CA Gov. Brown: These early wildfires are pretty much due to climate change, you know

Like every other self-aggrandizing environmentalist who isn’t partial to entertaining questions that could possibly challenge the green gospel, California Gov. Jerry Brown seized the opportunity to stress the all-consuming, catastrophic imminence of climate change on ABC’s This Week this morning:

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It is true that there’s virtually no Republican who accepts the science that virtually is unanimous. I mean, there is no scientific question. There’s just political denial for various reasons, best known to those people who are in denial. … But, you know, we live in a world that is not just government or not just business. It’s natural, the natural systems. As we send billions and billions of tons of heat-trapping gases, we get heat and we get fires and we get what we’re seeing. So, we’ve got to gear up. We’re going to deal with nature as best we can, but humanity is on a collision course with nature and we’re just going to have to adapt to it in the best way we can.

Brown does mention one of the most ragingly responsible factors for California’s early fire season — a growing and spreading population, increased industrial and commercial activity, and straight-up arson — as well as the importance of carefully cultivating wildfire preparedness and adaptation. What he neglects to mention, as do most environmentalists, is the possibility that the environmentalist-sponsored policies that governed much of the arid West for decades created ideal conditions to dry out ecosystems. California has its own individual conditions to deal with, but as ever with the progressive set, the overwhelming cause must be climate change, about which, according to Brown, “there is no scientific question” because the science is “virtually unanimous” and Republicans are the only one who don’t absolutely accept it. …Oh, wait, check it out — I found a possible scientific question!

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As firefighters struggle to contain the wind-fueled blazes, meteorologists and scientists say the fires could signal an especially active fire season for Southern California, fed by the wind, above-normal temperatures and tinder-dry vegetation.

But it’s not clear if the fires represent a new normal for expanded fire seasons, which typically start in summer, as it’s impossible to tie specific weather and fire events to climate change.

“What we’re seeing right now is just a real anomaly,” said Norman Miller, an expert in regional climate and hydrology at the University of California, Berkeley. “Whether it’s part of natural variability or climate change, we need to have a longer record of occurrences so we can construct a trend and make sense out of it.” …

Miller, for his part, has run computer models predicting that climate change could extend the traditionally October to November Santa Ana season, with increasing winds in December and January. But that still wouldn’t explain why they’ve come in May this year. …

“We’re fire prone almost every year,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we’re not linked to climate change. It’s just a more complex set of ecosystems.”

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