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Driven by high winds and fueled by dry conditions, what started as a wildland fire became an ‘area ignition’ event that grew into a ‘giant structure fire’ in Paradise, says Tim Aboudara of the International Association of Firefighters.

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The Carr Fire, which has devastated Shasta and Trinity counties, was sparked by a vehicle fire at the intersection of Carr Powerhouse Road and Highway 299 near Redding, California.

But Brown, a Democrat, argues that the larger cause for such devastating wildfires is global warming — or “climate change.” Like other advocates of the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming, Brown argues that fires are the result of industrial activity, but that this problem can be reversed — by draconian government controls, of course.

Brown addressed the fires this week, that since July 23 have burned more than 115,000 acres, ranking the total wildfires the sixth most destructive in the history of California. Six have died, and more than a thousand homes have been destroyed.

“Nature is very powerful,” Brown said, “and we’re not on the side of nature.” Such fires, he warned, are “the new normal.”

Why is that? “We’re fighting nature with the amount of material we’re putting in the environment, and that material traps heat, and the heat fosters fires, and the fires keep burning,” Brown said by way of explanation. In other words, he claims that industrial activity is causing the Earth, including California, to heat up, so the solution is to stop — or at least somehow reduce — industrial activity.

Arguing for the theory that it is primarily human industrial activity (which has greatly improved our material life on Earth) that has caused global warming, and thus the wildfires, Brown brazenly asserted, “Since civilization emerged 10,000 years ago, we haven’t had this kind of heat condition, and it’s going to continue getting worse and that’s the way it is.”

But, according to Brown, it doesn’t have to be the “way it is.” He claims that steps can still be taken to combat global warming to “shift the weather back to where it historically was.”

Back during Brown’s first run as governor of California, in the 1970s and early 1980s, he was widely ridiculed after he refused to order the spraying of insecticide to kill off the Mediterranean fruit fly, which was wreaking havoc on the economy of southern California’s fruit growers. Jokes were made that Brown was such a nice guy that he “wouldn’t even hurt a fly.”

His current remarks should also make him the butt of jokes, but probably will not. Yet his remark that “we haven’t had this kind of heat condition” since civilization “emerged 10,000 years ago” is ludicrous. For one thing, the earliest civilizations on Earth — ancient Sumer and ancient Egypt — simply do not go back anywhere near 10,000 years ago. Second, scientific evidence, with ice core analysis of permanent ice from Antarctic glaciers and petrified wood indicate that the Earth has experienced periods of time in which it was colder and at other times warmer than now. After all, how did Earth emerge from the Ice Age of the ancient world, if it did not get warmer?

Then, there is the “Medieval Warm Period,” a time lasting from about 950 to about 1250, in which it was almost certainly warmer than the Earth’s temperatures are today. In Greenland, land where Vikings once farmed are now covered in sheets of ice. It is highly unlikely that the “global warming” experienced at that time was caused because Hagar the Horrible and other Vikings were traveling around in SUVs, or operating coal-fired plants.

Evidence also exists from the Domesday Book, a census conducted after the Norman invasion of England in the late 11th century, that grapes were grown in England in places that later could not support such activity. There was even grape-growing in Scotland.

The Medieval Warming Period then ended, to be replaced by what was called the Little Ice Age. Those advocating that humans are causing the present alleged global warming have attempted to challenge the global extent of the Medieval Warming Period, but suffice to say that it is certain that there was unusual warming at a time long before there were SUVs, industrial plants, and other human industrial activity.

It is believed that such warming at that time was caused by factors such as higher solar activity and changes in ocean circulation patterns. Whatever the cause, it is likely that Earth has experienced several warmer periods (such as the Roman Warm Period) and cooler periods (such as the Little Ice Age) in the past few thousand years.

The fires in California has been attributed both to natural causes (Santa Ana winds) and human action (but not in the way Governor Brown thinks). Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, has charged, “The federal government has shown itself to be a poor steward of its massive land holdings,” suggesting that turning over the lands to state and private ownership would reduce the number of wildfires in California.

Robert Smith, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, expressed similar views, blaming the intensity and frequency of the fires in California, at least partly, on radical environmentalists who have blocked the Forest Service from managing its forests by removing old or dead trees most vulnerable to fire.

In short, Brown’s supposed solution of extensive government control of the economy is not correct. His utopian assertion that such government action could somehow “shift the weather back to where it historically was” raises the question of just what is the “normal” temperature? Who is to say that the temperatures of today, or 250 years ago, or 1,000 years ago, are the “normal” temperature?

What we do not need to do is shut down the engine of our modern economy to please those with such radical views as expressed by “Governor Moonbeam.”

Source: https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/29701-california-s-governor-brown-says-heat-worse-than-in-last-10-000-years

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Gov. Jerry Brown of California pardoned five ex-convicts, including two whose families had fled the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia decades ago. President Trump criticized the move on Twitter on Saturday.CreditRich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

Gov. Jerry Brown of California on Friday pardoned five ex-convicts facing possible deportation, drawing criticism from President Trump and heightening continued tensions between Washington and California.

The five immigrants were among 56 pardons and 14 commutations Mr. Brown granted on Friday — Good Friday and the start of Passover — to those who have been out of custody for at least 10 years and have exhibited “exemplary behavior” after their convictions, the governor’s press officesaid.

They included a United States military veteran, Sokha Chhan, a refugee from Cambodia who served nearly a year in jail for the misdemeanors of inflicting corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant and threatening a crime with the intent to terrorize. Phann Pheach, another Cambodian refugee who was pardoned, served six months for possession of a controlled substance for sale and obstructing a police officer.

Mr. Brown also granted pardons to Daniel Maher, who spent five years in prison after being convicted of kidnapping, robbery and using a firearm, and who is now the director of a recycling program in Berkeley, Calif.; Sergio Mena, who was sentenced in 2003 and put on probation for three years for possession of a controlled substance for sale; and Francisco Acevedo Alaniz, who served five months for vehicle theft.

On Saturday morning Mr. Trump tweeted a list of crimes that he linked to the five who were pardoned and asked, “Is this really what the great people of California want?”

“We will definitely not sit by idly as the Trump administration tries to deport immigrants, throw people off health care, ignore climate change and steal our water,” State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat, said in January. “It’s about playing defense to whatever the administration throws at us — but also offense in terms of continuing California’s push for progressive social change.”

On Friday, the same day Mr. Brown announced the pardons, Mr. Trump declared April “Second Chance Month,” highlighting the need for ex-convicts to get an opportunity to become contributing members of society.

“I am committed to advancing reform efforts to prevent crime, improve re-entry and reduce recidivism,” Mr. Trump said in a news release.

Mr. Brown, who is serving the final 12 months of his second stint as governor, has granted 1,115 pardons and 51 commutations since taking office in 2011, Evan Westrup, the governor’s press secretary said on Saturday. It amounts to far more than his recent predecessors.

Some of these cases involved immigrants who faced deportation or who had already been deported. An exact breakdown was not immediately available.

In December, Mr. Brown pardoned two men who came to the United States as children, after their families fled the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, and who were scheduled to be deported for their crimes, The Sacramento Bee reported. Last year, he pardoned three veterans who had been deported to Mexico and in 2015, he pardoned a man who was fighting deportation after serving two decades for burglary and kidnapping, among other crimes.

For ex-convict immigrants, deportation is a severe punishment that is often unwarranted, said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which seeks to change California’s laws to help immigrants avoid deportation.

“We believe that deportation is an enhancement to their sentences that goes way too far,” she said. “They’ve actually paid their debt to society.”

Immigration law is “so punitive, that it just does not forgive,” she added. “Most judges, their hands are tied behind their back,” she said, and the inability to have any discretion promotes large-scale deportation.

Mr. Trump visited California in mid-March to inspect border wall prototypes designed to keep out undocumented immigrants. The trip came one week after Attorney General Jeff Sessions sued the state over three new immigration laws he called unconstitutional, saying they made it impossible for federal immigration officials to deport criminals who were born outside the United States.

Mr. Brown, a Democrat, said at the time that Mr. Sessions was “basically going to war” with California.

In Mr. Trump’s weekly address on Saturday he took another swipe at California, blaming so-called sanctuary cities for the opioid epidemic, and referring to California as a “sanctuary state” that has become a hub for transporting heroin across the southern border. He also admonished Oakland’s mayor for helping “criminal aliens” elude the authorities because of the city’s “dangerous sanctuary policies.”

“Sanctuary cities put innocent Americans at the mercy of hardened criminals and heartless drug dealers,” Mr. Trump added. “These are bad people.”

That argument — that immigrants bring crime to America — has influenced many of the Trump administration’s policies on immigration. Studies have shown, however, that immigration does not drive crime. According to one recent analysis, a large-scale collaboration by four universities, the areas with the largest increases in immigrants all had lower levels of crime in 2016 than in 1980.

“The data is crystal clear that immigrants do not lead to an increase in crime,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “I think opponents to immigration like to cherry-pick egregious cases where the individual does not belong in the U.S. and therefore marginalize an entire community.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/us/california-pardon-immigrants.html

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