Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Californian power company PG&E has played the climate card.
Facing $17 Billion in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change
By Mark Chediak
13 August 2018, 20:00 GMT+10…
Authorities don’t yet know the cause of some of the fires, but the region’s giant utility, PG&E Corp., see a culprit at work — climate change. The blazes in recent years, it said, are the latest example of how global warming has produced unusually hot, dry conditions that spawn more frequent and intense fires. “Climate change is no longer coming, it’s here,” Geisha Williams, chief executive officer of PG&E, said in an email. “And we are living with it every day.”
Scientists tend to agree with that assessment. But California’s biggest utility has an especially compelling reason to link the fires to the environment. State investigators have tied PG&E equipment, such as trees hitting power lines, to some of the blazes in October that in total destroyed nearly 9,000 structures and killed 44 people. It faces damage liabilities totaling as much as $17 billion, and possible financial ruin — its stock is down about 37 percent since the fires — unless Williams can convince California lawmakers that the company’s problem is, in fact, a climate change problem.
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In my opinion it would be premature to pass judgement on PG&E for equipment initiated fires.
There are complicating factors; President Trump claims Californian opposition to tree clearing and poor Californian water management policies made the fires worse. Perhaps activist regulators prevented PG&E from clearing vegetation in vulnerable locations.
But climate is rapidly becoming a favourite excuse for companies and governments to deflect blame for their mistakes. In some cases the climate excuse is being applied in truly ridiculous circumstances.
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https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/12/whats-starting-all-these-fires-we-are/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
And the other 5%…….
Naw. Still human caused…twas a human wot planted that tree
There’s only one thing I can guarantee, the places that were cleared by fires this year will not burn next year. But the places that the fires would have burnt this year but were suppressed, are at an unnaturally higher risk of burning next year.
The next step is to hire a consultant to confirm the science and assignment of blame on climate change. They are always on the lookout for a trusted bias contractor—like at AGU.
There is a negligent party, but not PG&E. The forest policies of the past 100+ years were based on suppression of fire. The viability of that strategy depended upon continued harvesting of timber. When environmentalists got allies in state and federal agencies, timber harvesting was reduced to almost nothing, except on private land. Forests have overgrown with almost 10x the stems per acre forests had before 1850.
Forests were much more open, with a great diversity of plant and animal life. Now trees are crowded together. They pull so much water from the ground (transpiration), they no longer get enough water per tree. Pines cannot make sufficient sap to fight off bark beetles, and they can die in high temperature extremes because needles wither and dry.
John Muir reported park-like forests with separated trees, so much so, a rider could easily maintain a full gallop. Fires were indeed required to open certain pine cones, but these fires were typically relatively cool and stayed low to the ground. Today crown fires kill everything, turn pine cones to cinders, and convert soil to hydrophobic clay.
The negligent parties are the government agencies managing the forests and the environmental groups like the Sierra Club who launch legal attacks any entity attempting to conduct reasonable forest thinning.
https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2013-10-27/prevent-another-sierra-inferno-thin-and-clean-forests
So PG&E blames GHG emissions…seems like they are and have been the biggest emitter in CA and one of the largest in thr US (if not the largest).
Actually, they blamed climate change. Have you succumbed to the propaganda that the climate only changes when humans emit CO2?
SR
The dog ate our annual report excuse no longer works…
Perhaps someone should look into a Russian connection.
And… and… the dog ate my homework!!!
It should be obvious to the most casual observer what the cause of wildfires are today.
One only needs to look at the photographs of the Giant Redwoods taken back in the late 1800’s early 1900’s and compare those same areas ground cover, underbrush and overgrowth with recent photos. PERIOD.
The pioneers heading west frequently complained about the lack of firewood along the Platte River through Nebraska. They were warned to carry enough to get to the mountains as the nearest fire wood was miles away from the river. Today both sides of the Platte River have trees, underbrush and overgrowth extending miles from either side of the river.
Have been told all my life that most trees in Nebraska are non-native and few existed 100 years ago. look into the history of the Nebraska Tree “Conservation” Program. Hundreds of millions planted through governmental and “Conservationists” efforts starting back in 1870 for the extent of this endover. How can a conservationist knowingly plant non-native trees? Squirrels and chipmunks are now following the Platte River Valley trees across the USA. How many of the dead trees in California’s forests were nonnative and now dying off, creating more fuel for the wildfires? How did the tick that carries Lyme disease get from Connecticut to Nebraska and further west?
And so from listening to the talking rings we learned that mankind descended into chaos when all sides blamed CO2 for everything that happened and responsibility was lost. Some chose to believe the biased models and (one) bristle cone pine and retreated into CO2-proof caverns. While others chose to pay dues to the policy masters to limit the bloodsucking and try to live simple lives above ground in primitive conditions.
And in other news, the EU is celebrating that it has funded €11 million towards the capital cost of a battery-backed hybrid solar-voltaic-windmill power plant on the island of Tilos (pop 780). €14,000 per head looks pretty expensive for capital costs of power plant. I’m guessing it’s three times as expensive as a small-island diesel generator and five times that of large-area CCGT generators running off natural gas. Are there any power engineer economists here who can comment on the economics of power generation on Mediterranean islands? https://europa.eu/investeu/projects/energy-production-turned-its-head-tilos_en
President Trump said tonight in a speech that if you look underneath some windmills it looks like “The Killing Fields” there are so many dead birds laying there.
Trump didn’t have anything good to say about windmills or the Paris Climate Agreement.
Lawyers always like to cater to prospective jurors’ prejudices and fantasies.
This is a ready-made, state-sponsored, virtue-signaling excuse/defense.
It looks like they’ve found the cause of at least one of the major fires. Hint: it isn’t Climate Change.
“Arson Suspect Arrested in SoCal’s Holy Wildfire”
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/california/Holy-Fire-California-Wildfires-Arrest-Riverside-Orange-Cleveland-National-Forest-490374161.html
Man-made forrest warming.
It’s the smart, green, organic excuse with a lot of precedence in the Governor’s Office.
I am a scientist and I say that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. Climate change has been going on for eons and will continue to go on whether mankind is here are not. Fires like the ones we have been having have been common in California long before mankind ever set foot on North America. For example there exists a species of true popy in california that requires fires like the ones we have been having to germinate. The LA basin was known as the valley of the smokes because of all of the fires that usually occurred there. By preventing little fires mankind has set the stage for much larger fires to happen. If not man, natural phenomenon like lightening will ignite them. The Thomas fire for example was a fire just waiting for ignition. If the power companies power lines did not start the fire, something else would have. For structures built in or next of high fire danger areas, adequate precautions have to be taken.
One source reported that a failed transformer started the worst fire:
Utility companies shouldn’t be penalized when they are forced by political mandates to contend with “off spec” power from a dozen wind farms with a dozen turbines all operating at different times and producing different quantities and qualities of electricity. With this junk power being dumped on the grid is it any surprise that a transformer overheats?
One thing not really being discussed is the impact of the near record rainfall season of 2016-17. Having lived in fire areas for a good portion of the last 65 years, heavy rains greatly increase the growth rates of vegetation. Then as typically happens in California all this undergrowth dries up. This is followed by a massive growth. Then when a following season brings much drier than average conditions that sets a stage ideal for fire. Add in more and more legal efforts to leave areas untouched to promote natural growth and denser vegetation does nothing but further set the stage. My opinion is a person only has to live through one of these episodes to see how fire is a completely natural part of California ecosystems. The renewal after a fire is one of the most impressive natural events I have ever seen in my life. Dozens of species of plants with seeds dormant in the soil seem to spring out of nowhere having apparently evolved in an ecosystem that essentially only allows these plants to thrive after a fire has taken down the dominant vegetation. Anybody who wants a great nature hike should plan on going about a month or two after winter rains return. Yes it is climate change but its really probably only climate change not seen by current PG&E managers.
It’s the plants, stupid.
The fuel is vegetable matter, i.e. botanicals, i.e plants.
The fuel is alive!!!! It grows. Blame photosynthesis! Year after year the veggie biomass accumulates, conglomerates, builds up and up. It’s what plants do. Wet years, dry years, every year.
Former cattle pastures with wispy grass are now tick brush monstrosities waiting for any spark to burst them into mega fires. It’s right behind your house, lurking, expanding, inflating, year after year, growing more dense and contiguous. A wall of deadlies, a sea of flammables.
You can always do nothing, blame the gummit, blame the population bomb, blame SUV’s, blame gerbil worming, blame your idiot neighbors, sue sue sue.
You can blame the firefighters for suppressing Gaia’s wonderful natural healing fires. Okay. Next time you pull the fire alarm, we’ll just watch you roast. Then you can blame yourself, Einstein.
But that won’t stop the plants.
Negligence in powerline maintenance has been a cause of fire in Australia, and we apprehend that an increasingly problematic cause of fires will be wind turbines throwing bearings and dropping blazing oil upon the terrain. Whatever the cause of fire, the most important contributing factor to the severity of the fire is not temperature but the quantity of available fuel. In Australia and reportedly in California immense danger has been caused by reckless Green-inspired reluctance to cool burn and minimize fuel loads. A website well worth visiting is https://sites.google.com/site/stopbushfires/. Dr Christine Finlay PhD is Australians foremost academic expert on bushfires (wildfires in USspeak).
More echo-chamber fake news.
Williams says “global warming has produced unusually hot, dry conditions”
Bllomberg fakes that up into: “…CEO Blames Climate Change”
Not satisfied with Bloombergs pussy-footing around Eric sexes it up to:
“PG&E: Climate Change Caused the California Fires”