Newsom’s hot air on climate change and wildfires

California’s recent heat wave has the usual suspects talking about “climate change” again.

That’s just the usual sloppy, unscientific thinking that climate alarmists encourage.

Weather — short-term — is not the same as climate. 

While California was baking, snow was piling up in the Midwest, and the East Coast suffered a brief return to mid-winter temperatures.

But cold temperatures don’t convince the climate alarmists, who have long since moved on from “global warming.”

Any extreme weather is now evidence of “climate change.”

And Gavin Newsom has made climate change the center of his economic policy. 

That’s why oil refineries are shutting down and gas prices had begun rising in California, long before the Iran war. 

And that’s why he is joining other Democrat-run states in suing the Trump administration over its decision to repeal the “endangerment rule.”

That rule, imposed by President Barack Obama, allows the EPA to regulate carbon emissions.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 says nothing about carbon emissions. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the Act could, in theory, be used to regulate them as pollutants.

It was an unscientific ruling: Carbon dioxide, the main “greenhouse gas,” is not a pollutant. 

But the Obama administration used that loophole to impose sweeping climate regulations, which Trump has now erased.

In explaining why California is suing Trump, Newsom claimed: “Our communities have felt the impact of destructive wildfires, watched families run from burning homes, and inhaled toxic fumes.”

But California’s wildfires aren’t being caused by climate change.

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In fact, as Bjorn Lomborg noted recently in The Wall Street Journal, wildfires have fallen 25% worldwide over the past 25 years.

Fires are only increasing in North America — which should not be the case if the entire planet were warming. 

And the main driver of the increase, Lomborg argued, is poor planning and management — especially in California.

Newsom isn’t the first to try blaming climate change for wildfires.

His predecessor, Jerry Brown, did the same. It wasn’t true then, either.

But from Brown’s last years in office, through Newsom’s two terms, there has been a dramatic increase in the size and scale of wildfires in California. 

In fact, the emissions from California’s wildfires wiped out decades of progress in reducing emissions from the state.

Climate change is increasingly a distraction that politicians use to blame other people — the oil industry, the auto manufacturers, Donald Trump — for their own failures.

The real answer is better management. 

More water, more brush clearance, more firefighters, controlled burns — and a state insurance market that protects homeowners instead of leaving them to fend for themselves.

If Newsom wants to cut down on emissions, maybe he should consider limiting his jet travel.

Between his book tour, his travel to early presidential primary states, and his appearances at overseas conferences — including climate confabs — Newsom has burned plenty of fossil fuels.

There’s much to do here at home in California to prepare for the risks of a warmer planet — that is, if Newsom wants to show up for work.