Climate Change Did Not Cause the LA Fires
An interview with Steven Koonin, from Emily Yoffe, originally published by The Free Press:
Emily Yoffe: Los Angeles is burning. President Joe Biden has said that climate change, which he just called the “single greatest existential threat to humanity,” is the cause. Many climate scientists agree with him. What do you say?
Steven Koonin: Nonsense. While climate might be playing a minor role, by far the greatest factor affecting how much damage results from a fire is the fuel available to it. Have you cleared the brush and other vegetation or not? Also, there’s the infrastructure that you’ve built. Are the houses fireproof? How close are they together? If we want to avoid the kind of disasters we’ve just seen in the Los Angeles basin, there are so many things we could be doing much more directly and easily than trying to reduce CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions.
EY: You lived in Altadena—much of which is now ash—for almost 30 years when you were at Caltech. When you were living there, did you think something like this could happen?
SK: I remember one very windy night in the ’90s when our kids woke up and thought the sun was rising, but it was actually a fire in the hills…
The complete interview can be accessed here.