California
Be ‘proactive’: California’s worsening fires are a warning to temperate world
In the last 20 years, California’s northern forests have experienced a stark increase in lands burned by fire. Now scientists have a better idea why.
The culprit is a familiar one — human-caused climate change, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, according to findings published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But other aspects are new. The paper presents for the first time a portrait of fires in an alternate California in which human-caused climate change hadn’t happened.
And by comparing that world to our own, it offers a sobering warning for any ecosystem — notably Canada and the Western U.S. — in which temperature, not the availability of trees, is the primary factor limiting the size of fires.
Fossil fuel burning expanded vulnerable forests
In those regions, lead author Mario Turco told The Hill, the impact of a century of burning fossil fuels has vastly expanded the amount of forest vulnerable to fire.
That relationship portends a grim future, he noted. California’s coming fires could burn up to 50 percent more land than the fires of today.
Those specific prescriptions focus on the pine forests of Northern and Central California. But Turco emphasized that similar dynamics were at work in the record Canadian wildfires that clogged the air of the U.S. Northeast last week.
In Canada, the amount of land burned by fire thus far this season is now 13 times the national average — only a couple of weeks into what was traditionally considered to be the fire season.
“What is happening in Canada this month is something strange because there are not so many analogs in the past,” Turco told The Hill.
California, by contrast, offered the scientists a golden setting for a natural experiment. In addition to its long history of big blazes — in particular, the enormous fires in the summers of 2018, 2020 and 2021 — California has unusually good data around fires.
Unlike many other fire-prone areas, California’s state agencies have been collecting rigorous data on the extent of fire in the state for decades.
That data shows that the 10 largest wildfires in California history also happened in the last 20 years, with those fires getting bigger and more powerful later in that period. (Half occurred in 2020 alone, and eight since 2017.)
But while the increased scale of the problem is clear — as is the fact that it has come alongside an implacable rise in both global temperatures and the burning of fossil fuels — it has historically been difficult to untangle how much human-caused climate change, specifically, has contributed to California’s current fire problem.
Simulation shows scope of problem
To answer that question, the team simulated an alternate California that had experienced only natural climate variation since 1996.
While the scientists didn’t make this point explicitly, this experiment amounted to a rough simulation of an alternate past: one in which people rapidly stopped burning fossil fuels once their role in climate change was discovered.
Off-ramps from the current crisis into such an alternate world appear early. As NASA notes, the Swedish scientist who first predicted the relationship between rising levels of carbon dioxide — the major byproduct of burning — and rising temperatures first published in 1896.
That relationship was confirmed as early as 1938, when British engineer Guy Callendar linked the world’s use of fossil fuels to a slight — but already statistically significant — rise in temperatures; by 1956 U.S. Office of Naval Research was already promulgating “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change.”
But even in a world where such scientific work had led to an early, widespread and total move away from fossil fuels, climate change would not stop. The sun’s power would still fluctuate, as would the distance — thanks to an orbital wobble — between it and Earth, each of which would impact how much heat reached the surface.
And down on Earth, changes in terrestrial processes — like volcanic eruptions and the spread or contraction of forests — would also have led to broader changes in the climate.
Humans caused threefold rise in burned lands
But on that alternate Earth, natural variations in the climate wouldn’t be enough to produce the dramatic rise in burned areas that California has experienced over the past 30 years, the PNAS paper found.
In fact, the scientists wrote, our world was accelerating away from that nature-only paradigm. The historical record shows that California has had nearly twice as big an increase in burned land — 1.7 times, to be exact — between 1971 and 2021 as it would have under purely natural cycles.
And the magnitude of that difference was increasing, they wrote. Human-caused climate change has led to a “remarkable” threefold increase in burned lands between the latter half of that period — 1996 and 2021 — and the equivalent period over on nature-only Earth.
That has been a pivotal period for climate change — not only in terms of its rise as political issue, but also in the acceleration of the forces driving it. (More than half of the carbon discharged into the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial revolution came from fires lit — in fireplaces, power plants and internal combustion engines — since 1990.)
What role does forest management play?
One major question rests outside the scope of the paper: the role of “forest management” — or mismanagement — on the fire problem.
Since the 2018 fire that leveled Paradise, Calif., state and federal officials have faced harsh criticism for their decades-long policy of suppressing low-grade wildfires that might otherwise have cleaned fuels from the forest — sowing the ground for the unstoppable fires of the present.
Conservative politicians have appealed to similar management concerns to explain away the impacts of climate change, as in Donald Trump’s 2018 claim that California faced such bad fires because — unlike the forest nation of Finland — the state didn’t “rake” its forests.
To Trump’s defense — and despite the bemusement those remarks caused on both sides of the Atlantic — the Finnish forestry sector really does use giant mechanized rakes to pull flammable tree residues out of its forests after they have been cut.
That real geographic difference, however, conceals an even more important historical one. Such tree residue — which is now burned in district-level power-plants — could once have been safely left to decompose in place, before climate change heated up the forests.
“Trump has a point,” fire ecologist Matthew Hurteau wrote in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post. “The U.S.could get away with poor management, until global warming.”
Reinforcing that idea, the PNAS study didn’t find any historic change in forest management that was big enough to explain the size of the jump in the amount of California that now burns, Turco said.
The one place that scientists did find such a connection was Europe — where they found that forest policy had led to a striking decrease in the amount of land burned, even as human-caused climate change pushed in the opposite direction.
That might not be entirely good news, Turco said. “It means that the tool of fire management — where basically they try to suppress all fires — is working. But that doesn’t mean it will work in the future climate.”
On the one hand, because the climate itself was heating up and drying out European forests, leading to a greater capacity for fire. On the other hand, because with each wildfire stopped too early, “we are creating more fuel to be burned in the future.”
That rising climatic pressure towards bigger wildfires makes it more important “to focus not only on suppression, but also on preparedness, proactive action, proactive management,” he added.
That’s something the Biden administration Forest Service has staked out as a priority. The agency sees the decades of forest mismanagement of forest fuels as a serious and systemic problem they are spending billions to fix.
Turco said those steps are important, even if blunting the speed of human-caused climate change is the main imperative.
“It’s quite dangerous to say ‘climate change is responsible for all the problems of the forest fires in California — so it’s not important to have a good plan,’” he added. “Because this is not true.”
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Officials in California are working to remove a racist term towards Native American women in more than 30 locations in California, according to the state Natural Resources Agency.
The removal of the term “squaw,” which was deemed “derogatory” by the Secretary of the Interior in 2021, is part of AB 2022, a bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022. The law asks that the term be removed “all geographic features and place names in the state” by Jan. 1, 2025.
“The term is recognized as a racial, ethnic, and gender-based slur, particularly aimed at Native American women. Its removal is a crucial step in recognizing the ongoing trauma and oppression that Native communities have faced,” officials said in a news release.
In a statement on social media, the agency described the move as a “bold new step towards healing for past injustices.”
PRO-NATIVE AMERICAN ACTIVISTS FIGHTING TO SAVE INDIGENOUS TRADITIONS IN NATIONWIDE WAR AGAINST WOKENESS
California ski resort whose name included a derogatory term for Native American women changed its name to Palisades Tahoe. ((Photo by Slim Aarons/Getty Images))
The full list of new California names is not currently available but has been selected with the help of California’s Native American tribes and will be released shortly, the natural resources agency told The Associated Press in an email.
FLASHBACK: HARRIS DECLINED TO INTERVENE ON BEHALF OF NATIVE TRIBE PUSH TO PROTECT SACRED SITE FROM WIND FARM
Three California delegates from the Indian Rights Association meet with Representative Harry Shepard of California to put their claims before Congress. The delegates are Julia Ross Gardner form the Piute, Celestine Pico Von Bulow from the Pachanga, and Thomas Largo from the Cahuilla. (Getty Images)
Deputy Secretary for Tribal Affairs at the Natural Resource Agency Geneva Thompson said this is an extremely important step for Indigenous people.
“Acknowledging those historical wrongs that were committed against Native Americans is extremely important, but we need to take the next step toward healing,” Thompson said. “While there are differences among folks, we can build communities that reflect and honor and celebrate those differences instead of alienating and perpetuating historical wrongs.”
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The California Advisory Committee on Geographic Names says they will implement approved replacement names by Jan. 1.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the California Natural Resources Agency for comment.
California
Woman Arrested After Allegedly Posing as Nurse and Caring for Around 60 Patients in California Hospitals
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/nurse-111624-bd2bb62d9bbf497885ff1975bad1576b.jpg "Woman Arrested After Allegedly Posing as Nurse and Caring for Around 60 Patients in California Hospitals")
A woman has been arrested for allegedly impersonating a nurse and working in multiple California hospitals without a license.
The Burbank Police Department arrested Amanda Leeann Porter on Nov. 7 after hospital staff at the city’s Saint Joseph Medical Center reported she was impersonating a nurse while caring for patients, police said in a statement.
Police alleged that Porter, originally from Virginia, fraudulently applied for a job at the hospital and was hired. She cared for around 60 patients, per the statement, between April 8 and May 8, before staff realized she was impersonating a real registered nurse who did not live in California.
“By the time Porter was terminated, she received two paychecks for the time she was fraudulently employed,” police added.
Burbank Police Department
Porter, 44 — who police said does not hold a nursing license — is also accused of committing a similar crime at the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles.
“During this investigation, detectives learned that Porter continued to obtain employment with various local hospitals using a variety of false identities,” the police statement said.
Porter had bonded out of custody from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department after being arrested in Santa Clarita, according to police.
Porter faces charges of felony identity theft, felony false impersonation and felony grand theft. According to the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office, Porter pleaded not guilty to all of the charges on Wednesday, Nov. 13.
“Ms. Porter’s alleged actions are deeply troubling and egregious as she deceived patients and medical professionals alike, betraying the trust of those who rely on our medical community in their most vulnerable time of need,” district attorney George Gascón said in a statement.
“We acknowledge the profound distress that this situation may have caused those who were treated by the defendant,” the statement continued. “Our office will work relentlessly to hold this individual accountable and ensure that justice is served.”
The Los Angeles Times reported that Porter is also on federal probation for a fraud violation in Virginia, and that a woman named Amanda Porter-Eley pleaded guilty to impersonating a nurse and committing bank fraud in the state.
The outlet reported that Burbank police would not confirm whether Amanda Leeann Porter and Amanda Porter-Eley were the same person, but that their ages match and prior court filings have used both names.
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Porter-Eley was found guilty of impersonating a nurse in Virginia and worked for six months as a nursing supervisor without a license, the U.S. Department of Justice said, per the Times. The woman was accused of using the nurse’s identity from September 2015 to 2016 to open bank accounts and take out loans for cash, services and goods worth around $450,000.
Burbank police said that Porter is being held without bail at the L.A. County Central Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood.
Authorities are now seeking more information about Porters’ case, with Burbank police alleging that she “may have committed additional similar offenses in the Southern California area during the past year.”
Anyone with further information is asked to contact local law enforcement or Burbank detectives at (818) 238-3210.
Republicans in a majority-Latino district in California that includes Indio and Coachella are on course to flip a Democratic state Assembly seat red.
Jeff Gonzalez, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, is set to beat out Democrat Joey Acuña, a school board member, for the 36th Assembly District.
Gonzalez is ahead by an insurmountable 4,362 votes, or 3.1%, as of Friday, per official count numbers.
If Gonzalez gets over the line, it will be the first time since 1992 that Republicans in California have picked up a seat in the state legislature during a presidential cycle, according to California state Assembly member Bill Essayli.
Republican Ken Calvert wins re-election to US House in California’s 41st Congressional District
Jeff Gonzalez, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, is set to beat out Democrat Joey Acuña, a school board member, for the 36th Assembly District. (© Richard Lui/The Desert Sun)
If elected, Gonzalez will replace longtime Democratic legislator Eduardo Garcia as the next state assembly member in a sprawling district. Garcia, from Coachella, decided not to seek re-election this year and instead endorsed Acuña, the Coachella Valley Unified School District board president, per the Desert Sun.
The soon-to-be stunning seat win is underlined by the fact that Democrats make up about 42.3% of the 245,500 people registered to vote in the district, while Republicans account for 28.7%. Voters with no party affiliation were 21.6% of the total, according to the Desert Sun.
In the March primary, Gonzalez received about 21,000 votes compared to about 12,000 for Acuña. However, Democratic candidates overall earned about 4,500 more votes than Republicans.
California, a deep blue state, was easily won by Vice President Harris, who is currently leading President-elect Trump by 58.8% to 38% with 92.85% of the votes counted.
Gonzalez is a 21-year veteran of the Marine Corps who also served on embassy protection missions in Honduras and the Czech Republic, working closely with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, according to his campaign website.
GOP REP. CALVERT WINS ELECTION IN COMPETITIVE CALIFORNIA HOUSE SEAT
Jeff Gonzalez speaks with voters during an election fair and voter registration drive at College of the Desert in Palm Desert, Calif., Oct. 21, 2024. (Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
He is also a pastor and the owner of three small businesses, per his website. He is married with four sons, one of whom is physically and mentally challenged and lives with he and his wife for caregiver support.
Gonzalez ran on a platform of cutting red tape, lowering taxes and fees on groceries and gas and “reviving the California Dream.”
He also wants to address inflation by passing “the largest middle-class tax cut in California history.”
Gonzalez is also vowing to improve education, saying he is concerned about falling test scores and graduation rates. He wants to hire more teachers and more school security to create a safer learning environment as well as promote bipartisanship by supporting good ideas from both parties.
Acuña ran on tackling affordability, housing and public safety.
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California, a deep blue state, was easily won by Vice President Harris, who is currently leading President-elect Trump by 58.8% to 38% with 92.85% of the votes counted. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
“I want to make sure the kids who grow up in our district have access to good-paying jobs, safe neighborhoods, world-class schools, and clean air and water,” he states on his website.
Acuña is serving his fifth term on the Coachella Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees. In this role, he said he has worked to improve graduation rates, enhance after-school programs, and expand the district’s college and career pathway programs, according to his website.
He works professionally as development manager for health clinics and a grant writer for a local tribe.
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