result of the burning of coal, dating back to Newcomen’s introduction of the steam engine in 1712./sarc
Current conditions are part of a long cycle. So it didn’t sneak up on you. Why did forest management practices and policy not account for the current conditions, which have been a long time in developing?
Here’s your laugh of the day.
Eucalyptus trees make great wood-gas engine fuel.
The oil in Eucalyptus leaves is the problem. It takes a massive firestorm to kill most eucalypts. Most start to regenerate within weeks, Eucalyptus Regans excepted which relies on fire to germinate its seeds.
Of course he does – these guys have no ability to accept a flaw in their own selves, and certainly not in their world view.
We have a similar problem here in Alberta (Canada). Our province’s policy is to have all fires under control within 24h of first report. The result is a huge fuel buildup over the years. After the 2011 Slave Lake fire that burnt down over 400 homes, the Alberta government commissioned a study to find way of preventing future similar fires. A huge chunk of money was allocated to help municipalities implement the recommendations. Non of them used the money. The money was still sitting in the fund untouched when the 2016 Ft. McMurray burnt down 2400 homes.
The biggest recommendation of the study was to replace the extremely flammable log pole pine around towns with less combustible species (poplar aka trembling aspen). To this date, no communities have implemented this recommendation. The study also criticized the prevention of natural fires that thin the forest’s fuel load.
Here on Salt Spring Island, BC, the entire island is vulnerable to wildfires, due to an absolute lack of forest management. Scary!
Useful idiot of the highest order. Add to that hypocrisy since Brown and his family have a history of massive oil company investments around the world. He even used state resources to map out mining/mineral/oil deposits on his family’s private land. He blames population growth for many of California’s ills while opening the borders to illegal aliens. He sees himself as one of the elite in the current US Socialist movement.
The “hypocrisy” of the left is just one of many signs of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome ) !
“New York Times slammed by critics for ‘hypocritical double standard’ after standing by Sarah Jeong” (“Jeong tweeted that she gets joy out of being “cruel to old white men,” used a “CancelWhitePeople” hashtag and sent numerous other offensive tweets. “)
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/08/03/new-york-times-slammed-by-critics-for-hypocritical-double-standard-after-standing-by-sarah-jeong.html
Anti-Trump vandalism sweeps country: Yacht, Hollywood star latest targets.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08/03/anti-trump-vandalism-sweeps-country-yacht-hollywood-star-latest-targets.html
“Delta passengers restrain unruly man threatening to ‘take the plane down’ ”
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/08/03/delta-passengers-restrain-unruly-passenger-threatening-to-take-plane-down.html
……. NUTS !
OK Marcus, you are back to your old ways of posting ridiculous and highly irrelevant off-topic comments, the same behavior which got you banned for over a year.
One more like this and you are gone permanently. Seriously. This stuff you posted hasn’t anything at all to do with the topic at hand. It’s junk.
OK..sorry Anthony…
Maybe Guv. Brown should try beano so his personal “greenhouse gasses” can be tolerated by people forced to read such drivel.
Gov. Brown: “…since civilization emerged 10,000 years ago, we haven’t had this kind of heat condition, and it’s going to continue getting worse and that’s the way it is.”
And LAX is going to be under water when the massive influx of sanctuary seekers causes the state to tip over.
Suggested reading for Brown: “Holocene Megadroughts and Megafloods in California’s
Central Valley.” Big type, lots of pictures, and includes studies of ancient fires:
https://cepsym.org/Sympro2009/Malamud-Roam.pdf
These fringe lunatics can’t see the forests for the trees—sorry I had to say it!!!
“Sorry, Gov. Brown — Global Warming Not To Blame For Deadly California Fires” Editorial by Investor’s Business Daily.
“Brown had a different culprit: global warming.
“We’re fighting nature with the amount of material we’re putting in the environment, and that material traps heat, and the heat fosters fires, and the fires keep burning,” he said.
He called on dramatic, extremely costly steps to “shift the weather back to where it historically was,” claiming current weather conditions hadn’t been so hot “since civilization emerged 10,000 years ago.”
Succinct, and very wrong. In fact, a look at global temperatures for the last 10,000 years shows that temperatures have been much warmer than they are today for much if not most of the time during that period. Indeed, many historians and anthropologists attribute the rise of civilization to global warming following the last Ice Age.
And, no, despite Brown’s claims, we’re not having more fires. A study in the journal Science determined that the global burnt area from fires, rather than growing, had declined by roughly 25% from 1999 to 2017.”
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/global-warming-california-fires/
The number of fires and the acres can be found at the following site (scroll down):
NIFC
The data presented is for 10 years. Thus long term info has to be found elsewhere.
Note the 10 year average at the bottom of the table:
more fires, fewer acres
Note 2011: a year of lots of fires
Note 2014: fewer fires, lowest acres in the 10 years
~ ~ ~ ~
Not all the vegetation within a fire’s perimeter burns.
See my comments (with links) on Chiefio’s site.
LINK
It said in the article: “Brown, who met with top fire and emergency response officials…” Did Brown actually spout the same nonsense to them about global warming being to blame?
Is it possible that catastrophes such as the wildfires in the western states could have more that one cause — for example, both mismanagement of forests and underbrush AND global warming? This would mean that global warming is, among other things, going to make us pay for our mistakes in a way that we have not had to do before.
Why take blame for your mistakes when you have a corrupt mainstream media that will support and repeat your lies blaming everyone else?
And from USA Today, which I tend to ignore-
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-03/90-wildfires-are-caused-people-not-climate-change
The forests that are the healthiest are those that are owned by private timber concerns that have long-term, truly sustainable, interests in the assets that forests represent.
Oh, and I’m sure we need more tax money for the bullet train that will speed us from Fresno to Madera.
A flat tire started the deadly Carr Fire and days of devastation in California
People like Gov. Brown need to be taken to task for fraud and lying to the people about such serious matters. I think there should be a new criminal code section that prohibits this kind of misinformation from fear mongering the general public, like Nazis did etc. they like to make erroneous claims when free thinking people call out the climate lies.
If the fires are due to “greenhouse gases” which the left has been parading about for the last 20. Years, why on earth didn’t they prepare the forests for that?? If you are such a proponent of global warming why are the forests throughout Tuolumne County piled 5 feet high with pine needles?
“Brown . . . said the current conditions are part of a long cycle that began with the rapid rise in greenhouse gases caused by human activity.”
The rising part of the current cycle of CO2 fluctuation (as has been evidenced by multiple rising and falling cycles of atmospheric CO2 concentration in Earth’s past history) actually began about 20,000 years ago around the time of the last glacial maximum. It then rose from a low point of about 185 ppm to about 270 ppm about 10,000 years ago. (It did not decline since then but instead resumed its upward rise about 200 years ago.)
By his statement, Mr. Brown must believe human-activity caused that first part of the rise.
Gov. Moonbeam
To prevent wildfires, replace your “environmental officers” with commercial loggers. They will cut down old dead woods to plant new trees.
People like Brown only listen to experts when the experts agree with the latest orthodoxy. Often folks like Moonbean even go expert shopping.
Or maybe they started the fires to get federal funds