Contributor at Western Free Press
Nancy Thorner is a writer, cellist, and Tea Party activist based in suburban Chicago who writes regularly for Western Free Press, Illinois Review, and The Heartland Institute's Freedom Pub blog. Nancy is active in the following organizations: The Heartland Institute, Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, Illinois Family Institute, Family-Pac, Republican Assembly of Lake County, and the Women's Republican Club of Lake Forest/Lake Bluff.
Latest posts by Nancy Thorner (see all)
- THORNER: HEARTLAND INSTITUTE HONORS CONTROVERSIAL TRUTH-SEEKER JAMES O’KEEFE - October 12, 2021
- Democrats Set Up America for Economic Collapse - September 30, 2021
- TIME FOR OPEN, HONEST DIALOGUE ABOUT TREATING CORONAVIRUS – PART 2 - September 23, 2021
As of Sept. 13, 2020, fires have been raging in Oregon, California and Washington for three weeks, burning millions of acres of land and destroying thousands of homes.
Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes. According to officials, the fires have now scorched an area of land the size of New Jersey.
In Oregon, where firefighters are battling 16 large blazes, 40,000 people are under mandatory evacuation orders. Oregon’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) says the fires have killed 10 people, but officials warn the final death toll could be much higher.
In Washington state, firefighters are tackling 15 large fires. A one-year-old boy died as his family tried to escape a blaze. His parents remain in critical condition.
As for CA, Governor Gavin Newsom told reporters on Friday, September 11th when inspecting damage from a fire near Oroville in Northern CA: “This is a climate damn emergency. This is real and it’s happening.”
The North Complex Fire has been burning since August 18 and is among the deadliest in history. Twelve bodies have been found so far, with people still missing.
California has seen at least 22 deaths in total from fires since 15 August. Tens of thousands of people are under evacuation orders; 14,800 firefighters continue to combat 28 major fires in the state.
Smoke turns skies orange
The following account was published by the San Francisco Chronicle on 9/12/2020:
“City Hall is seen under a sky glowing orange due to smoke from the wildfires. The sun did come up on Wednesday, Sep 9, 2020 meteorologists confirmed, but it kept largely to itself, on the other side of the thick blanket of smoke, fog, haze and muck. Headlights and porch lights stayed on all day. Flashlights came out at high noon. The orange dimness confused almost everyone and everything — from the Bay Lights display on the Bay Bridge, which is supposed to turn off a half hour after sunrise, to pets acting unusually standoffish to folks who spied the early-morning darkness, figured their alarm clocks were wrong, and rolled over and went back to sleep.
Hours after sunrise, dawn remained something of an oversight. At high noon, the heavens grew darker instead of lighter.
Trump and Newsom agree to disagree
President Donald Trump has long stressed poor fire-control measures as the main cause of the latest blazes. “You’ve got to clean your forests – there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re… so flammable.
On Monday, September 14, 2020 President Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom met and traded rare compliments at a briefing on wildfires, agreeing to disagree on whether global warming is a contributing cause.
As to Newsom’s request to Trump about agreeing to disagree, Trump replied, “Absolutely.” However, moments later when California secretary of natural resources Wade Crowfoot insisted to Trump that “we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate,” Trump said, “It will start getting cooler, you just watch!”
Newsom did concede that Trump was right to blame dry leaves and logs on the forest floor for contributing to raging fires saying: “There’s no question, when you look past this decade for almost 1000-plus years we have not done justice on our forest management.”
And where was Biden? Biden used Monday, September 14 to rip President Trump as a “climate arsonist” in a speech from Delaware in which he laid out his $2 trillion Green New Deal agenda for America’s future, touting renewable energy jobs, electric vehicles and energy-efficient homes.
Using the forest fires as a political issue, Biden blamed Trump from failing to protect us from the pandemic, from an economic free fall, from racial unrest, and the ravages of climate change.
Predictions come true
Climate scientists did forecast that western wildfires would grow larger in size, scale and impact. Their predictions are coming to fruition faster than expected.
Bob Zybach, an experienced forester with a PhD in environmental science, told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Sunday, September 13 how he predicted an uptick in blazes 30 years ago, but states are still ignoring it.
Shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mido-1990s that drastically reduced logging and road creation of federal lands, Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires. Argues Zybach, the former president’s decision created “a ticking time bomb.”
According to US Dept of Interior and Insurance Institute issued on August, 18, 2020: “Almost 90% of all wild land fires in the United States are caused by people.” The specific causes cited were arson, unattended campfires, burning of debris, downed power line, negligently discarded cigarettes. The remaining 10% were started by lightning or lava.
As to arson, arrests are being made across the West coast as multiple fires have been identified as arson related.
A twitter account by Katie Daviscourt tracked some of the fires and a recent series of events from the area(s) [ SEE HERE]. People have been caught, captured or filmed in the act of lighting fires. There is some speculation, and some evidence, that some of these fires may have been ignited by Antifa activists as a method of further creating crisis in the region.
While the FBI is saying there is no evidence Antifa or Joe Biden’s far-left base of support are behind the fires, given the internal dynamic within the FBI, accepting that the FBI carries a political agenda, and considering that the facts on the ground do not support the denials, can we be reassured by the downplaying of motive by the FBI?
Following is an Islamic State propaganda video telling its believers to set fire in the West this summer as an act of Islamic jihad. They specify CA, but ask for it to be done everywhere the ‘infidels’ live.
This video is of an Oregon bystander taking videos of people in hoods setting fires in the woods.
The Climate Science of Global Warming
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared on September 11, 2020, without evidence, that the ongoing wildfires in his state proves the science surrounding global warming is now officially settled. “It’s not an intellectual debate, it’s not even debatable,” said Newsom.
Newsom’s exceedingly ignorant climate claim was contradicted by Jim Stelle, a guest blogger at Wattsupwiththat.com. Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
“Scientific evidence reveals there has been no climate effect regards California’s wildfires! None! The data below proves it beyond all doubt. There is no denying that warmer temperatures can cause drier fuels and promote larger fires. But that fact is being misapplied to all wildfires.
About 70% of California’s 2020 burnt areas have been in grasslands and dead grass is so dry by the end of California’s annual summer drought that dead grasses are totally insensitive to any added warmth from climate change. Dead grasses only require a few hours of warm dry conditions to become highly flammable. It’s fire weather not climate change that is critical.
Furthermore, the century trends in local temperatures where California’s biggest fires have occurred reveal no connection to climate change. In most cases the local maximum temperatures have been cooler now than during the 1930s. Those cooler temperatures should reduce the fire danger.”
According to Mr. Stelle, “Newsom is either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, is totally stupid, or is a dishonest demagogue.”
Stelle then presented these relevant facts (from the Western Regional Climate Center), asking us to trust the scientific evidence:
1) The August 2013 Rim Fire centered around Yosemite National Park, was California’s 5th largest fire.
2) The November 2018 Camp Fire was California’s deadliest fire destroying the town of Paradise. It was also its 16th largest fire.
3) The 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire was California’s largest fire (since 1932 excluding 2020) .
4) In the October 2017 wine country fires, the Tubbs Fire was the 4th deadliest. It only burned 37,000 acres but high winds drove embers into the dwellings of the heavily populated outskirts of Santa Rosa.”
Said Steele: “Governor Newsom has ignored the data to hijack the tragedy of California’s fires to push his climate change agenda.”
Stelle also related how Newsom is not alone in either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, for this is what believer of climate change do.
According to Mr. Steele: “There are climate scientists pushing catastrophes by ignoring the local maximum temperature trends. Bad analyses promote bad policies and obscure what needs to be done regards fuel management and creating defensible spaces in fire prone California (and other western states).”
[Originally posted on Illinois Review]
