You knew this was coming, right? The amazing thing was that it took so long for the climate change hysterics—aka pretty much the whole Democratic Party—to go do that voodoo that they do so well. As the horrible facts came in, it was pretty apparent to all but hopeless “Facts Don’t Matter” addicts that many factors helped cause the disaster in Maui, including administrative incompetence, warnings that were ignored, a deadly combination of hurricane winds and dry conditions, fallen power lines, and more. But the climate change Borg never lets any tragedy, disaster or weather-related anomaly go by without linking it to climate change. Too hot? Climate change! Too cold? Climate change! No snow? Blizzards? High winds? Sharks in the water? Racism? Poverty? Whatever. If it’s bad, climate change is the culprit.
Yet for some mysterious reason, ABC, which is owned by Disney who these days never heard a piece of woke propaganda that it didn’t want to shout to the metaphorical rafters, headlined a story, “Why climate change can’t be blamed for the Maui wildfires.” What did ABC think would happen?
Of course the Borg attacked the headline, and the story itself. The article cited Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who said that climate change “may” have “nudged” the “conditions that contribute to making wildfires more severe,” but, to be honest about it, there wasn’t much to support the thesis that climate change played a significant role in the Maui fire. The piece also dared to point out that Hawaii Governor Josh Green’s statement—“That level of destruction, and a fire hurricane, something new to us in this age of global warming, was the ultimate reason that so many people perished”—was unadulterated hooey. “Not only do ‘fire hurricanes’ not exist, but climate change can’t be blamed for the number of people who died in the wildfires,” the ABC report stated, correctly.
But Climate Change Cult members like Emily Atkin, founder of the “Heated” climate newsletter (I am not a subscriber), condemned the story because it “serves to help absolutely no one except the people trying to downplay and deny climate change.” Funny, I thought the mission of journalism was to report facts, not to frame stories so they “helped” activists. That concept of journalism—you know, the ethical kind—is now anachronistic, I know.
So ABC changed its headline to “Why climate change can’t be blamed entirely for the Maui wildfires.” [That emphasis is mine.]
These silly, dishonest people, who lecture about “following the science” but who instead rely on deception, bullying, fearmongering, public ignorance and censorship, are best marginalized by pointing out just how ridiculous not only they are, but the fools like the ABC News management who capitulate to their nonsense. At this point, they most resemble the John Birchers during the Cold War, who would state as fact that every American President from FDR to Carter was secretly working for the USSR.
Hey wait—wasn’t the thawing of the Cold War probably caused by climate change?
Ethics Alarms 
Well, we can’t blame the thawing of the Cold War ENTIRELY on climate change. Nudge, perhaps?
Definitely nudge.
this is what I had heard (from the ABC article): “The main factor driving the fires involved the invasive grasses that cover huge parts of Hawaii, which are extremely flammable, Frazier said.”
-Jut
Invasive grasses that are on government land, so nothing could be done about it because the government refused. This was combined with a solar farm putting stress on poorly maintained power lines owned by the government monopoly power company seem like the the early favorites as the cause of the fire. The toppling of the new renewables-rich power grid combined with the decision by the government to put out the warnings only by text when the cell towers were down, combined with a government bureaucrat who refused to allow the firefighters to use water because it is ‘sacred’ and needs to stay in the ground, all led to the deaths of between 100 and 2000 people ( the number currently unaccounted for). I’m sure the people of Hawaii are going to respond to this blatant incompetence and corruption by voting in Republican officials to let the Democratic Party know they can’t take the electorate for granted…..
Sorry, I was laughing to hard to finish that.
“Invasive grasses that are on government land, so nothing could be done about it because the government refused.”
Wait a minute, Big Gubmint screwed up again? That doesn’t happen too often, right?
Not exactly.
The Summer Yellowstone Burned; WHAT WENT WRONG IN 1988
Just wait a few days. There’s a hurricane barreling up the Baja coastline that’s about to soak SoCal and southern Nevada.
Tropical storms are extremely rare along the US West Coast, though certainly not unusual on the Baja pensinsula.
Take it to the bank: if landslides/debris flows – common in SoCal – occur, particularly if there’s loss of life on the part of someone dumb enough to live on the alluvial fan, it’ll be called yet another example of the catastrophic effects of climate change.
I can’t wait for the rain from the tropical storm (Hilary! I love it!) this weekend to arrive in Arizona. I hope Saturday will make up for a very minimal monsoon in one fell swoop.
People who think Southern California should be a perfect version of the Midwest with lots of foliage and temperate weather year-round should re-read Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast.” California from San Diego to San Francisco was an arid, Godforsaken place. And beneath all the effects of over a century of manmade irrigation projects, it remains an arid, Godforsaken place. Of course, now it’s culturally Godforsaken as well.
Ironic the left has taken up the Birch Society practice, naming Trump a Soviet stooge. And of course, Hilary was wonderful for wanting to reset our relationship with Russia! But it was Trump who was Putin’s cockholster. Go figure.
The true believers are going to have an interesting task at blaming Hurricane Hilary on climate change since our news/weather reports are pointing out that the last time a hurricane hit SoCal was in 1939. They will undoubtedly ignore that fact since it doesn’t fit their narrative.
Hurricanes are always unprecedented if they happened before, oh say, 1995. Katrina appears to have been the first hurricane on record.
But you need to understand the children fully believe this. I showed a temperature record for the last 1500 years (from the IPCC report) and it caused pandemonium. The students were insisting it couldn’t be true because people weren’t burning fossil fuels in 1500, so the climate couldn’t have been changing. It took about 15 min to bring the class back to order. The indoctrination has been that severe.
Yabbut 1939 was before global warming. Ergo, this storm is the result of global warming. Simple enough….
As I predicted above: Hurricane Hillary blamed on climate change.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-08-18/hurricane-hilary-los-angeles-baja-southern-california-tropical-storms-weather-climate-change