Yes, the new growing point seems to be “yes, these types of things, such as wildfires and tropical storms and rain and snow and stuff have always happened, but, they’re worse now”, and now the NY Times has noticed (and runs this as their banner story, with some small ones on 9/11 further down the page)
A Climate Reckoning in Fire-Stricken California
Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves. Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face.
The crisis in the nation’s most populous state is more than just an accumulation of individual catastrophes. It is also an example of something climate experts have long worried about, but which few expected to see so soon: a cascade effect, in which a series of disasters overlap, triggering or amplifying each other. (snip)
California’s simultaneous crises illustrate how the ripple effect works. A scorching summer led to dry conditions never before experienced. That aridity helped make the season’s wildfires the biggest ever recorded. Six of the 20 largest wildfires in modern California history have occurred this year.
If climate change was a somewhat abstract notion a decade ago, today it is all too real for Californians. The intensely hot wildfires are not only chasing thousands of people from their homes but causing dangerous chemicals to leach into drinking water. Excessive heat warnings and suffocating smoky air have threatened the health of people already struggling during the pandemic. And the threat of more wildfires has led insurance companies to cancel homeowner policies and the state’s main utility to shut off power to tens of thousands of people pre-emptively.
Let’s see: California has always had very dry areas, because of the geography. They build more and more within areas that are dry and near areas where the state blocks anyone from clearing out the dead brush. Then a fire is started by a poorly maintained power line or idiots using pyrotechnics for a gender reveal party. Then there isn’t enough power because they rely on stuff that only works during certain times. But, see, this is their new talking point, a new and inventive way to Blame Every Event on mankind. Well, on Other People
Climate scientists say the mechanism driving the wildfire crisis is straightforward: Human behavior, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil, has released greenhouse gases that increase temperatures, desiccating forests and priming them to burn.
Yet, these same climate scientists, and all the rest of the climate cultists, refuse to give up their own use of fossil fuels. Weird, right?
Oh, and see, the thing is that California weather monitoring stations show that it was actually warmer in the earlier part of last century. Most during the 1930’s, one during the 1910’s, and one during the 1950’s (which is interesting, as that was the start of a slight cooling). Of course, none of these facts matter to climate cultists, as they have Narratives
This summer millions of Californians’ homes went dark for an hour or more as the smothering summer heat threatened to overload the grid.
Strangely, we didn’t have that problem in North Carolina, nor did we hear anything on down to Florida nor out to Texas, which always have heat. Heck, even the United Kingdom, which had a warmer than average summer (you know how averages are created), didn’t have the same power problems, even as they rely more and more on “renewables”. Must be amplification for California, eh? Over-reliance on solar and wind followed by Summer weather combined with mismanagement (to be charitable) by Government while building more and more in areas which are in danger zones.
