As California Burns, Governor Brown Looks To Blame Everyone But Himself

The story of Guglielmo Marconi is renowned in science. The privileged son of Italian and Irish nobility, he was largely an amateur schooled by private tutors. Despite his lack of scientific credentials, Marconi— through private trial and error— was able to revolutionize the applications of sound waves.

While scientists with great pedigrees floundered over Hertzian waves, the self-taught Marconi was able to apply his discoveries to long-distance radio transmission and, eventually, to what we know today as radio. He was the classic example of the sceptical outsider of science, defying convention to find truth. Naturally, his empirical method was shunned by the learned of the age. A rival in the scientific community sniffed, “A mere adventurer like him with his pinchbeck claims to be an original inventor”.

Marconi’s unconventional method— lately detailed in Eric Larsen’s wonderful book Thunderstruck— is telling in light of remarks from California governor Jerry Brown over the horrific forest fires in his state: “This is not the ‘new normal.’ This is the ‘new abnormal.’ And this new abnormal will continue, certainly in the next 10 to 15 to 20 years … And unfortunately the best science is telling us that dryness, warmth, drought, all those things, they’re going to intensify.”

What’s important here is the Gov’s shoutout to “the best science”. Even as his claims of greater warmth and dryness crumble under the most basic research Brown calls down the indisputable authority of Science® to buttress his point. Dissenters in the tradition of Marconi are compared to Holocaust deniers.

Though data clearly demonstrate that rainfall and heat statistics in southern California are well within predictable and historical norms for arid Southern California, Brown continues to attribute his state’s disasters to a failure of people like President Trump to heed his frantic claims of a higher power. He wants to “shift the weather back to where it historically was”, as if there is a static mystical point in his boyhood that defines California’s climate.

It’s easier for Brown to cite the ultra-ultra-complex computer modelling of the IPCC than to admit some home truths. The miracle of the Golden State is largely a product of water brought in from outside its borders to green the deserts. This has encouraged settlement in areas that are at risk without enough water. This week that risk met reality in Paradise.

The state’s Green forestry policies cited in Trump’s intemperate tweet have built up what’s described as a “fuel load”of deadwood and detritus just waiting for the kind of fires we’ve seen in the past two weeks in California. The meeting of the Paradise and Woolsey fires with this fuel source has produced the predictable. Dozens of dead so far and billions in property damage. 

Something locals had seen coming for a while. “Years and years and years ago we knew we had a problem with that community,” Thom Porter, a chief with Cal Fire, told BuzzFeed News.

Brown disputes this causation. Because Science®. All heretics in the Church of Jerry are “definitely contributing” to reducing his state to ash. His solution? More the same misguided SJW spending on pet causes like the Spotted Owl that has left his state a tinder box. Now. “And it’s not millions, it’s billions, and tens, and probably hundreds of billions even in the span of a few years.” 

Of course.  Brown’s maxim has always been My Ideas. Your Money. 

It’s the same devotional call to action heard from the current Canadian federal government. While their scientists and media puppets have missed predictions, juggled data, denied their research to others and, like this study of ocean warming, flubbed their research, the message is full speed ahead with draconian economic measures that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau admits won’t make even a tiny dent in the pollution issues of the world.

Because Science®. Like the sanctified bones of the saints it requires a leap of faith and a closed mind to fall in line. Most people will go along to get along, so Trudeau’s virtue signalling faces little pushback. As the deadlines and drop-dead dates come and go, the dogma remains strong.

 In this crusade, the Planet Panic crew have the undying devotion of media in disseminating their message. Daily, the federally funded CBC allows people to assert— without questioning— that the Great Barrier Reef is 80 percent destroyed or that the Maldives are sinking or that 83 percent of all animal species on earth have been destroyed by man. 

They’re abetted by hundreds of millions in eco-dollars funnelled into Canada’s political and economic machinery  by America environmental groups. Journalist Vivian Krause reports that just one of these outside forces, The Tides Foundation, has paid $40 million into organizations working to stop pipeline construction. “At least $25 million was explicitly for anti-pipeline activity,” she reports, “while $15 million went to the same organizations for general, related or unspecified purposes.”

Don’t bother checking the national Canadian media on this file. They’re elsewhere. While Trudeau’s government allows the destruction of Canada’s energy sector, its pet media ignores the undermining of the country’s electoral integrity.

But don’t worry, we’re in the capable hands of the professionals of Science®. Not amateurs like Marconi. I mean, what’s a ”mere adventurer” ever done?

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is on his website Not The Public Broadcaster . He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author whose new book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports And How The Free Market Could Save Them is now available.