- The despicable Donald Trump ignorantly criticizes California politicians, rather than offering any sympathy for the victims of the recent fires;
- How well-intentioned policies from decades ago are partly responsible for the fires;
- How humans might be doomed by their own human nature;
- Another Mel Gibson screed;
- And my take on the real reason behind why so many people want to think evolution, or climate change, is false.
What a despicable person.
NY Times, 12 Jan 2025: Trump Calls Officials Handling Los Angeles Wildfires ‘Incompetent’
President-elect Donald J. Trump offered fresh criticism early Sunday of the officials in charge of fighting the Los Angeles wildfires, calling them “incompetent” and asking why the blazes were not yet extinguished.
“The fires are still raging in L.A.,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social site. “The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out.”
Once again, those alien mind parasites have apparently addled his thinking. The officials don’t put out the fires. The firefighters themselves are arguably the best in the nation, having decades of experience dealing with the weather conditions and terrain in Southern California. What’s caused these fires is a combination of a dry year with no rain for months, and extraordinarily winds and heat, which competent people can trace to climate change, something Trump thinks is a hoax. He’s projecting his own incompetence and ignorance. To Trump, everything is about scoring points among those he can assign enemies in order to charge up his base.
Headlines about Trump’s irrational criticisms of Newsom and others are making headlines around the world. He is, among other things, destroying America’s reputation.
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Also this, from yesterday:
JMG, 12 Jan 2025: Newsom Debunks Lies By Trump, Musk, And Cultists
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I alluded to these issues a couple days ago. I would suggest that liberals will try to change, and conservatives, especially wealthy land-owners, will resist them. As it has ever been. This is about one particular change made decades ago…
The Atlantic, M. Nolan Gray, 11 Jan 2025: How Well-Intentioned Policies Fueled L.A.’s Fires, subtitled “The disaster can teach California how to rebuild, if the state will listen.”
Over the past week, fires have ravaged greater Los Angeles, killing at least 10 people, destroying more than 10,000 buildings, scorching more than 35,000 acres, and forcing the evacuation of at least 180,000 residents. The dry Santa Ana winds continue to blow, threatening to spread the destruction further. As I write this, a backpack stuffed with mementos, documents, and a water bottle sits next to the front door of my West Los Angeles apartment.
Commentators wasted no time trying to find a villain. Was it Mayor Karen Bass, who had left the city for Ghana before the fires began? Doubtful. What about budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department? In fact, its budget recently grew by $50 million. Was it a 2022 donation of firefighter boots and helmets to Ukraine? Water is in short supply, not uniforms.
The real story of the wildfires isn’t about malice or incompetence. It’s about well-intentioned policies with unintended consequences.
In particular, insurance policies. In recent years insurance companies have been simply canceling homeowners’ policies in high-risk areas. The alternative, in California, in a public insurance program called the FAIR Plan, which I presume (I don’t know) is much more expensive; it’s a last resort. What I didn’t know was this:
But in 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103, arbitrarily reducing rates by 20 percent and subjecting future rate increases to public oversight. Nobody likes high premiums, of course. But the politicization of risk has been a catastrophe. Artificially low premiums encouraged more Californians to live in the state’s most dangerous areas. And they reduced the incentive for homeowners to protect their houses, such as by installing fire-resistant roofs and siding materials.
Decades of worsening climate risk alongside suppressed premiums have prompted many insurers to drop coverage altogether. Just last summer, State Farm dropped 1,600 home-insurance plans in Pacific Palisades. Earlier this week, most of the neighborhood was burning.
This echoes another, famous, California proposition from the 1970s, Proposition 13, which limited increased on property tax so that, for example, elderly people could afford to stay in their homes indefinitely. That too had unintended consequences. But the electorate voted for it.
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Humans may be doomed by their own human nature.
Washington Post, opinion by Jennifer Rubin, 12 Jan 2025: The Los Angeles fires won’t affect climate denial. They should., subtitled “The disastrous California wildfires are another undeniable sign of the dangers of climate change.”
As I’ve discussed many times over the years, studies show that people are not persuaded by evidence, and form their beliefs based more on ideology and religion, whatever they grew up with, and the conventional knowledge of their family and community. If “everyone” in your acquaintance is sure that climate change is a hoax, it’s very hard for you to accept the evidence and express a counter-belief. You could be ostracized. Rubin:
The Los Angeles fires won’t affect climate denial. They should.
The disastrous California wildfires are another undeniable sign of the dangers of climate change.
And so on.
These sorts of horror shows will become routine if climate change deniers, led by the MAGA anti-science crowd, get their way. Put differently, the cost of refusing to listen to Al Gore — who has been sounding the climate change alarm for decades — and the scientific community is proving astronomically high. (At a 2017 energy summit, Gore warned: “All over the West, we’re seeing these fires get much, much worse. The underlying cause is the heat.”)
Gore was on the money when he dubbed climate change an “inconvenient truth.” That has created a media and political challenge for right-wing ideologues and their fossil fuel backers. Their solution, exemplified by President-elect Donald Trump’s reaction to extreme weather events, be they storms in North Carolina or fires in California: Deride officials and invent conspiracies to explain how liberal politicians “failed.” And spare little sympathy for victims.
Thus Trump’s attacks against Newsom. Rubin concludes:
In short, MAGA climate deniers and their fossil fuel backers cannot deal with the deadly and destructive effects of climate change, the massive costs it inflicts, and the untold human suffering in red and blue states alike. Confronted with the very outcomes Gore and others predicted, they resort to untruths and insults.
Enough. Democrats, independents, sensible Republicans, state and local officials, homeowners and the rest need to be blunt and consistent: Climate denial destroys lives; dishonest narratives and a lack of empathy for victims are repellent.
If ordinary Americans harmed by Republicans’ irrational policy positions are to both hold those responsible to account and change the political landscape to produce lifesaving policy changes, they need to make the connection between GOP ideology and climate disasters.
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One more item from one of the crazies.
JMG, 12 Jan 2025: Gibson: Evolution Is Fake, Bible is “Verifiable History”
I’ve made this point before but it’s worth making again. Aside from the astonishing ignorance and presumption revealed by Gibson, the real question, it’s always seemed to me, isn’t about the evidence or counter-evidence about evolution, or climate change. It’s about why it’s so important to so many people to believe that evolution is false, or that climate change is a hoax. They only debate these issues because they *want* them to be untrue. Why is that? They are not debating cosmology, or the reality of dark matter; they are not debating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. They’re only debating issues that threaten their self-images, and their tribal mythologies. It’s as simple as that.
