Ed Kilgore writes:

Right now, as Los Angeles deals with a horrendous wildfire emergency, Donald Trump is just an extremely unhelpful critic of the people trying to save lives and homes. The torrent of abuse and misinformation he is spewing is unfortunate but not calamitous. But in ten days he will become once again the president of the United States, and his intensely politicized approach to natural disasters, particularly in blue states like California, will become highly relevant to real-life outcomes.

This isn’t a new problem; Trump’s first administration struggled with natural disasters, in part because the 45th president wasn’t particularly interested in helping people who in his judgment had made poor choices in state or local leadership (or in presidential voting patterns, for that matter). But for the most part his grousing about this or that group of ingrates didn’t greatly interfere with the largely nonpartisan machinery of disaster response and recovery.

But the intensity of the blame game he and his supporters are currently playing with respect to the alleged responsibility of “Gavin Newscum” and various tree-hugging, farmer-hating Democrats has surpassed all precedents. [Continue reading…]

Amanda Marcotte writes:

One thing no one can deny: MAGA influencers put a lot of work into pushing really incoherent talking points. Most everyone with sense understands that the fires ravaging Los Angeles are, in large part, a predictable consequence of climate change. However, it is an article of faith in MAGA circles that climate change is a “hoax” invented by the “libs” to deny gender-affirming care to cis men, in the form of oversized gas-guzzling trucks. So they quickly jumped into action during a time of immense need, seeking someone or something else to blame. And because the movement takes all its cues from a right-wing influencer named Chaya Raichik — who posts under the name “Libs of Tik Tok” — they’ve settled on blaming women.

On Wednesday, Raichik tweeted a picture while falsely implying both that the entirety of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) leadership is female and also that women’s inherent inferiority is why the fires are spinning out of control. [Continue reading…]

Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist in Chapel Hill, N.C., writes:

I am utterly devastated by the Los Angeles wildfires, shaking with rage and grief. The Altadena community near Pasadena, where the Eaton fire has damaged or destroyed at least 5,000 structures, was my home for 14 years.

I moved my family away two years ago because, as California’s climate kept growing drier, hotter and more fiery, I feared that our neighborhood would burn. But even I didn’t think fires of this scale and severity would raze it and other large areas of the city this soon. And yet images of Altadena this week show a hellscape, like a landscape out of Octavia Butler’s uncannily prescient climate novel “Parable of the Sower.”

One lesson climate change teaches us again and again is that bad things can happen ahead of schedule. Model predictions for climate impacts have tended to be optimistically biased. But now, unfortunately, the heating is accelerating, outpacing scientists’ expectations.

We must face the fact that no one is coming to save us, especially in disaster-prone places such as Los Angeles, where the risk of catastrophic wildfire has been clear for years. And so many of us face a real choice — to stay or to leave. I chose to leave. [Continue reading…]