Various unfortunate events have been some blaming climate change. The Maui fire, Canadian wildfires, years of California wildfires and food inflation.
Maui Grass Problem
Maui did not fix its vegetation problem for years.
The root cause of the Maui fire was addressed in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times and other reporting. The WSJ titled: “Everybody Knew the Invasive Grass of Maui Posed a Deadly Fire Threat, but Few Acted.” Warnings went unheeded about the abandoned plantations above Lahaina; buildup of vegetation fueled ‘catastrophic’ spread.
NY Post – The grasses — including guinea grass, molasses grass and buffelgrass — were brought to the islands from Africa as livestock forage and were considered effective because they proved drought-resistant, experts say. But their advantages have backfired. “These grasses are highly aggressive, grow very fast and are highly flammable,” said Melissa Chimera, whose grandmother lived on the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co.’s plantation in Maui after emigrating from the Philippines.
Maui wildfires in 2018 destroyed 21 homes. In 2018, Clay Trauernicht, a specialist in wildland fire science and management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, sounded the alarm in a letter in 2018, to the Maui News.
Yes many parts of Hawai'i are trending towards dryer conditions, BUT the fire problem is mostly attributable to the vast extents of nonnative grasslands left unmanaged by large landowners as we've entered a 'post-plantation era' starting around the 1990s https://t.co/j4HgpYH4QH
— Clay Trauernicht (@claytrau) August 10, 2023
Then during the Maui fire the grid was not turned off and water was not diverted to fight the fire.
California 140+ Million Dead Trees and Not Controlled Burning Them
California has not fixed its dead tree problems for over a decade.Florida leads the way with controlled burns and burned more than 2 million acres last year. Why is California having less than 4 of the controlled burns of Florida (60,000 acres versus over 2 million)?
Wildfire control protocols from 1977.
FUELBREAKS AND OTHER FUEL MODIFICATION FOR WILDLAND FIRE CONTROL
Lisle R. Green, Supervisory Range Scientist
Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station
Agriculture Handbook No. 499
April 1977
For over 100 years, there have been procedures around managing forests and using fire to clear out dead trees. The competent management of forests is a procedure that was known for over 100 years. Climate change only works as an excuse if you do everything right and things still more.
Inflation
As of March 2021, COVID costs totaled $5.2 trillion. World War II cost $4.7 trillion (in today’s dollars). All-in (US only) money printing totaled $13 trillion: $5.2 for COVID + $4.5 for quantitative easing + $3 for infrastructure. Mountains of money cause inflation.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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I recall hearing about a ship that Henry VIII launched and due to poor design promptly sank. In response, the Crown blamed witchcraft and rounded up a bunch of usual suspects and burned them at the stake.
I suppose blaming Global Warming is an improvement over blaming Witchcraft.
Brian, so Maui is evidence that global warming is not real? This seems simplistic, even for you. I remember a time that you didn’t have to check the air quality before taking a walk. Luckily, the population, particularly the younger generation, wants leadership away from fossil fuels. Just reasonable, full disclosure, are you funded by the fossil fuel industry? Or is this article crafted for the aging ditto heads who need their MAGA fantasies validated?
Allow and Subsidize the raising of rudiments. They will eat the grass. Just make it a little profitable for the ranchers.
The best part is that with enough climate catastrophist mumbo-jumbo, the voters can’t never tell.
Democracies tend to degenerate due to inevitable corruption. It is in their very nature, deterministic to a fault.
Climate change is convenient as it can assume any shape one wants.
Don’t forget the Tonga eruption, all that water in the air has surely heated things up.
What?!???!!?!
“Green” policies are bad for the environment? Impossible.
For what it’s worth, the biggest barrier to the energy transition is also environmentalists.
Nuclear energy is effectively blocked by “environmental” groups like the NRDC.
Transmission lines to bring remote renewable energy to urban load centers are primarily prevented through environmental permitting.
Get rid of the greens and we can have much cleaner, safer communities.
I seriously doubt that since it’s much cheaper to pollute than not to pollute and the no greens will execute the cheaper plan.
Inflation flared after Covid for several reasons – some related to a *lack* of government spending. For instance, had the federal government bought one of the diesel refineries permanently shut down by a temporary drop in demand during Covid, we could have produced and stockpiled enough diesel for when the economy reopened.
Inflation was clearly caused by
1) Corporate pricing power. Much of the American economy is run now by cartels and monopolies whose pricing power is undisciplined by traditional market forces like supply and demand. This effect is visible in the way corporate profits have not been squeezed like they traditionally have in the face of inflation.
2) Supply chain disruptions, caused first by Covid and then by the flareup of the Ukrainian war. When 1.5 million people die in two years and tens of millions more develop crippling illness and miss work or permanently retire, the loss of key personnel clogs up numerous nodes in the economy. Border shutdowns and sanctions further punish global trade, causing supply shortages – which drive inflation.
The #1 driver of inflation has historically been population growth, which feeds end demand. Since supply requires longer-term investment to keep up, prices rise in a sustainable fashion because productive capacity takes longer to expand. As you point out, population is falling today. Japan, for instance, has printed money for thirty years with very little effect on inflation precisely because its population is shrinking. (A form of inflation has occurred from low interest rates but in speculative and non-productive assets bought by the rich who get access to most of that cheap capital: stocks, junk bonds, mansions, fine art, bitcoin, etc…).
Nations that shut down their borders and pursued zero Covid – e.g., Australia, South Korea, Taiwan – had better economic growth, unemployment and inflation numbers even though many of them engaged in the same stimulus measures to preserve economic capacity (which prevented post-Covid dysfunction from capacity destruction.)
You cannot create herd immunity by traditional vaccination to a respiratory RNA virus. This has never been done. Diminishing returns are now setting in with this approach of Covid containment. The world failed to use the temporary breathing room that the vaccines did buy us to install air filters, UV lighting, CO2 monitors and fans in all public air spaces – which would be an incredibly cost-effective way to cut into all such diseases caused by respiratory viruses like asthma, autism, heart disease, multiple sclerosis (EBV), Alzheimer’s, etc…
But just like we can’t fight an artillery war in Ukraine, we can’t fight an air war against a virus. Our elites don’t believe in national security. It gets in the way of their asset-stripping of the public – and it’s this factor at the heart of depopulation. Due to high education, housing and medical costs caused by rent-seeking, the budget for dating, marriage, families and children is shrinking – while the population is atomized and preyed upon by addictive processed foods, gambling, drugs, antisocial media and other predatory forces. The government would rather subsidize stock options and executive bonuses than romance, childbirth and -rearing.
Most people have had Covid and will get it repeatedly at this rate. We know a certain percentage of patients get *worse* with each repeat infection because Covid causes exactly the same kind of damage to H2S-producing ACE2(+) cells that block viral infections in the first place. That is to say, having diabetes, obesity, hypertension and other diseases put patients at risk for a Covid infection – and getting Covid in turn causes all of these conditions. We are in the middle of a doom loop. The extent of this effect won’t be known for years.
But now we also know the body may never quite clear Covid. The virus can stay latent and fulminate in certain immunoprivileged cells in testicle and eyes, continuing to mutate and waiting to reemerge as God knows what in a lytic stage like CMV or HSV1/2. This pandemic may not be over anytime soon.
Spot on on the inflation causes. I’d only add that we also had QE from 2009 onwards, especially 2010 onwards, and all it caused was asset inflation, which no one complained about (how odd!) until 2021, when supply shocks and latent corporate monopolization started making it appear in consumer prices, which people complain mightily about!
Wrong. The number one reason for inflation was higher gas and energy prices. Higher gas prices makes everything more expensive. And the reason for the high gas prices is the idiot in the White House who stopped the pipeline and banned fracking on his first day in the White House. Blowing up the Russian pipeline, which was probably us, did not help either. The number two reason is all the quantitative easing and giving everyone stimulus $, by the same group of fools. This lowered the value of the Dollar. Low interest rates set by the Fed so the rich can get richer did not help either. And wait until the BRICS currency gets started. People get the government they deserve. It’s just a shame the rest of us has to suffer.
Wrong. The number one reason for inflation was higher gas and energy prices. Higher gas prices makes everything more expensive. And the reason for the high gas prices is the idiot in the White House who stopped the pipeline and banned fracking on his first day in the White House. Blowing up the Russian pipeline, which was probably us, did not help either. The number two reason is all the quantitative easing and giving everyone stimulus $, by the same group of fools. This lowered the value of the Dollar. Low interest rates set by the Fed so the rich can get richer did not help. And wait until the BRICS surrency gets started. People get the government they deserve. It’s just a shame the rest of us has to suffer.
My vote is for incompetence…..
Maui is home to desert, rainforest, and mountainous climates. Areas that experience higher amounts of rainfall will be more green, lush, and humid, while areas with little to no rainfall will be more dry, sunny, and hot.
https://www.skylinehawaii.com/blog/mauis-microclimates#:~:text=There%20are%20tropical%20moist%20climates,%2C%20rainforest%2C%20and%20mountainous%20climates.
The part of Maui that burned was the desert part of the island. It has been for centuries. Couple that with lots of combustible material and governmental neglect, you’ve got a ticking time bomb
Unfortunately we can’t talk about things as adults…. People are receptive to crisis and drama.
Why was hawaii even made a state? It’s a remote territory that is completely irrelevant aside from tourism… Do they even export coffee or fruit any longer?
“Why was hawaii even made a state? ”
Hawaii was *the* crucial Pacific Naval Base of WW2. Its workers and people loyally stood up and repaired, resupplied, and guarded the ships and planes that won that war, from enemy attack. 15 years later, by majority vote, they asked to become a State of the Union, and did so. They earned it!
“Do they even export coffee or fruit any longer?”
Yes, but their most valuable physical export today is honeybees.
In regards to Maui fires, you may be confusing the “oily rags” with the “spark”. These grasses have been there for nearly 150 years.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-swaths-of-invasive-grass-made-mauis-fires-so-devastating-180982729/#:~:text=Without%20farmers%20tending%20that%20land,of%20drought%2Dresistant%20livestock%20forage.
“These species are native to Africa and were introduced to Hawaii in the late 18th century by European ranchers who wanted a steady supply of drought-resistant livestock forage. ”
(You would think a reputable source like the NY Post would have mentioned this.)
As for California, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory disagrees with you.
https://www.llnl.gov/article/49901/human-caused-climate-change-center-recent-california-wildfires#:~:text=However%2C%20a%20new%20study%20by,caused%20(anthropogenic)%20climate%20change.
Human-caused climate change at the center of recent California wildfires
However, a new study by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist and collaborators shows that nearly all the recent increase in summer wildfire burned area is attributable to human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change. Anthropogenic simulations yielded burn areas an average of 172% higher than natural variation simulations. The research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team, led by Marco Turco from the University of Murcia, Spain, modeled the climate drivers of summer wildfire activity in California, both with natural climate variation alone and with anthropogenic climate change effects.
Beginning in 2001, the team found, the drivers of increasing summer burn area are all anthropogenic, with no detected natural forcing component of enhanced burn area. Although repeated wildfires consume fuel and limit the activity of subsequent fires in the same area, the team estimated that the next decades — between 2031 and 2050 — may see a further increase in average summer burn area in California of up to 52% more than current average burn areas.
and
Non-climatic factors that have been implicated in changing wildfire characteristics include land management that has facilitated fuel buildup, which favors increased burn severity, and the increased susceptibility of California’s aging power grid to extreme weather and increased development in fire-prone areas that changes ignition patterns and fire management.
“Beneath these ‘external’ factors, natural climate variability also influences the occurrence and severity of forest wildfires, creating a noise that can mask the signal of human-caused impacts on wildfire changes,” Lucas said.
Using the latest simulations for climate-change attribution and detection studies and accounting for the uncertainties arising from the data-driven climate-fire model and climate models, the team quantified the influence of human-caused climate change on the burned area in recent years.
“We show that nearly all of the observed increase in burned area in California over the past half-century is attributable to human-caused climate change,” Lucas said.
I await your explanation for the Canada fires this year (causing the evacuation of a Canadian territory capital, Yellowknife), similar fire is Spain, Greece and Siberia. Previous mass burns in Russia, Australia, Indonesia, Portugal …
We have a climate czar here! There’s certainly a position waiting for you in the bureaucracy. Nothing we can’t fix without a little bit more top heavy government and lecturing. Regurgitate more please; we don’t get enough of this crap from the Biden Cabinet.
Too many facts for you ?
There are no ‘facts’ in climate science… Instead there is an incredibly complex system and a bunch of clonespeak regurgitators who’s simple mental models lead them to believe the biosphere reacts linearly and predictably when they throttle a single parameter, tree food (aka CO2).
People should take on real problems like water quality and extinction and the health of the fisheries. Instead they want deindustrialization…. morons.
We don’t believe that the biosphere and atmosphere react linearly.
Far from it.
You need to familiarize yourself with the concept of “climate tipping points”
Collapse when it comes will be exponential.
To quote Hemingway “Slowly at first, and then suddenly”.
Your comments are utterly and completely ignorant and redundant. Maybe you can find another playyard, while the adults are having a discussion here.
I’m sorry I don’t have the strength to battle every climate clone on the internet who thinks their plastic bottles are actually recycled…
Well they’ve been arresting dozens of arsonists in Greece.
These “arsonists” are migrants being used as scapegoats.
Over time monopolies grow lazier and more incompetent.
Government is a monopoly.
Yes. Exactly.
No, it’s not, not in a functioning democracy anyway. But, as Jimmy Carter said a decade ago, “we no longer have a functioning democracy.” So we can’t throw the bums out and get competent people in government. That’s the problem.
Don’t all libertarian laissez faire economies degenerate into oligarchies and monopolies that ironically snuff out free market competition since there are no government rules (like anti-monopoly laws) that ensure that the market stays competitive?