Bolt: Deranged Albo blinded by global warming crusade

Anthony Albanese has jumped the shark by linking the Los Angeles fires to global warming and attacking nuclear power. Is he really mad enough to think Aussies can stop fires in California by slashing our emissions?

Anthony Albanese’s crazy reaction to the fires devastating Los Angeles shows how dangerously our Prime Minister is blinded by ideology.

It seems LA is being burned by woke politicians who even let fire hydrants run out of water, but Albanese instead jumped on the excuse many leaders now use to hide their disgraceful incompetence.

Yes, global warming.

“We’ve seen the hottest years on record being reached year after year, and we’re seeing as well, more extreme events,” Albanese declared on Friday.

Then, in a bizarre non-sequitur, he claimed California’s fires proved we should reject the Opposition’s plans for nuclear power: “It’s why we can’t afford to say, ‘stop acting, don’t do anything until the 2040s and we’ll build you a nuclear power station’.”

Is the man mad?

Anthony Albanese jumped on the excuse many leaders now use to hide their disgraceful incompetence – global warming. Picture: John Gass

Is Albanese really so deranged as to think Australians can stop fires in California by slashing our emissions, at such horrendous cost?

Federal Teal politician Monique Ryan sure is, tweeting: “We can prevent more tragedies like this by acting more effectively to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.”

But if Albanese and Ryan truly thought we could stop fires in California by cutting Australia’s emissions, why are both against building zero-emissions nuclear generators?

Even madder is them assuming these horrendous fires really are a sign of global warming.

True, Los Angeles has had a very dry six months – its second driest period in almost 150 years of record-keeping.

But not so fast. That dry followed two record years of rain in southern California which left record water in its dams. And northern California is still getting above-average rains over these past months.

If that’s global warming, it’s good.

The charred remnants of the Palisades campus of international private school Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles. Picture: AFP

Of course, after rain comes more vegetation, now bone dry. And this past week there have been unusually strong Santa Ana winds, which blow from inland, whipping fires through this massive tinder box.

But not even those winds can be blamed on global warming. University of California researchers in 2019 found that all climate change models agreed there would actually be a decrease in Santa Ana winds.

Conclusion: Albanese jumped the shark by linking these fires to global warming and attacking nuclear power.

So why is Los Angeles really burning?

The full story is yet to be told. Investigations have been promised, but here are some clues, suggesting a story of truly astonishing incompetence to match the kind that’s left Australians somehow running short of electricity despite our massive reserves of coal, gas and uranium.

1 LA firefighters found fire hydrants in hillier areas without water because pipes to refill the three water storage reservoirs they used weren’t big enough to refill them fast enough.

2 A big dam in the Pacific Palisades, one of Los Angeles’ worst-hit areas, was drained dry for repairs, also leaving firefighters short of water pressure.

3 Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass last year cut the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget by $US17.6 million, despite warnings by fire chief Kristin Crowley that this cut “severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires”, and there’d be fewer brush clearance inspections which were “crucial for mitigating fire risks in high-hazard areas”.

For Anthony Albanese, the California fires are just one more reason to say no to nuclear power.

4 Chief Crowley now says the city’s leaders “failed” firefighters: “We need to double the size of our firefighters. The growth of this city since 1960 has doubled and we have less fire stations.”

5 Mayor Bass flew to Ghana for the swearing in of its president despite warnings of critical fire conditions, and did not return until Wednesday, a day after the first houses in her city had burned down.

6 California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, had meanwhile fought efforts to redirect more water to southern California, saying he wanted to protect “highly imperilled fish species close to extinction”, like a 15 cm smelt, although some experts claim this water wouldn’t have made a difference,

7 Newsom last year also slashed funding for wildfire and forest resilience, including fuel reduction burns, by $US101 million, although he says he’s doubled the number of state firefighters overall since being elected.

8 Fire experts rule out the Pacific Palisades fire being started by lightning, leaving arsonists or clashing power lines as the main suspects.

But never mind all that. For Albanese it’s just “climate change” and one more reason to say no to nuclear power.

How does that make any sense? And is this the kind of thinking that has Albanese destroying our own electricity system in his global warming crusade?

Originally published as Bolt: Deranged Albo blinded by global warming crusade