The system that brought raging winds and apocalyptic infernos sweeping across southern California is shifting east. Combining with a vortex of cold air swooping down from the Arctic, Winter Storm Cora will bring record-breaking cold, snow, and sleet to the southern states. So it appears that the same weather pattern is causing both kinds of extreme conditions of fire and frost. But is this all due to to the dreaded specter of climate change?
Not necessarily. The fires around LA are apparently not climate change-driven. They seem to be just how the weather works out there — with desert Santa Ana winds howling and no rain.
Fed scientist: ‘L.A. Fires Not Climate Change’ – Studies & data show ‘climate’ not linked to California wildfires
And the jury is still out on whether climate change is fueling harsher winter storms, too. (It is, IMHO.)
The reason the weather seems so awful may be because it just is more destructive. But that is likely less due to changes in the weather than the fact that more humans are simply in the way. Population growth and rising wealth have allowed people to live and build in areas formerly too remote or risky. All over the world, human populations are reaching a point of ecological saturation. The margins have vanished. We have intruded so far into the natural systems that every disturbance to the natural order has a much larger effect on humanity than before. And since every thing on Earth is connected, ecological saturation means that one disruption in one place will cause others elsewhere. Because people are everywhere and eating everything.
With or without climate change, until some sort of long-term balance is struck between human consumption and the natural world, things will inevitably get worse.
