On Tuesday January 9, a fire broke out in The Pacific Palisades, a beautiful, lush, historic neighborhood in Los Angeles. It contains the homes of celebrities, as well as the modest homes of people who bought there decades ago.
The fire started in the Palisades but soon exploded in other neighborhoods. Thousands of homes and businesses have been destroyed, and many people are homeless.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Palisades was a haven for people who were refugees from Hitler. Thomas Mann had a home there, which is now a retreat for German artists, writers, and scholars. The German government bought both the Mann house and Villa Aurora in the Palisades, which are administered by a foundation and funded by the German government. Villa Aurora sheltered Bertolt Brecht, Charlie Chaplin, and others who escaped the war in Europe. So far, neither has been consumed by the fires. But the fires are close.
Scientists say that the Los Angeles conflagration is the result of climate change.
Ian James wrote in the Los Angeles Times:
The devastating wildfires that have ravaged Southern California erupted following a stark shift from wet weather to extremely dry weather — a phenomenon scientists describe as “hydroclimate whiplash.”
New research shows these abrupt wet-to-dry and dry-to-wet swings, which can worsen wildfires, flooding and other hazards, are growing more frequent and intense because of human-caused climate change.
“We’re in a whiplash event now, wet to dry, in Southern California,” said Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist who led the research. “The evidence shows that hydroclimate whiplash has already increased due to global warming, and further warming will bring about even larger increases.”
The extreme weather shift over the last two years in Southern California is one of many such dramatic swings that scientists have documented worldwide in recent years.
NPR also reported on “hydroclimate whiplash.”
But no matter what scientists say, there is a determined group of people who are certain that the cause of the fires was nefarious and had nothing to do with climate change.
I scanned the Twitter feed of Governor Gavin Newsom and read scores of tweets that insisted on the following claims:
1. The state of California recently changed the zoning laws to make it easier to convert single-family lots to apartments for multiple families.
@HustleBitch wrote:
GAVIN NEWSOM WORKING WITH DEVELOPERS TO CHANGE ZONING IN BURN AREAS TO ALLOW MASS APARTMENTS
Newsom is allegedly working with developers to convert zoning in Pacific Palisades from R1 (single family) to R3 (apartments)
CONNECT THE DOTS.
Newsom commented: This is not true.
Dozens of other tweets insisted that the fire was deliberately set to enable the development of massive apartment buildings.
2. The fires got out of control not because of climate change or the Santa Ana winds of 80-100 mph, but because the Fire Department embraced DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies. Too many gays, Blacks, Hispanics, and women in the leadership of the Fire Department.
3. The fires were so bad because the state and city diverted money from the Fire Department to buy supplies and housing for illegal immigrants. Or to buy needles and drugs for drug addicts.
4. The green agenda is a plot.
@ptmoon tweeted a video of Rosa Koire explaining that the UN green agenda is a dangerous conspiracy.
Rosa Koire Agenda 21 (aka Agenda for the 21st Century) is: “The inventory and control plan for all land, water, minerals, plants, animals, construction, means of production, food, energy, information — and all human beings in the world.”
Another tweet said that Oregon sent 60 fire trucks to fight the blazes, but the trucks and firefighters were detained in Sacramento for emissions testing. Governor Newsom said this was untrue, that Oregon firefighters have been on site battling the fires for days.
Another tweet said:
LOOTING: Newsom and California Democrats literally decriminalized looting baring [sic] police from arresting looters and prosecutors from prosecuting them. Now he’s opposed to looting.
This was retweeted approvingly by Elon Musk as an example of disastrous WOKE policies.
There were scores of tweets attacking Newsom and his WOKE agenda.
Many of the conspiracy theories originated with Trump’s wild claims blaming Newsom for the fires.
This is all so sad. A tragedy of this scale should be a time when Americans unite to offer help, not nitpick and criticize those on the front lines.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Disgusting and yes, “SAD.” The ignorance and lies stupefy me.
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Both parties are owned by the fossil fuel industry. It’s going to kill us all.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/fire-weather?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=154695993&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=b728d&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
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The John McPhee book “The Control of Nature “ has a very well written chapter on Los Angeles.
A great book about climate change is Richard Alley’s “Two Mile Time Machine “. Nice that President Biden recognized his work recently.
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it is heartbreaking, as one who lives in SoCal, that our President elect has no sense if empathy, no decorum, and no ability to understand or care about the people affected. His first response is always to ridicule and blame. He did the same thing with the NYE tragedy in New Orleans.
How can anyone fight the ridiculous rumors and conspiracies when they are constantly making up such garbage?
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For tRump and his fellow billionaires, it’s like ‘who cares about the planet (and our progeny) when we won’t be around to face the consequences and there’s money to be made today,’ as in “drill baby drill…”
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I don’t deny that climate change has a lot to do with these fires. But there is a way in which blaming climate change essentially amounts to a throwing up of hands, given that US emissions have already falling but global emissions continue to rise. Climate change “solutions” are hugely important but take a long time, have far from certain outcomes, and are not entirely under US control, much less state control. (Some say climate change is irreversible and that we have already passed a tipping point.)
Forest management on the other hand is something that California and the U.S. can control. I’d like to see more public discussions of that could be improved, as opposed to continuously repeating “climate change.”
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The LA fires have nothing to do with forest management.
These are heavily populated areas that are on fire.
The Santa Ana winds are fierce. I once experienced them while vacationing in Santa Barbara. They are hot and fierce. In LA, they were 80-100 mph. No helicopters or airplanes could fly.
This was a perfectly horrible deadly fire.
I hope fire experts will figure out better strategies to prevent fires.
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I suppose forest wasn’t the right term. But I hope you got my point.
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My response to claims like these is “Your evidence?”
Almost always shuts them up.
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