LA Wildfires Prove Climate Change, Not Democrat Inefficiency.

The Blame Is Only Being Placed On Democrats By Those Who Do Not Believe In Science.

There has been a tragic span of wildfires across the LA area beginning Tuesday, January 7th.

Composed of 5 fires in total, each of which are in different cities surrounding the greater Los Angeles area. The totality of damage adds up to 28,497 acres burned.

Over 100,000 people have been evacuated, with at least 5 confirmed dead, as thousands of buildings have been burned to ash.

This has sparked quite the conversation online. With Trump quick to shamelessly blame Democrats as people’s homes were still burning.

This was despite him largely conflating multiple unconnected issues and utilizing misinformation to do so.

Image Credit: BBC

So today we are going to debunk this by exposing the real culprit, climate change. In hopes, at the least, this tragedy can bring the conversation back to the mainstream discourse.

As it’s one that has largely been rejected by Republicans. Though, this way, we can actually take steps to prevent any other innocent families from losing their homes. By the end of the article we will also connect this directly to what is happening in California.

The Case For Climate Change.

The case for climate change being the main culprit here is pretty straightforward. Climate change has made Wildfires both burn hotter and for longer periods of time, as well as more frequent and appearing earlier in the season.

This puts additional strains on our resources, and hinders our ability to respond appropriately, especially when we aren’t upgrading our systems to combat this. The only way to deny this, is to deny the science behind climate change.

So this is what I will be thoroughly arguing here, as most denials of this just relies on ignorance of the facts behind it.

Cause And Effect Of Climate Change.

The effects of human-caused climate change on Wildfires specifically is actually a pretty widely studied phenomenon. To quote a 2016 study that takes effects from 1970-2016 the authors find:

Although numerous factors aided the recent rise in fire activity, observed warming and drying have significantly increased fire-season fuel aridity, fostering a more favorable fire environment across forested systems. We demonstrate that human-caused climate change caused over half of the documented increases in fuel aridity since the 1970s and doubled the cumulative forest fire area since 1984.

Essentially, the effects of climate change on the environment(warmer temperatures, drier air, droughts) create conditions that allow for Wildfires to catch easier and spread faster.

This study finds due to these effects, forested area’s experience as many as 9 additional high risk fire days a year. Fires since 1970 have burned an additional 4.2 million ha of area than what would be expected in its absence.

Even more research specifically on Wildfires in California and how they are related to climate change shows from 1996-2021 areas with more effects of human caused climate change experienced 172% more burned area than those with only natural forces at play.

How Increased Temperature Effects Fires.

One of the most known effects of climate change is the rising temperature, a lesser known effects of this however is making heat waves more common. Presently, we are 5 times more likely to experience a heatwave as global temperatures continue to rise. These global temperatures rising can be directly connected with human-caused climate change.

And it is these exact heat waves that create the perfect, dry conditions Wildfires need to become a more common phenomenon. This rate is only expected to climb if we continue on our trend, to where heatwaves could become 40 times more likely than they are now.

On average in the US Wildfires now burn 12,000 square miles a year, roughly the size of Maryland. In the 80s when we began to track this, they were only burning around 3,300 square miles a year.

All in all, human-caused climate change and its effects on Wildfires is pretty thoroughly documented. There is even a resource list available with over 10 studies from different periods of time, ranging multiple years, that track this exact thing.

Unequipped, Not Unprepared.

The narrative going around on the right is largely based around blaming Democrats for being unprepared. From citing lack of water storage, to ineptness from Democratic leadership, Republicans are largely trying to blame anything to distract from the effects our climate played.

Let’s start by looking at the claims made by Republicans, if there is any merit to them, and then end by explaining how climate change actually plays the role directly in the effectiveness of these services.

California doesn’t have enough water supply because of Newsom.

This is predicated on Trump accusing Gavin Newsom of refusing a water deal that would’ve “fixed the supply” all to save a special fish. It should go as no surprise, this is a completely fabricated story in the effect it actually had.

The main issue however, is water supply has nothing to do with the problem. Its more about distribution, which we’ll get to. But to quote Orange County Water District Chief Hydrogeologist Roy Herndon, he said:

Orange County Water District Chief Hydrogeologist Roy Herndon said his agency, which supplies groundwater to the north half of the county, has enough supply to carry its 2.5 million customers through the worst of any potential droughts — multiple years in a row with minimal rainfall. “Three years, no problem. I’d say even five years,” Herndon said.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million people, also stated they have 3.8 million acre-feet of water storage, enough to supply 40 million people for a year by itself.

Their water reservoirs are well above average for this time of the year as well.

Karen Bass and Democrats are to blame.

This largely revolves around the idea that one, Karen Bass cut the fire department by 17 million. And two, that it was decisions made by Newsom, Bass, and Biden that lead us to this point.

However, this is an issue Democrats have largely been on top of. Biden passed plans for increased water delivery to California during his term. Republicans have fought against this, including passing numerous pieces of legislation to cut funding from water supplies.

Not to mention the massive 3.6 billion in funding approved by Biden for water infrastructure in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. It seems forgotten by Republicans that Trump threatened to cut California’s wildfire funding if re-elected just months ago on the campaign trail.

Trump Speaks at 2024 Presidential Debate In Philly.

With Karen Bass, some blame could be placed on her. Though the context is important. The 17 million the budget was cut by reflects just over 2% of the overall funding, and did not result in cuts on personnel or equipment.

Also, that 17 million was not set to go toward anything that would’ve made fighting or preventing wildfires easier.

However, there is legitimate criticism in her slashing the budget for any reason when if anything it needs raised to meet the demands climate change has put forth. Especially when it seems she largely did it because the firefighters union endorsed her opponent.

The last point I will very briefly touch on is this idea that, its because we’re sending millions to Ukraine that we don’t have the proper equipment. This is ridiculous for a few reasons, first we send little money to Ukraine. We buy weapons from ourselves and send them to Ukraine.

This puts more money in our economy and creates jobs and other downstream benefits. Secondly, things are not so black and white. Even if we were sending money to Ukraine it wouldn’t mean we didn’t have money for here, and stopping money to Ukraine doesn’t mean it’ll go toward Wildfires.

This isn’t how governmental budgets work. And the party who’s voters are pushing this idea on social media, is the party who’s elected officials refuse to allocated more funding to these services regardless of anything else.

The Real Culprit.

I’ll keep it brief, as again, with the science behind it it is really simple. Increased effects from climate change ranging from increased temperatures, drier air, drier land, then lead to an heightened atmosphere for Wildfires. Making them more likely to happen, and more dangerous when they inevitably do.

Meaning, the equipment we had for lesser fires doesn’t hold. Hydrants are typically made for neighborhood blocks, a couple houses at most. The hydrants in California were being relied on for thousands of buildings.

Pipes and other structures can’t hold up to the increased temperature of the fires causing them to melt.

Burning in a wider radius then means more personnel will be required to treat these fires. California as a whole already relies heavily on the incarcerated population to fight fires and as fires become more common haven’t received the funding necessary to adequately staff how they should.

A lot of these measures are being blocked by Republicans. Ultimately, what happened in California was a result of the hydrants being too overly relied on for refills, leading to them losing pressure to distribute to more elevated areas.

The fires themselves hindered firefighters abilities to reach the hydrants manually, leaving them relying on water tenders. But without the needed infrastructure, or personnel, distribution was a lost effort.

The blame can be on a combination of people. Republicans for routine blocking water supply funding bills. Trump for putting Infrastructure on the back burner in his first term. Conservatives for outright denying climate change and its effects, Democrats for largely ceding the issue.

But pretending the root cause is anything but climate change is to deny science, and by that result, deny reality.