California is on fire because its liberal government stopped clearing fire breaks, stopped clearing brush from underneath the transmission lines and stopped clearing brush from the sides of highways. Failure to augment the transmission grid as the population increased left equipment vulnerable to overload. These are unforced errors.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...ist-utopia-cant-even-keep-the-electricity-on/ Nolte: California’s Leftist Utopia Can’t Even Keep the Electricity On If California can’t keep the electricity on, if California can’t perform basics tasks like forest and brush management, if your once beautiful cities are now killing fields of human waste, needles, and the homeless, you are a failed state. California is a failed state. A failed state is one that cannot deliver the basics: personal safety, adequate shelter, adequate transportation, and basic sanitation.
Let us all try to keep a very confused situation straight. There is more than one question. 1a) Is the climate changing at an atypical rate on a geological time scale. 1b) If so, what's causing it? 2a) Are man's activities significantly affecting climate? 2b) If so, how? It is being assumed that the answers to these questions is known. That's incorrect. There are many of the world's most knowledgeable scientists, including many experts in climate science and atmospheric physics, who maintain the answers to one or more of these questions is as yet unknown. This includes some of the most highly respected and well-known scientists in the world. It is unfortunately not the case that everyone is equipped to recognize when the popular press, and media in general, has concluded that a scientific consensus exists before it actually does. Scientific questions can not be answered by public opinion polls, nor even polls of scientists. Everyone understands this simple reality; yet even though we understand this we continue to justify our belief by stating that scientists agree that man made CO2 is causing our planet's temperature to rise. Scientific questions can never be settled this way. The best we can do is to formulate an hypothesis and then test it by repeated observation. A single observation not consistent with the hypothesis is enough to cause the hypothesis to be questioned. Either the hypothesis is wrong or the observation is wrong. The now famous Hansen Hypothesis is a guess, based on known science, that man's activities have released enough CO2 into the atmosphere to cause the Earth's surface temperature to rise, and if the rate of CO2 released to the atmosphere is not reduced, man's habitat will suffer calamitously as a result of rising temperature. At present there exists more than one observation inconsistent with the hypothesis. It is claimed by some that models of future surface temperature prove the validity of the Hypothesis. These models, in themselves, can not be used to prove the validity, because they assume validity as the basis of the model. However, were the models to produce correct predictions of surface temperature well into the future, they would constitute a putative proof of the Hypothesis. Unfortunately, as yet, no model has correctly predicted future temperature beyond the next few years. When the models' parameters are adjusted periodically to fit actual past temperatures, the models then correctly predict temperatures for the next half decade*, or so, within acceptable error limits. These results are encouraging in that they seem to offer an indication that our more recent models are improving in their predictive ability.** It should not escape notice however that these results are also entirely consistent with the Hypothesis having been dis-proven by actual observation. ________________________ * The Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv has remarked that the IPCC adjusts their models' parameters every six years to keep them in line with reported temperature measurements. ** The ability of the models to predict temperature for the next few years may actually be due to total failure of the models from being over parameterized so that too few degrees of freedom are left. A guess at future temperatures for the next five years based on the range of temperatures in the past five years might be every bit as useful! It is as easy to fool ourselves as it is to jump to conclusions!
A reasonable post on your part. 1a) Is the climate changing at an atypical rate on a geological time scale. Probably not given historical data of numerous climate shifts over the eons of time, many of them far worse than what we're experiencing. 1b) If so, what's causing it? Multiple theories, but no absolute certainty with the exception of the lunatics. 2a) Are man's activities significantly affecting climate? If it's significant it's still a slow roll all on a short time frame, and if significant longer term we're probably long past a tipping point. 2b) If so, how? I'd say that they have the general idea down of how we are impacting the climate, but given that just how severe that impact is or will be is still unknown the real question is how much sacrifice needs to be made to offset it? That is the big debate and I don't see anyone, including and especially the climate alarmists taking any significant measures on their own part to curb what they can control. If it's all that serious, then get serious and I mean right fucking now. Legislate are fleet vehicles to natty gas immediately. A hundred or more nuke plants to begin construction today. Mandate all electric personal vehicles, today. Limit cross country and cross continent flights immediate. Mandate temperature control on all structures, buildings, homes, everything and no tax penalties to keep the wealthy warm. Nope, everyone puts on an extra sweater. There's more, much more to be done if it's really serious. No taxes, only mandates for change and everyone suffers and sacrifices equally, EVERYONE, WORLDWIDE and it happens today. Those that don't comply are immediately punished with imprisonment. Countries that don't comply are destroyed immediately by whatever means necessary. Got to be that way are we're all gonna die. Ready, set, go, who's in? Yeah, that's what I thought, leading me to believe it ain't all that serious.
I can't fault anything you wrote as it is informed opinion. However you predicated your extended remarks on the assumption that if there is man made climate change going on then it is due to CO2. I am one of those scientists who believes that if there is significant man made climate change occurring, not only is it not due to CO2, but it can not be!, as I firmly believe Hansen's hypothesis has been disproved and that the atmosphere's overall feedback response to perturbations is negative, not positive. The latter is a requirement of the Hansen Hypothesis. I think it was a mistake to pull out of the Paris Accords however, and I think it is a good idea to pursue energy alternatives to fossil fuels -- actually not just a good idea, but a really good idea. What I wonder is, What is the effect of plain old man made thermal pollution on a grand scale? That of course is what the "urban island effect" is all about. As we populate, defoliate, pave over, industrialize and pollute more and more of the Earth's surface, what are the thermal consequences, beyond any effect of CO2? I think we should be thinking more about that. Are we still paving over Houston with pitch black asphalt. Do homes there still roof with black asphalt shingles? If so, why? I can see it in North Dakota, but not in Houston. We need to get smarter!