Let me start by saying I can't listen to a live unscripted President Trump campaign speech for more than a minute. He grossly exaggerates his accomplishments and overstates what a President Biden would do (unless he had Democrats controlling both Houses of Congress as in Obama's first two years). Although I find Trump's bragging to be obnoxious, and his accomplishments highly exaggerated, he does not make ridiculous and obviously false claims like Biden reads from his teleprompter.
Last week Joe Biden condemned President Donald Trump as a “climate arsonist,” predicting if Trump wins we should expect more “hellish” events like wildfires in the West, flooding in the Midwest, and hurricanes on the East Coast. Which strongly implies if he wins, Biden will give America fewer wild fires, fewer floods, and fewer hurricanes. That's complete nonsense.
Biden harshly critcized Trump for “ignoring the facts” and “denying reality,” as he focused on the wildfires ravaging California, Oregon, and Washington State. Fires made much worse by bad forest management, not climate change.
“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze? If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is under water?” Biden asked.
This is nonsense for people with below 100 IQs. But then Biden sort of walked back a little of what he implied, with these words: “Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes, but if he gets a second term, these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating, and more deadly."
“Meanwhile, Donald Trump warns that integration is threatening our suburbs,” ... “It’s ridiculous. But you know what is actually threatening our suburbs? Wildfires are burning the suburbs in the West, floods are wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest, hurricanes are imperiling suburban life along our coast,” Biden said.
“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned from wildfires? How many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?”
"Climate change is the existential challenge that will define our future as a country." Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 14, 2020
Climate activists oppose the harvesting of dead trees and aggressive clearing of brush, however. Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) vetoed forest management attempts in 2016. California’s forests don’t get the work they need because private landowners fear liability for controlled burns, CAL FIRE doesn’t have enough resources to prioritize controlled burns, and stringent climate regulations make it difficult for proposed burns to get approved.
See my next article for
much more detail
on California wildfires.
Wildfires in California are nothing new. Poor forest management, not climate change, is the true culprit. Joe Biden thinks merely talking about forest management is “blaming the victim”. He's unlikely to champion the forest management policies that would restrain the spread of wildfires in California.
Does Biden think floods had never happened in the Midwest, and hurricanes had never hit the East Coast, before humans started burning fossil fuels? The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, and it came only a few decades after the invention of the automobile.
As for hurricanes, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) said“there were no hurricanes” hitting New York before the devastating impacts of climate change. Hey Cuomo, Hurricane Donna in the 1960s knocked the mast and TV antenna off our two story home roof in Woodridge, New York, where I grew up, about 90 miles northwest of Manhattan. A kid remembers that. No TV channels at all until the parents signed up for relatively new cable TV, to get all the "free" New York City TV stations without a tall TV antenna.
Analysis of sedimentary evidence from New Jersey showed that a major hurricane struck the New York/New Jersey area between 1278 to 1438, long before the internal combustion engine.
There is no evidence that more stringent regulations on fossil fuels will prevent wildfires, floods, and hurricanes that have plagued these parts of America for centuries. California’s rolling blackouts provides evidence that a forced transition to green energy makes energy more expensive and more scarce for a society. Biden’s energy policies could bring California’s rolling blackouts to the rest of America.