by 
Scientific
American
blames
the
Los
Angeles
fires
on
climate
change.
A
Yale
University
publication
agrees.
An
article
in
Quartz
predicts
that
climate
change
is
going
to
make
housing
“uninsurable.”
Instead
of
insurance,
a
New
York
Times
op-ed
by
a
former
California
insurance
commissioner
argues
that
oil
companies
should
be
forced
to
pay
for
fire
damages.
It’s
a
neat
argument
that
appeals
to
homeowners
eager
to
blame
the
loss
of
their
houses
on
anything
other
than
their
own
decisions
to
buy
or
build
flammable
homes
with
flammable
landscaping
in
a
fireplain.
Yet
there
are
valid
reasons
to
believe
that
climate
change
is
not
the
issue,
and
that
even
if
climate
change
is
occurring,
it
won’t
make
homes
uninsurable.
In
fact,
people
who
believe
climate
change
is
the
problem
should
be
all
the
more
interested
in
making
sure
that
homes
and
landscaping
are
fireproof.
A
key
weakness
in
most
of
the
arguments
for
anthropogenic
climate
change
is
that
they
rely
on
data
that
goes
back
only
about
55
years
or
so.
The
1970s
were
one
of
the
coolest
decades
in
the
20th
century,
so
any
data
that
start
from
there
will
make
it
appear
that
temperatures
are
rising.
The
Yale
article
cites
one
study
that
uses
data
back
to
1971
and
another
that
goes
back
to
just
2001.
Both
of
those
studies
are
also
not
of
climate
change
but
of
fire
data,
but
that’s
problematic
because
the
Forest
Service
and
other
wildland
fire
fighting
agencies
dramatically
changed
how
they
fight
fires
since
the
1990s.
Where
they
once
risked
firefighter
lives
by
having
them
directly
attack
the
fire
fronts,
they
now
do
huge
amounts
of
back
fires
and
rely
more
heavily
on
aerial
drops
of
water
and
retardant.
This,
not
climate
change,
has
increased
acres
burned
and
the
sizes
of
the
largest
fires.
Acres
burned
are
a
symptom
of
climate
change,
but
they
can
also
be
a
symptom
of
other
factors
as
well.
Relying
on
actual
climate
data,
rather
than
symptoms,
climatologist
John
Christy
has
shown
that
heat
waves
in
the
West,
the
number
of
days
over
100
degrees
in
California,
and
southern
California
rainfall
have
not
particularly
changed
over
the
last
110
years.
If
anything,
some
of
these
indicators
have
cycled
up
and
down,
with
the
1970s,
as
mentioned
above,
being
a
cool,
wet
period.
Even
if
you
believe
that
climate
change
is
the
problem,
blaming
the
oil
companies
is
the
wrong
answer.
For
one
thing,
the
oil
that
has
been
burned
over
the
past
century
was
burned
by
us,
not
the
oil
companies,
who
only
sold
it
to
us.
More
important,
as
Bjorn
Lomborg
showed
in
the
Financial
Post
last
week,
recent
studies
have
estimated
that
climate
change
is
going
to
reduce
global
GDP
by
only
2
to
3
percent,
while
the
actions
climate
activists
want
os
to
take
to
slow
climate
change
will
reduce
it
by
25
percent,
both
increasing
poverty
and
making
us
less
resilient
to
any
changes
that
come
about
as
a
result
of
increased
temperatures.
As
I’ve
noted
here
before,
the
main
reason
I
am
suspicious
about
the
whole
climate
narrative
is
that
most
of
the
things
that
activists
want
us
to
do,
such
as
spend
more
on
mass
transit
or
increase
urban
densities,
won’t
really
reduce
greenhouse
gas
emissions
and
are
simply
part
of
an
agenda
that
existed
long
before
climate
was
thought
to
be
a
problem.
Read
the
rest
of
this
piece
at
The
Antiplanner.
Randal
O’Toole,
the
Antiplanner,
is
a
policy
analyst
with
nearly
50
years
of
experience
reviewing
transportation
and
land-use
plans
and
the
author
of
The
Best-Laid
Plans:
How
Government
Planning
Harms
Your
Quality
of
Life,
Your
Pocketbook,
and
Your
Future.
Photo:
The
Palisades
Fire
on
the
evening
of
January
7,
via
Wikimedia
by
Toastt21.
Go to Source
Author: Randal OToole
