Mr. Bruce Hall speculates on the causes for the severity of the LA fires:
I remember being in Lompoc, CA in 1968 for a month of military training. Since there wasn’t enough temporary housing on base, I rented a small apartment nearby. One morning, I got up and the hill near the apartment complex was burning. No one seemed concerned. I questioned one of the other tenants [sic] about why nothing was being done and the response was essentially that this happened every year and don’t worry about it. In the intervening 50-60 years, the population has spread to areas where these fires were “no big deal”… not just near LA, but in many areas along the coast of California. Policies that allowed controlled burns or forest thinning were abandoned in the “let nature take its course” philosophy. And then the population spread out to vulnerable areas.
https://www.newsweek.com/controlled-burns-california-forest-management-los-angeles-fires-2012492So, now nature is taking its course through stick frame homes and everyone seems so surprised. Sure, it’s dry in California, but not nearly as dry as it has been in the past. So the climate change nonsense has no bearing on the current situation. It’s all about people, policies, and poor decisions. But, hey, now it’s a great opportunity for the YIMBY advocates to walk the talk after they bulldoze the remnants of homes and businesses.
I’ll skip over the fact that the Pacific Palisades area has been developed for quite a few years, and given that the fire consumed houses on the shore, I’m not sure Mr. Hall’s preferred cause is explanatory for this destruction.
Notes: Beach front properties are left destroyed by the Palisades Fire, in this aerial view, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 in Malibu, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill). Source: CBS42.
Let me instead present some data on whether it’s not nearly as dry as it has been in the past, not in geological time, but in the context of human time.
Figure 1: Palmer Modified Drought Index (PMDI) for California Division 6 – “South Coast Drainage”. LOESS smoother in red line. Blue box by author denotes 1968. Source: NOAA, accessed 1/13/2025.
Yeah, sure it’s been drier in California in the past — but only in recent years. Mr. Hall’s visit to California in 1968 was actually in a relatively drought-free period.
Hence, I’m not sure “nature taking its course” is the right characterization, given that we continue to emit large amounts of greenhouse gases year after year, with many crying global warming is a hoax.