Seduced by a four-year old memo described in an article linked to from the Drudge Report, 'Fox anchors spread fears of al Qaeda link to California fires.' More on 'Fanning Fear's Flames,' which includes a clip that inspired the observation: 'Bush's demagoguery knows no bounds.'

more details here (carpetbagger)

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

5 Arrested For Arson in Southern California

At least five people have been arrested for arson since wildfires broke out across Southern California this week, but none has been linked to any of the major blazes, authorities said Thursday.

[The] latest arrest came Wednesday after witnesses spotted 41-year-old Catalino Pineda starting a fire on a San Fernando Valley hillside and then walking away, Los Angeles police said.

Witnesses alerted authorities and followed him to a nearby restaurant where police arrested him.

Pineda, a Guatemala native, was booked for investigation of arson and held on $75,000 bail. He's currently on probation for making excessive false emergency reports to law enforcement, police said.

Two others, an adult and a juvenile were arrested Tuesday for allegedly starting a small fire in the San Diego suburb of Vista. Still two more arrested in San Bernardino County earlier this week were charged with arson counts for setting blazes.

A sixth man was shot to death by police after he fled officers who approached to see if he might be trying to set a fire.

In Orange County, authorities declared arson as the cause of a 23,000-acre blaze based on evidence showing two distinct ignition points.

It is unspeakably heinous to set up more blazes during a major fire, for sure.

On the other hand, the maximal rage of California fires has nothing to do with initial causes, be it an arson set. The conditions were drought and warmer temperatures for unusually longer time. Whatever initial cause there may be, there is high risk of small blazes escalating. And the risk for these conditions is increasing with global warming - it must be difficult to argue against that.

[As pointed out] at Open Left, environmental groups haven't been very quick off the mark in responding to the California wildfires and framing them as a climate disaster.

Whether it's Katrina, Rita, the 2003 wildfires, 2004 Florida hurricanes, or any of the numerous other climate disasters of recent years, environmental groups have been slow. It's true that you can't tie any particular climate disaster directly to global warming -- but it's easy enough to acknowledge that and then talk about how these kinds of disasters will become more frequent and more intense as the climate crisis worsens ... and then turn the conversation to solutions.

Mostly, environmentalists have been timid because they're afraid right wingers will accuse them of "exploiting" the tragedies, but environmental groups shouldn't decide what to say or not say on the basis of a few fringe anti-environmentalists. Framing these events as climate disasters directs the conversation and forces the media to address the question, rather than continuing with the "Mother Nature strikes again" stories they usually run. If we let the right wing define what we say, we'll be 100 percent mute, 100 percent of the time. It's kind of a ridiculous strategy.

You've got to talk when people are paying attention. It's nice to release thoughtful, hard-hitting reports about how the climate is increasing the likelihood of wildfires during the rainy season. But it really doesn't matter if no one cares when the report is released. You've got to drive the point home while people actually care about wildfires (same true for hurricanes, droughts, etc.).

Let me give an example. In 2003, I was working on forest protection. Then, as now, some environmental groups didn't want to say that either the climate crisis or logging of fire-resistant old growth trees was contributing to the massive burns, even though they had put out loads of reports about it. Why not? They were scared they'd be accused of exploiting tragedies.

But for some reason, the right wing had no similar fears. They blamed the fires on environmentalists, saying that environmentalists had prevented thinning of low-diameter trees. The environmental community was so scared by that line of argument that the environmental messaging was, "Yes, we need tree thinning -- just not deep in the forest." Not surprisingly, few members of Congress and few members of the public remembered the distinction. The result: passage of Bush's Orwellian Healthy Forests Initiative, which actually subsidizes the logging of fire-resistant old growth trees.

Not for the first time, the opponents accuse us of "exploiting a tragedy" before we start discussing the issue. They will always capture the first sounds of "this might be due to global warming" and hammer them in full. Now they don't even need to wait for the first hints - they control the image of environmentalists fully.

To take some initiative in the debate, we need to be more creative, less reluctant and predictable, perhaps at slight expense of formal accuracy routines.

After all, the statement "The California fires were caused by global warming" is just as important as "The California fires were not caused by global warming". Can anyone prove that global warming could not be a factor in these massive fires? Would fires had a good chance to grow that size if not for dryer and longer summer? Which of the two statements seems to be closer to the truth?

To counter the right wing spin on "not clearing fuel is the fault of enviros", it'd be worth mentionning that the fires are very intense precisely because the amount of fuel increases radically with global warming.

I feel comfortable saying the intensity and extent of the fires is probably due to global warming.