Tag: California wildfires

Trump administration rejects, then approves, emergency aid for California fires, including biggest blaze in state history

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Fueled by extreme heat and dry, windy conditions, wildfires ravaged California in September, blazing through almost 1.9 million acres, destroying nearly 1,000 homes and killing at least three people. One wildfire, the Creek Fire, became the largest single inferno in California history and grew so fierce it spun up fire tornadoes with 125-mph winds.

On Friday, the request for federal assistance to help pay for the recovery from a half-dozen of those fires spun up a tornado of its own. Like the proverbial tempest, the storm over the money had been contained in a teapot by the day’s end.

The day began with news that the Trump administration had refused to grant California an emergency declaration that would make hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding available for areas devastated by the Creek Fire and five others. Federal officials said the most recent application did not meet the criteria for federal relief. Continue reading.

In Visiting a Charred California, Trump Confronts a Scientific Reality He Denies

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A president who has mocked climate change and pushed policies that accelerate it is set to be briefed on the scorched earth and ash-filled skies that experts say are the predictable result.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump flies to California on Monday to assess the state’s raging forest fires, he will come face to face with the grim consequences of a reality he has stubbornly refused to accept: the devastating effects of a warming planet.

To the global scientific community, the acres of scorched earth and ash-filled skies across the American West are the tragic, but predictable, result of accelerating climate change. Nearly two years ago, federal government scientists concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels could triple the frequency of severe fires across the Western states.

But the president has used his time in the nation’s highest office to aggressively promote the burning of fossil fuels, chiefly by rolling back or weakening every major federal policy intended to combat dangerous emissions. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his senior environmental officials have regularly mocked, denied or minimized the established science of human-caused climate change. Continue reading.

As wildfires burn across California, President Trump lashes out at the state on Twitter

Autumn in California now comes not only with fierce, wind-driven wildfires but with routine claims from President Trump that the state’s leaders are to blame for the disasters, followed by assurances from experts that the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The cycle renewed again Sunday, when Trump tweeted that Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) had failed to properly manage the state’s forests, causing a string of recent blazes.

Newsom “has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers,” Trump said in an early-morning missive on Twitter.

View the complete November 3 article by James Rainey on The Los Angeles Times website here.

Trump Stymies California Climate Efforts Even as State Burns

New York Times logoCalifornia is feeling the brunt of climate change with more intense fires. The Trump administration is blocking the state’s efforts to fight it.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — For the past three years, countries and companies around the world have looked to California as a counterweight to the Trump administration’s aggressive dismantling of efforts to combat climate change.

But this past week, as wildfires burned across the state — fires that scientists say have been made worse by a changing climate — and as at least five large carmakers sided with President Trump’s plan to roll back California’s climate pollution standards, the state’s status as the vanguard of environmental policy seemed at the very least diminished.

The state’s leaders found themselves both witnessing firsthand the eff

View the complete November 2 article by Thomas Fuller and Coral Davenport on The New York Times website here.

Trump team blames ‘terrorist groups,’ not climate change, for wildfires

The following article by Dan Desai Martin was posted on the ShareBlue.com website August 16, 2018:

Citizens petitioning their government, a right protected in the First Amendment of the Constitution, are being called ‘terrorists’ by the Trump administration.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP Photo

In a desperate attempt to blame anything except climate change for the deadly wildfires rampaging across California, Trump’s Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed “environmental terrorist groups” for the blazes. The escalation of rhetoric is a troubling trend in an administration known for authoritarian impulses.

Within the first minute of an interview with Breitbart, a site with known white supremacist ties, Zinke used the word “terrorist” to describe groups that have different political ideas than him.

Zinke claims, citing no specific examples, that environmental groups prevent the type of forest management Zinke says would prevent these catastrophic wildfires. The result is an increase in the “fuel load” that feeds fires, such as dead limbs and twigs.

View the complete article here.