California NOT “fighting climate change”, climate change NOT driving wildfires – claims are propaganda

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

The L A Times is at it again making completely idiotic claims that California is “fighting climate change” and alleging that wildfires and blackouts will hurt this purely politically contrived, monumentally costly and globally meaningless state “fight”.

“The state’s electric grid was experiencing rapid and unprecedented changes even before Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison began shutting off power to millions of people in a desperate scramble to prevent their transmission lines from sparking wildfires.

Solar and wind power were booming. Gas-fired power plants were shutting down. Investor-owned utility companies such as PG&E and Edison were being replaced by city-run alternatives. And the falling cost of lithium-ion batteries was making some households less reliant on the grid than ever before.

The changes will only accelerate in the coming years, as California ramps up efforts to fight climate change by cleaning up its energy supply.

But the state’s plans for slashing climate emissions depend on a stable electric grid delivering clean electricity to the cars, homes and businesses of the world’s fifth-largest economy. The jarring new reality of preemptive blackouts could frustrate those plans by throwing the grid’s reliability into doubt.”

Additionally an Orange County Register article is also hyping the same flawed California wildfire climate change claims as the Times with its own article touting climate change political opportunist Tom Steyer and his screwball and economically destructive energy ideas for our state and nation.

“With California’s wildfires drawing attention to climate change’s role in the blazes, presidential candidate Tom Steyer is especially vigorous in touting the need to reduce carbon emissions and overcome the corporate influence that contributes to the environmental status quo.

“You prevent wildfires by not having a climate that creates the environment for them,” the Democratic billionaire said in a Tuesday interview.

“My first day in office, I would declare climate change a national emergency. It would entail rules about renewable energy, miles per gallon for new cars, building codes requiring energy efficiency and stopping oil drilling in national parks and on federal government land.”.

The reality however is that no matter what California does about reducing at great cost its own emissions while at the same time ruining its energy reliability and economy the impact on the world stage is completely irrelevant.

Additionally the state’s targeted emissions reductions have no impact whatsoever on California’s wildfire debacle that is driven solely by government forest management failure and incompetence.

These energy and emissions realities were addressed in the WUWT article noted below which exposed how inept a prior Times article was that attempted to make the same point with this newest Times article equally inept.

The bottom line from the WUWT article is summarized as:

“What California government officials and L A Times completely hide from view and leave totally unaddressed is the unequivocal fact that the state’s climate change campaign is immensely irrelevant regarding any impact whatsoever on reducing global emissions ever increasing outcomes. This reality is driven by the huge and increasing use of energy and related emissions by the world’s developing nations that completely control global energy use and emissions trends and results.”

Additionally because the state so badly bungled its responsibilities in failing to properly fulfill its forest management responsibilities over a period of many decades the resulting wildfire outcomes have added more emissions to the states tracking assessments that when properly accounted for will preclude California from even meeting its modest year 2020 AB 32 emissions targets as noted in another WUWT article presented below.

The article notes that originally the state assumed that wildfire emissions would be carbon neutral but that assumption has proven to be wrong as shown in the chart below that estimates the net increased emissions from the state wildfires.

When these emissions are accounted for as being the responsibility of the state the AB 32 emissions reduction target for year 2020 is unachievable.

Also addressed in the article is the fact that the state should be held accountable for its forest management responsibility failures that have led to the wildfire debacle with this significant issue as usual left unaddressed and concealed by the Times.     

“The state is clearly responsible for creating significantly increased wildfire risks and outcomes as a consequence of decades long poor forest management decisions, practices and priorities by responsible government, regulatory and political leaders as presented in detail at WUWT.

These extensive failures are fully addressed and documented in a comprehensive report by the California Legislative Analyst Office issued in April 2018. This significant report and its detailed assessments and findings are unaddressed by the L A Times.”

Year 2018 global emissions of CO2 total about 37.9 billion metric tons and have climbed ever higher for decades as a consequence of unrelenting increased energy use by the developing nations. In 2018 the developing nations accounted for about 60 percent of global energy use and two thirds of all global CO2 emissions.

California’s misguided, useless and expensive emissions reduction schemes that impose tens of billions of dollars in costs may achieve about 50 million metric tons of CO2 emissions reductions IF wildfire emissions are NOT counted. This California reduction is completely indistinguishable and irrelevant compared to the total global CO2 emissions shown below that have grown by 8 billion metric tons since 2005.

The world’s developing nations led by China and India whose emissions growth profiles are shown below continue to charge ahead with increased energy use that relies heavily on fossil fuels.

Furthermore the southeast Asia nations are not going to spend any effort listening to climate alarmist propagandist Tom Steyer and his economy destroying energy schemes as demonstrated by these nations continuing and growing even larger commitment to increased use of fossil fuels as noted in a recent Bloomberg world energy article update.

California needs to stop spending tens of billions of dollars on climate alarmist irrelevant emissions reduction shenanigans and instead reallocate this spending to addressing the huge work backlog needed to deal with the state’s decades long failure to properly manage its forests that has resulted in the wildfire debacle.

Until California starts to deal with its failed responsibilities in forest management the state’s citizens will continue to experience increasing property damage, destroyed housing and loss of lives.

Additionally the ability of property owners to obtain future fire insurance to protect their property will continue to decline as insurance companies refuse to offer coverage or increase rates to exorbitant and unaffordable levels.

California is already experiencing significant increases in outflow of its residents to other states as a consequence of its very high living costs, huge governmental bureaucracy, the imposition of ever growing regulations upon citizens lives and failure of leaders to address real world issues.

The state’s badly misguided campaigns regarding the irrelevant and phony “fighting climate change” idiocy and failure to deal with its decades long forest management failures will only lead to further misery for California citizens and drive even greater outmigration.