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IQ TEST: If California’s fires are caused by climate change, and if driving cars produces CO2 that accelerates climate change, then didn’t all the motorists of California cause their own forest fires?

11/12/2018 // Mike Adams // Views

Tags: badclimate, California, carbon dioxide, climate change, CO2, combustion engines, Emissions, forest fires, fossil fuels, hydrocarbons, rational, real science, skeptics

Anyone daring to apply logic to a catastrophe risks being labeled "insensitive." You're supposed to fall all-in with the emotional plea of the moment, sweeping away rationality and replacing it with the convenience of conformity.

Far from being insensitive, I'm so sensitive to the pleas and suffering of those victims of this California fire that I want to know how we stop this from ever happening again. I truly feel for those people (and the animals), and I think we owe it to all Californians to figure out how this happened and do our best to stop it from happening again. That's not satire, by the way. It's genuinely what compelled me to explore this issue and write this article.

Of course, it's not socially acceptable to argue with people whose homes are on fire. That's why, when California celebrities, fire officials and media personalities all insisted that the horrific fires there were all caused by climate change, I've decided to take them at their word.

So let's start with that premise: Yes, "climate change" caused the fires in California.

No argument. Let's follow this narrative, then, and see where it leads us...

To begin, we have to ask: What is climate change, exactly?

How "climate change" causes trees to catch on fire, according to California liberals

According to liberal ideology, "climate change" is a radicalization of weather events caused by carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles that run on petroleum. This belief, of course, rests on the absurd notion that forest fires, hurricanes and droughts never took place before the invention of the combustion engine, but let's set aside factual history for the moment so we can follow the liberal myth that claims the Earth was a calm, pristine, disaster-less planet right up until about 1920, when the combustion engine went into mass production.

(Those of you who are actual historians, geologists and scientists who are scoffing at such a leap of absurdity, pipe down! We are giving the climate change narrative the benefit of the doubt here, just for argument's sake. We must now pretend no natural disasters ever took place before 1920, just as we must pretend that people can magically change their gender in complete defiance of their genetics and biology.)

Climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels, we're told. The No. 1 source of fossil fuel burning that takes place in California is, of course, combustion engine-driven automobiles, which account for the vast majority of all cars and trucks on the road in California.

According to the California Energy Commission, over 15 billion gallons of gasoline were sold to California motorists in 2015. That number is surely higher today, but we'll go with 15 billion. That comes to just over 41 million gallons of gasoline per day, sold and burned in California, contributing to climate change.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), each gallon of gasoline that's burned produces 19.6 pounds of CO2. When 10% ethanol is added -- which is generated, by the way, through the production of GMO corn that presents an ecological disaster to the world -- that CO2 production is reduced to 17.6 pounds. (If you're wondering how a gallon of gas that weighs less than 19.6 pounds can produce 19.6 pounds of CO2 when burned, it's basic chemistry. The extra mass comes from the O2 oxygen in the air that forms with carbon to create CO2.)

For the sake of simplicity, we'll say that each gallon of gas burned in California produces 18 pounds of CO2.

If you multiply the 18 pounds of CO2 times the 41+ million gallons of gasoline sold and burned in California each day, you arrive at the astonishing answer that California contributes 739,726,027 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere each day.

That's three quarters of a billion pounds of CO2 generated in California each day, just from the motorists. That doesn't even count Al Gore's private jet or multiple mansion homes, either.

According to climate change narratives, all this CO2 makes the weather go wonky. In turn, this sets trees on fire, we're told, causing burning trees to torch the homes of people who built those homes right in the middle of forests (which always burn sooner or later, by the way, but we'll discard that fact for the moment...). Regardless of what you think about CO2 and forest fires, the most important part to remember in all this is that according to California Gov. Jerry Brown, this is all Trump's fault.

It's all Trump's fault because America now produces enough energy to feed the ravenous fuel consumption of California commuters

Now, if you're wondering how it's Trump's fault that the 39.6 million residents of California burn 41 million gallons of gas each day, releasing 739.7 million pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere every 24 hours, setting trees on fire and burning up thousands of homes that were built near trees, you obviously don't understand climate change logic. It's Trump's fault, you idiot, because Trump just did the most wicked thing imaginable: He lifted regulations so that America could produce all its own energy. Yes, America just crossed the threshold of energy independence.

For the first time in recent memory, the United States now produces more energy than it consumes, which means the United States is no longer beholden to foreign nations that have traditionally exported oil to America. This means the people of California can continue to drive tens of millions of cars and burn 41+ million gallons of gas each day without American soldiers having to die over oil interests in the Middle East. California liberals, of course, despise American soldiers, so this isn't actually a benefit in their eyes. They just want to drive their cars without having to think about where the energy actually comes from, in much the same way they also want to smoke weed and pretend cannabis smoke doesn't cause lung cancer or heart disease because cannabis is "medicine." (If you burn it, the smoke is carcinogenic. But don't tell California weed smokers, or you'll ruin their buzz.)

Nevertheless, the California commuter lifestyle is only made possible by a steady stream of energy that's now being produced in record quantities, domestically. In bizarre fashion, the very same Californians who are burning this energy condemn oil companies for making it available. Yes, only a California liberal could complain about fossil fuels while driving a combustion engine vehicle on a crowded highway with a million other vehicles, all churning out the CO2 tonnage that they claim is burning up their own forests.

Oh yeah, and it's Trump's fault, too. Don't forget.

If fossil fuels cause forest fires, why are Californians still driving cars?

It may strike you at this point that if the people of California didn't want "climate change" to set fire to their trees, they would all stop driving fossil fuel vehicles and thereby drop carbon dioxide emissions to zero. Surely, you say, the answer must be found in electric vehicles, which are claimed by manufacturers to produce "zero emissions."

But wait, you're reminded. Electric vehicles must be charged up with electricity. Where does that electricity come from in California? As the EIA documents, the No. 1 source of generating electricity in California is non other than natural gas, a hydrocarbon that produces CO2 when burned.

So wait. You mean the electric cars that are supposed to save the climate are actually using energy that's mostly produced with hydrocarbons that generate carbon dioxide emissions that set the trees on fire?

Yep.

All those people smugly driving electric vehicles around Ventura County are actually just shifting CO2 emissions to somewhere else. Electric vehicles aren't "zero emissions" vehicles. They're largely hydrocarbon-powered vehicles.

By 2045, California will still be causing its own forest fires, according to climate change theory

Under the legislation of California Democrats, the state has moved to replace all carbon-sourced electricity with renewable sources by the year 2045. But this will still leave tens of millions of vehicles on the roads, all producing CO2 while the trees keep burning. Plus, it's Trump's fault, remember?

California, it seems, wants all the benefits of fossil fuel energy but none of the repercussions of using fossil fuel energy. People who burn fossil fuels are bad, say California commuters... who are the very same people burning fossil fuels. They don't consider themselves to be bad people, of course. Because denialism is the first step in casting blame upon others.

Ultimately, if fossil fuels cause climate change, and if climate change causes forest fires, then didn't the people of California cause their own forest fires?

Or am I not allowed to ask that question while citing environmentalists' own logic? They are the ones who keep saying this, not me. I'm just repeating their narrative here. Don't call me insensitive for repeating the exact narrative California's environmentalists have been pounding into our heads for years. I'm just parroting what they've been saying for demonstrative purposes.

But wait, it's Trump's fault. The people of California are convinced of it. And that's how they can keep driving and smiling, filling their own air with carbon dioxide while condemning people who don't even live in California for all the problems of California. It couldn't possibly be Jerry Brown's fault, you see, even though he oversaw the utter lack of forest management and water reservoir management that has worsened every drought, forest fire and flood over the last two decades (yes, he was also in power many years back, if you recall).

In conclusion, if you believe that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, then you also believe Californians are to blame for their own forest fires.

Why Californians hate dolphins and whales, too, since they emit CO2

But if you believe that then you must also blame all the simple organisms of the Earth that produce CO2, since their carbon dioxide emissions dwarf those of the human species. Human activity only contributes about 3% of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. "Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is replenished mainly from warming oceans but also from termites, volcanoes and exhaling animals, assisted by about a 3% contribution from burning carbon fuels," writes Principia-Scientific.org. "No rational person could define carbon dioxide as 'pollution'. It is a harmless, non-toxic, colourless natural gas that is the essential food for all plants which then produce food and oxygen for all animals."

Thus, if Californians really want to know who's responsible for their forest fires, assuming the climate change catastrophe narrative is valid, it's actually land mammals and aquatic life forms that exhale CO2, such as dolphins and whales.

Yes, the people of California now hate dolphins, but they blame Trump. Go figure.

See more rational articles on climate change and natural disasters at Climate.news.

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