The Western Fires and Climate Change

 The big push regarding climate change these days is to tie the forest fires out west with man made global warming and scream hysterically.  The problem, of course, is that there is nothing that ties the fires to any changing climate.

There are many people who believe that the fires have been set by some of the leftist groups trying to take control of society through climate change regulations.  Who knows if any of that is true.  It seems pretty wild, but if these same sorts of groups burn down cities to "help" those who homes and businesses get burnt, then maybe they really are idiotic enough to burn forests to save the climate.

Let's assume that most of the fires were started by lighting strikes, though.  The existence of lightening is not changed whether or not the average temp is 72 or 73 degrees (and that's the sort of climate change we are talking about).  There are dry years and there are rainy years, even out west.  It used to be said that the rain each year was determined by whether or not there was an El Nino phenomenon in the Pacific or a La Nina.  These were warmer or cooler spots on the surface of the Pacific that guided weather systems north or southward.  Now it's all climate change because ...well...it's the story of the moment.

Of course, the severe forest fires this year are also the result of using "natural" methods in land management.  It used to be that particularly in dry years, the forestry service would try to clear much of the dry brush out of the forests so that any blazes would have much less fuel to burn.  The environmentalists who now scream about climate change previously marched about only using natural methods for land manage.  Clearing brush was bad; nature would clear it away in fires.  Seriously, these people who are now going berserk over fires wanted the US Forestry service to let natural fires clear away the brush.  It's like an opponent of vaccines getting upset when his or her child gets measles that was totally preventable with the vaccine.  What did they expect would happen?