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US President Donald Trump dismissed concerns about climate change on a visit to devastated California, telling an official that “I don’t think science knows” about global warming.
“It’s going to start to get cooler, just watch,” Trump said after being urged not to “ignore the science.”
Fires in California, Oregon and Washington state have burned nearly 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of land and killed at least 36 people since the beginning of August.
Trump blames poor forest management.
During his visit to the west coast of the United States, Trump, who has often denied climate change, repeated his argument about forest management when he met with California officials involved in the battle against wildfires.
On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called Trump “a climate arsonist.”
In 2018, the president criticized California’s forest management, pointing to Finland, where he said they raked and cleared forests to prevent fires.
What else did Trump say about the weather?
When asked by a reporter if climate change was a factor in the massive wildfires, Trump responded, “I think this is more of a management situation.”
He also claimed that other countries had not faced the same level of wildfires, despite major conflagrations in Australia and the Amazon rainforest in recent years that experts attributed to climate change.
“They don’t have problems like this,” he said. “They have very explosive trees, but they don’t have problems like this.”
He added: “When you get into climate change, is India going to change its ways? And China is going to change its ways? And Russia? Is Russia going to change its ways?”
Trump has previously called climate change “mythical,” “non-existent,” or “an expensive hoax,” but has also described it as a “serious issue.”
It pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord, which committed the US and 187 other countries to keeping this century’s global temperature rise well below 2 ° C (3.6 ° F) above from pre-industrial levels.
Irony in Trump’s decision to leave Paris
It is a path well traveled by President Trump, especially in relation to climate change: other countries are taking advantage of the US and they are not doing their part.
But the irony is that the absence of the United States in the Paris agreement is making it very difficult to change forms.
In the Paris pact, China committed to maxing out its carbon emissions by 2030 at the latest, and is on track to do so.
India agreed to reduce its emissions intensity by 2030 and significantly increase renewables as part of the energy mix. Last year, India’s spending on solar energy eclipsed coal-fired power for the first time. Russia has committed to reducing carbon by as much as 30% from 1990 levels by 2030.
So all these countries are committed and are ready to honor their commitments.
However, where the president might be right is in the scale of the efforts of these countries, which have been described as “very insufficient” if the world wants to avoid dangerous warming.
However, the real strength of the Paris agreement was getting all countries to commit to doing something, no matter how insignificant, and then using peer pressure to increase those commitments over time.
What’s the latest on the ground?
Strong winds and low humidity have hampered efforts to keep the fires under control.
Authorities in California, where 25 people have died since Aug. 15, report that firefighters are working to address “hotspots” to allow some residents to return to various neighborhoods in areas near San Francisco.
State officials also warned that while the storms forecast for the end of the week could bring much-needed rains, they could also bring more lightning.
Thousands of homes and other property have been destroyed in the states of California, Oregon and Washington, and large areas of land have been covered with ash.
At least 10 people died in Oregon last week. Authorities have said dozens of people are missing and warned that the death toll could rise.
Oregon police have installed the state’s first mobile morgue, the Oregon newspaper reports. The report adds that a separate facility is being created to allow families of the missing to undergo DNA testing to help with the identification process.
One person died in Washington, where there were five major fires on Sunday.
What do politicians say?
Speaking in a meeting with Trump on Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged that “we have not done justice to our forest management,” but said that more than half of the land in California was under federal, not state control.
The state itself owns only three percent, and the rest is owned by private individuals or businesses or Native American groups.
But he echoed his own statement on Friday that the fires showed that the debate on climate change was “over.”
“The hot spots are getting hotter, the dry ones are getting drier,” he said. “We present the science and the observed evidence is self-evident: that climate change is real and that is making it worse.”
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has said her state is facing “the perfect firestorm” and called the moment “truly the benchmark for climate change on the West Coast.”
“And this is a wake-up call for all of us that we have to do everything in our power to address climate change,” he said.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee described the situation as “apocalyptic” and condemned Trump’s stance on the climate.
What role does climate change play?
Nine of the world’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, and the UN warned this week that the five years from 2016 to this year will most likely be the hottest period on record so far. Both Oregon and California have warmed more than 1 ° C since 1900.
The sustained heat has caused six of the 20 largest fires on record in California to occur this year. In Oregon, the series of fires burned nearly twice the number of average annual losses in one week.
In California, a prolonged drought over the past decade has killed millions of trees, turning them into powerful fuel for fires. Mountainous regions that are typically colder and wetter have dried up more quickly in the summer, increasing the potential fuel load.
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