California wildfires: Trump will say anything to deny the grim facts of global warming

Desdemona Despair

19 November 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – In August 2018, it was “environmental terrorist groups” causing California’s forest fires. Before that, it was water regulations. Now, California just needs to rake its forests and manage them like Finland.

Anything to deny the obvious: global warming is causing California’s megafires.

Throughout 2018, the Trump administration has undertaken a Stalinist program of eliding references to climate change and global warming from official policy documents. Here are a few examples:

• References to “climate change” removed from U.S. Treasury Department report
• References to “climate change” removed from USAID report
• Climate change omitted from list of White House research and development priorities
• FEMA strips mention of “climate change” from its strategic plan
• Pentagon revised report to remove risks from climate change – “Taking out maps of critical areas of flooding, that’s pretty fundamental”
• Human role in global warming censored from official National Park Service science report – “Censorship of this kind is something you’d see in Russia or some totalitarian regime. It has no place in America.”
• Leaked memo: EPA shows workers how to downplay global warming
• Climate change omitted from list of EPA research objectives
• EPA research grants cancelled at direction of Trump political appointee – Climate science research targeted

Also, Trump intends to gag government scientists when they speak to the press about climate science:

• Trump administration tightens rules for federal scientists talking to reporters – “It essentially gives political appointees veto power over science, scientists, and information that the American people should have access to”
• U.S. Department of Interior buries communications policy after attempting to justify muzzling scientists
• Joel Clement: I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration.
• Myron Ebell says purge necessary at EPA to rid “scientists who believe the global warming alarmist agenda”

To underscore his complete disdain for climate science, Trump revoked fuel economy standards, over the objection of the auto industry itself: “Climate change is real”, automakers told the White House in letter. “We have a continuing role in reducing greenhouse gases and improving fuel efficiency”. They were ignored.

The goal is the eradication of climate science from public consciousness. It’s as if Trump had decided to convince the U.S. public that Americans never landed on the moon.

Back to Trump’s latest cranky claim: “I was with the president of Finland, and he said, ‘We have a much different — we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation. And they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem.”

What’s wrong with the latest disinformation from Trump about California’s wildfires?

• The Finns don’t rake their forests.
• Finland is much colder than California.
• The trees aren’t the same.
• Finland and California differ greatly in their winds.
• Finland is not fire-free, especially in 2018.

“The whole comparison is a bit wild,” says Professor Henrik Lindberg, a forest-fire researcher at the Häme University of Applied Sciences, in southern Finland.

And the president of Finland never discussed “raking” with Trump.

What really happened in 2018 is that Arctic forests in Northern Europe experienced unprecedented high temperatures and wildfires.

All-time temperature records melted in northern Scandinavia, and next-door Sweden battled wildfires from the Arctic Circle to the Baltic Sea, issuing a record number of public warnings.

In California, it was the same story during the summer of 2018, with temperatures in the triple digits into the first weekend of August across northern and central California. July 2018 was the hottest month in California state history.

It doesn’t take a climate scientist to draw a straight line between global warming and the wildfires. But what do actual scientists have to say?

In the words of Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research:

We can estimate Earth’s energy imbalance quite well: It amounts to about 1 watt per square meter, or about 500 terawatts globally. […] How big is the energy imbalance effect over land? Well, 1 watt per square meter over a month, if accumulated, is equivalent to 720 watts per square meter over one hour; 720 watts is equivalent to full power in a small microwave oven. One square meter is about 10 square feet. Hence, after one month this is equivalent to one microwave oven at full power every square foot for six minutes. No wonder things catch on fire!

Meteorologist Rob Elvington observes that the Camp Fire began under atmospheric conditions that are unprecedented in state history. By early November 2018, the Evaporative Demand Index (EDDI) had maxed out, and “extreme fire conditions in these fuels have no analog/comparison.”

California’s vegetation dryness in early November 2018 was off the charts, exceeding the 99th percentile for Energy Release Component (ERC), as far back as records go. “Worse than no rain is negative rain,” Elvington tweeted. The air was so dry that it sucked water out of the soil.

After surveying the destruction caused by wildfires in California, Trump said on Saturday, 17 November 2018, that the devastation has not altered his opinion on climate change: “I have a strong opinion. I want great climate, we’re going to have that.”

Trump wants to Make Climate Great Again. His plan: deny climate science, lower fuel economy and emissions standards for vehicles, pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, silence government scientists, and rake the forests.