Conditions in Southern California now

President Joe Biden, joined by administration officials, gave briefings on Thursday and Friday to go over the federal government’s response to the devastating fires affecting Southern California, specifically the Los Angeles area. During both briefings, Biden mentioned “global warming” and
“climate change” as major underlying causes of the fires. For example, on Thursday, Biden stated:

There is, in case you haven’t noticed, there is global warming. It does change weather patterns.

Later in the briefing, Biden said:

All has changed in the weather. Climate change is real, fundamentally altering around the world, not just here but around the world, what’s going on. And we’ve got to adjust to it, we got to adjust to it. And we can. It’s within our power to do it. But we’ve got to acknowledge it to begin with, just acknowledge that there’s a change taking place, that we’re not going to be able to legislate away. It’s real. There is global warming.

On Friday, Biden used similar language, driving home the point that climate change, specifically global warming, is creating conditions that lead to weather disasters like the California fires.

In this case, the weather that President Biden and other officials taking part in these briefings (including California Governor Gavin Newsom) were talking about includes:

–Unprecedented high winds, up to 100 miles per hour in some locations;

–No rain in Southern California this month and very little in the preceding few months, even though it is supposed to be the rainiest part of the year;

–Humidity as low as single digits.

President Biden also suggested during his Friday briefing that America needs to “build back better,” meaning rebuilding destroyed infrastructure in a safer way to avoid further devastation from future weather-related disasters. One example Biden gave was to bury power lines underground. However, such preventive steps are very expensive. It remains to be seen whether the incoming Republican administration and Congressional majorities would agree to spend the money for such prevention, in blue California no less, especially given that they don’t believe in climate change in the first place.

Photo by Lorie Shaull, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/gxyTCC