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Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)

CA Lawmaker Claims Wildfires are ‘Being Driven by Climate Change’

‘Objective science on climate has been sacrificed to politics’

By Katy Grimes, January 24, 2025 8:00 am

24 Jan 2025 8:00 am

Thursday in the California Assembly, lawmakers debated and voted to approve $2.5B in wildfire relief bills, only after Democrats blocked an additional $1 billion for wildfire prevention, requested by Republicans.

As the Globe reported, Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) told colleagues that they need to address “the cause” of wildfire increases the last 10 years because… climate change. “We’ve been taking up big issues related to climate action,” he said. “This is all being driven by climate change.”

“We need to remember this moment to fight climate change,” Muratsuchi said.

As one actual scientist reported, “objective science on climate has been sacrificed to politics.”

With 9 fires currently blazing in Southern California, we decided to research California’s 20-year wildfire history. This are the current fires, according to CalFire:

Current fires in Southern California. (Photo: CalFire, fire.ca.gov/incidents)

But first, remember there is ‘NO Climate Crisis’ Says Coalition of 1,600 Actual Scientists that we reported last year:

“There is ‘NO Climate Crisis’ says a coalition of 1,600 actual scientists” in a recent letter to the California Air Resources Board. In fact, the scientists find that “California is in no danger of unusual drought: The annual precipitation in California has fluctuated greatly over the last 150 years, with only a slight decrease.”

California also has record low levels of air pollution that are below the threshold of human health effects, JamesE. Enstrom, PhD, MPH has told us repeatedly for years. He’s also one of the 1,600 scientists signed onto the letter to CARB.

The scientists also insisted that carbon dioxide is beneficial to Earth.

Their letter was ignored by CARB and the state legacy media.

California’s drought conditions are actually historically normal. So are our occasional heavy wet winters – Despite Gavin Newsom claiming that there is a climate crisis in California and the state is facing “a more extreme future.”

It’s not hard to plan for California droughts as well as wet years – if politicians were honest. Every few years, the state’s reservoirs are full to the top, with enough water to supply to all users for at least five years of drought – until the governor’s State Water Resource Control Board direct 80% of snowpack runoff and stored rainwater to flow to the ocean as water quality control for fish, while starving farmers of water. The environment, and not agriculture, gets 80% of the water in the state.

As for California’s wildfires, here are several reports going back to 2005 on the number of fires, compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center, and CalFire records.

Year  Fires Acres     Hectares Ref.

2005 7,162 222,538 90,058 [30][31]
2006 8,202 736,022 297,858 [32][33]
2007 9,093 1,520,362 615,269 [21][34]
2008 6,255 1,593,690 644,940 [21]
2009 9,159 422,147 170,837 [35][36]
2010 6,554 109,529 44,325 [37]
2011 7,989 168,545 68,208 [38][39]
2012 7,950 869,599 351,914 [40]
2013 9,907 601,635 243,473 [41][42]
2014 7,865 625,540 253,150 [43][44]

2005 -2014, 10 YEARS of fires: 80,136 fires

2015 8,745 893,362 361,531 [45]
2016 6,986 669,534 270,951 [46][47]
2017 9,560 1,548,429 626,627 [48][49]
2018 8,527 1,975,086 799,289 [50][51]
2019 7,860 259,823 105,147 [52]
2020 9,639 4,397,809 1,779,730 [53]
2021 8,835 2,568,948 1,039,616 [54]
2022 7,490 362,455 146,680 [55]
2023 7,127 324,917 131,489 [56]
2024 8,024 1,050,012 424,925 [57]
2025

2015 – 2024, 10 YEARS of fires: 82,793 fires

Besides the two blocks of 10 years of fires above, in 2003, 9,116 fires burned 1,020,460 acres of land, as reported by CalFire.

These were the largest wildfires – and it appears one of the largest wildfires was in 1889 – and another in 1932:

As of October 2, 2024, the 20 largest wildfires according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection have been:

Name County Acres Hectares Start date Structures Deaths Notes
1 August Complex Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Tehama, Trinity, Shasta 1,032,648 417,898 August 2020 935 1
2 Dixie Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta, Tehama 963,309 389,837 July 2021 1,329 1 Largest single-source wildfire in California history.[59]
3 Mendocino Complex Mendocino, Lake, Colusa, Glenn 459,123 185,800 July 2018 280 1
4 Park Butte, Tehama 429,603 173,854 July 2024 709 0 Largest caused by arson.
5 SCU Lightning Complex Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Merced, Stanislaus 396,624 160,508 August 2020 222 0
6 Creek Fresno, Madera 379,895 153,738 September 2020 856 0
7 LNU Lightning Complex Colusa, Lake, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Yolo 363,220 146,990 August 2020 1,491 6
8 North Complex Plumas, Butte 318,935 129,068 August 2020 2,352 15
9 Santiago Canyon Orange, Riverside, San Diego 300,000 120,000 September 1889 0 0 The fire dates before 1932, when reliable fire records began.
10 Thomas Ventura, Santa Barbara 281,893 114,078 December 2017 1,063 23 Fatalities (2 direct, 21 indirect) attributed to the fire include 1 firefighter and 1 civilian directly, 22 deaths in later mudslides, with 1 never recovered.[60]
11 Cedar San Diego 273,246 110,579 October 2003 2,820 15
12 Rush Lassen 271,911 110,038 August 2012 0 0 This fire burned an additional 43,666 acres (17,671.0 ha) in Nevada, for a total of 315,577 acres (127,709.5 ha).[61][62]
13 Rim Tuolumne 257,314 104,131 August 2013 112 0
14 Zaca Santa Barbara 240,207 97,208 July 2007 1 0
15 Carr Shasta, Trinity 229,651 92,936 July 2018 1,614 8
16 Monument Trinity 223,124 90,295 July 2021 50 0
17 Caldor El Dorado, Amador, Alpine 221,835 89,773 August 2021 1,003 1
18 Matilija Ventura 220,000 89,000 September 1932 0 0
19 River Complex Siskiyou, Trinity 199,343 80,671 July 2021 122 0
20 Witch San Diego 197,990 80,120 October 2007 1,650 2

Most destructive wildfires

As of January 14, 2025, the 20 most destructive wildfires according to the CalFire  have been:

Name County Acres Hectares Start date Structures Deaths Notes
1 Camp Butte 153,336 62,050 November 2018 18,804 86 Town of Paradise mostly destroyed[71][64][65][66]
2 Eaton Los Angeles 14,021 5,674 January 2025 9,418 17 This information is as of 1/22/25; the fire is 95% contained, and the damage assessment is complete.[67]
3 Palisades Los Angeles 23,448 9,489 January 2025 6,662 11 This information is as of 1/22/25; the fire is 70% contained, and the damage assessment is ongoing.[69]
4 Tubbs Napa, Sonoma 36,807 14,895 October 2017 5,643 22
5 Tunnel Alameda 1,600 650 October 1991 2,900 25
6 Cedar San Diego 273,246 110,579 October 2003 2,820 15
7 North Complex Plumas, Butte 318,935 129,068 August 2020 2,352 15 Towns of Berry Creek and Feather Falls mostly destroyed[72][73]
8 Valley Lake, Napa, Sonoma 76,067 30,783 September 2015 1,955 4 Towns of Cobb, Middletown, and Whispering Pines mostly destroyed. [74][75]
9 Witch San Diego 197,990 80,120 October 2007 1,650 2
10 Woolsey Ventura, Los Angeles 96,949 39,234 November 2018 1,643 3
11 Carr Shasta, Trinity 229,651 92,936 July 2018 1,614 8
12 Glass Napa, Sonoma 67,484 27,310 September 2020 1,520 0
13 LNU Lightning Complex Colusa, Lake, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Yolo 363,220 146,990 August 2020 1,491 6
14 CZU Lightning Complex Santa Cruz, San Mateo 86,509 35,009 August 2020 1,490 1
15 Nuns Sonoma 54,382 22,008 October 2017 1,355 3
16 Dixie Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta, Tehama 963,309 389,837 July 2021 1,329 1 Town of Greenville mostly destroyed
17 Thomas Ventura, Santa Barbara 281,893 114,078 December 2017 1,063 23 2 direct, 22 indirect deaths were caused by the Montecito mudslides
18 Caldor El Dorado, Amador, Alpine 221,835 89,773 August 2021 1,003 1 Town of Grizzly Flats mostly destroyed
18 Old San Bernardino 91,281 36,940 October 2003 1,003 6
20 Butte Amador, Calaveras 70,868 28,679 September 2015 965 2

It is not difficult to conclude that California wildfires are historical. Modern fires appear more destructive as Californians have developed residential living into more rural areas. It is also evident that most of the recent fires are man-made – arson, utility related, and homeless caused fires.

Claiming “climate change” as Assemblyman Muratsuchi did is reckless and deliberate – especially because he offered no solutions. With “climate change” there is no accountability for politicians, but there is great wealth redistribution. In California, businesses are charged a carbon tax in the form of cap and trade. It’s a shakedown. (The “cap” is the state-imposed limit on businesses that emit greenhouse gasses, and the “trade” is the sale of carbon credits to other businesses).

Meanwhile, back to our actual scientists: One of the most prominent signers of the letter to CARB was 2022 Nobel Laureate John Clauser, who described the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as “one of the worst sources of dangerous misinformation,” and was disinvited to speak before the U.N.’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) on July 25, 2023.

“The physicist believes that objective science on climate has been sacrificed to politics. The preeminence of politics is all the worse, he said, because so much money has already gone to climate,” the CO2 Coalition said.

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23 thoughts on “CA Lawmaker Claims Wildfires are ‘Being Driven by Climate Change’”

  1. In order to keep the business model of “Climate Change” alive, a stooge such as Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) has to make a false statement that the fires are a result of climate change. It is an industry he must have an investment in. It is a grift.
    Facts be damned! They don’ need no stinking’ facts!
    Vote him out Torrance. He clearly is a hack!

    Reply

  2. Arsonists everywhere and nobody(in charge) wants to discuss! A person(transient) caught red-handed trying to light fires in Woodland Hills and was NOT charged with arson! I’ve contacted numerous officials and they are ALL ignoring me!

    Reply

  4. Climate change isn’t an excuse. If you knew climate change resulted in fires, then why did Newsom cut the Cal Fire budget by $101 million? Why have you Democrats been blocking bills to prevent wildfires for the last two decades? When the utilities weren’t maintaining their lines, why didn’t you correct the problem? You were even warned by the State Auditor, and you did nothing.

    You screwed up. It doesn’t matter what caused the fires. What matters is what you Democrats didn’t do to prevent them. You Democrats are negligent and incompetent. You are putting everyone’s home at risk.

    We need some Democrats to resign, including Newsom. You failed.

    Reply

  5. Democrat Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi who is laughably trying to blame the fires on climate change is also the radical Democrat who authored AB 1825 that prevents pornographic library books from being banned by parents and school boards and he also authored Assembly Bill 49 that specifically prohibits school officials and employees of a local educational agency from allowing an officer or employee of ICE to enter a school site for any purpose.

    It’s hard to believe that Muratsuchi’s radical legislation and extremist viewpoints represent the majority of his constituents in the 66th Assembly District which is only about 42% Democrat and includes some very wealthy areas such as Rancho Palos Verdes and Manhattan Beach?

    Muratsuchi appears to be pushing the deep-state WEF globalist agenda and he’s probably receiving payoffs or other incentives from nefarious sources to do so? Maybe the Trump administration’s DOJ should investigate him and his connections?

    Reply

  6. You will eat less meat, the demogogues decree… So, cow farts cause climate change and cattle must be therefore be exterminated from earth, isolated cases of bird flu becomes national crises where the collective national flock is slaughtered without going to market, and pork production must be so humane that it becomes unaffordable in the store (if the food supply is strictly controlled, so are the peasants, therefore, no water to farmers). Maintenance of fire prone vegetation is destructive to the environment and therefore evil, because it is only due to climate change that we have any fires at all. The demogogues want to compress society into cities to reside in tiny cubicles no larger than mandated (exept for the demogues, we must be equal!) and force everyone onto collective public transportation… cars cause global warming, which causes wildfires! (except for chauffered luxury cars and private jets personally owned by demogogues). Fires destroy single family homes, which insurance won’t cover, and the former occupants become destitute (except for demogogues, personal wealth is EVIL!). Leftist governments make it financially difficult to build single family homes, while Blackrock and Vanguard buy up as much housing as they can for rental property (everything you use, you will rent: you will own nothing and you WILL be HAPPY!!! – said the demgogued while smacking his palm with a club). Uncontrolled wildfires burn up all that oversized single family housing, which the can then be “repurposed” as ugly, cramped, crime ridden, highrise hovels, because we MUST be EQUAL!!! (except for the elite demogogues, who will live in spacious luxury and each have several personal dachas with beautiful vistas in scattered places forbidden to the peasants), or “returned to nature.” All citizens are equal, except some citizens are more equal than others. Oppose the agenda, to the gulag, so shut up, drop your pants and bend over, PEASANT! (directive followed by a spitting sound). All of the above is communism 101.

    Reply

  7. Sadly, their base believe them. But, most fires have been started by the homeless, excuse me “unhoused”. So, maybe you can ask them: “Since it is climate change, or as us common folks call it, the weather patterns of life, what are your plans to minimize fires, store more water, clear brush and old growth? Then, if ol’ Newsom can eliminate red tape, why not in those areas? I mean, all those “animals” the environmental wackos wanted to protect are now BBQ.

    Reply

  8. I am pleased to read that Trump may not confer with Governor Newsom while advancing American interests, here in California today.

    Reply

  9. OMG! You have outdone yourself Katy! In your argument *against* a relationship between wildfires and climate, you present a list of the 20 largest in the state. In that list, you point out that one happened in 1932 and one in 1889. So *obviously* there is no connection. Well, according to your own data, another big one occurred in 1991. That means 85 percent have occurred since 2003. Your data span 135 years yet 85% of the worst fires have occurred in the last 20! And I love that you drag out the “respected scientist” (see my clever use of quotation marks) JamesE. Enstrom, PhD, MPH. This is the guy who took thousands from the tobacco companies to fake research that said smoking was safe. He is a REAL piece of work. I encourage readers to look him up. Thank you for the laugh on a Friday.

    Reply

    1. I take from many years in California from observing things around me that wildfires were generally not so extreme before communist ideologues seized control of California government in order to force their ideology on everyone else by any means necessary, and their general method of presenting what they say (which is different from what they do) is to lie, justify and change the subject while calling you names, “Who ya gonna believe, me or your lying eyes, you (insert derogatory slur of choice)? ” So, after maybe maybe 55 years of failed climate predictions, innumerable prevarications and hoaxes of every type, few who can tell the difference between one’s own posterior and the porcelin receptical on which it periodically rests might not much believe laughing boys anymore, whether they are academics, talking heads on tv or internet trolls. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and I start to catch on.

      Reply

    2. Instead of attacking Katy Grimes, someone with real common sense would note that while most of the largest fires have occurred since 2003, it happens to be around the time that the criminal Democrat mafia began taking over the state through massive voting fraud and when they started implementing their globalist agenda of restricting/rationing water while not building new water storage facilities despite massive population growth, restricting and even stopping forest and brush management, and massively cutting firefighting budgets. Many of the fires seem to be coordinated arson and some even speculate that directed energy weapons might being used because the intense fires seem to incinerate everything except for a few objects that are blue in color.

      Reply

      1. Oh, clever TJ. Got me. That makes as much sense as pointing out that the fires that occurred between 2017 and 2020 were caused by the Orange Jesus. PLEASE. Do not expose your ignorance. Go back to chatting with your foolish friends on Meta. They think you have something to say.

        Reply

        1. It sounds like you’ve been chatting with your old Democrat pervert butt buddies on the libtard echo chamber of Bluesky? Only a senile old Democrat who took too many mRNA boosters and suffers from AIDS dementia would try to claim that Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, Gavin “Hair-gel Hitler” Newsom and the rest of the criminal Democrat thug mafia that has controlled California for DECADES weren’t responsible for the fires and all of the other destruction that they’ve inflicted on Californians.

          Now run along you old coot, take your HIV meds and get another COVID mRNA booster. When you leave your safe place, be sure to wear at least two face masks and keep six feet distance from others at all times.

          Reply

  10. Cause of Fire: Presence of Oxygen, Fuel and Heat.
    I suspect, like gender, it also has become another expansive tool of mental grandiosity.

    Reply

  11. Hey OldCalifornianWithCommonsense THe fires are happening now because the Fuel Load is unberable. Did you notice nothing in the 50’s,60’s,70’s, 80’s when we did Real Forrest Management. We have done Any since the 90’s, it’s really bad now.

    Reply

  12. I fought fire on a CDF hand crew in ’72 and ’73. The largest fire I fought in those two years was a 17,000 acre fire near Cherry Lake, on the western border of Yosemite National Park. All of our career CDF foremen at the camp agreed that it was one of the largest wildfires they had ever been on.

    Ten years later along came the Northern Spotted Owl and soon after that came Bill Clinton and the reduction of 90% of the timber sales in the Pacific Northwest. And the rest is history.

    The problem isn’t climate change, it’s fuel loads, Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi. But then you wouldn’t know that, as your polished shoes have never seen an ounce of dust on them, let alone ash.

    Reply

      1. Owls don’t cause fires, communists entrenched in California government and litigous envirofascists who use a species of owls (predated on by larger owls) as a wilfully destructive excuse to not thin forests cause out of control, massive fires that destroy homes and kill people. Those are people who need to be ruined in every way because of their sociopathic, callous disregard of public safety to further an ideological agenda.

        Reply

  13. The same people that cant protect a city from wildfires are the same people that tell you if you just pay more taxes, not use the products they dont like, they will be able to control the weather.

    Reply

  14. With the precient wisdom of accomplished climate warriors like Gavin Newsom, Karen, Rob Bonta, Scott Wiener, 98% of California university professors and Che Guevara t-shirt wearers (repeating myself), we will launch the California version of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (who needs farmers and people who think for themselves?) as well as recreate Stalin’s beneficient regard for kulaks, climate change will reverse itself and California fires will all become figments of reactionary imagination – they never happened! Because men will be women and women will be men and pedophilia is healthy and normal! And what spotted owl?

    Reply

  15. Two thoughts:
    1. Climate change didn’t defund the fire dept, hire only DEI’s, and drain the reservoirs.
    2. If they really believed that Climate change would produce the conditions to start or exacerbate wildfires, why did they defund the fire dept, hire only DEI’s, and drain the reservoirs?  
    He obviously doesn’t believe it himself, but wants to place the blame on something that can’t be held accountable, in order to get the blame off of those who truly are responsible.

    Reply

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