By Robert W. Endlich
The year 2017 featured incredibly intense, damaging wildfires in California. First the Wine Country fires of October, and later, in December, the massive Thomas Fire, each destroyed hundreds of homes. The latter, in many of the affluent suburbs and enclaves northwest of Los Angeles and Hollywood. The Thomas Fire is the largest in modern California history with over 1000 structures destroyed.
California’s Governor Jerry Brown blamed human-caused CO2-fueled
global warming for this conflagration during a visit to Ventura County on 9 December, saying the drought conditions were the “new normal.” To quote the governor, “There have (historically) been very long droughts in California and we are getting some of those returning very bad, and we’re going to get them returning more often.”
But, Governor Brown is just wrong about this, as an examination of some meteorological and climate data shows: