The 2017 World Series in Los Angeles began on the blistering late afternoon of October 24. That day it had reached 107 degrees in numerous parts of the Los Angeles basin. At first pitch, the temperature was still over 100 degrees. Hours later, with the Dodgers having beat the Astros 3-1, the mercury still was over 90.

Before this October, with records going back to the 1870s, the Los Angeles area had never topped the century mark after mid-October.

This October saw not only record heat, it was windy too. In fact, the winds were the immediate cause of the heat. Indeed, almost every year similar dry, hot winds blow strongly in the “wrong” direction — from east to west — down from the mountain passes then across the coast and out into the Pacific Ocean. These winds happen mostly during October through December.

First recorded by European explorers, they were named the Santa Anna winds, or just the Santa Annas. The Santa Annas’ sweltering blasts melt away some of the allure of Southern California’s mild Mediterranean Climate. And with these winds there usually comes at least some wildfire because they fan the tiniest sparks into flame in the dried-out grass and brush of autumn.

Although the winds are known as the Santa Annas in the L.A. Basin, further north in southern California winds that blow up the same way are more often called the Diablo Wind.

The cause of the winds is well known. A high-pressure area forms just east of California over the Great Basin (mostly Nevada) desert. If, at the same time, low pressure forms offshore in the Pacific Ocean, then the air will begin to flow in a clockwise direction out from high pressure and into the low-pressure area — very easy to understand.

The Santa Annas are also katabatic winds — downslope winds. Their speed and air temperature increase as the air flow is dried while squeezing though the mountain passes and losing elevation. It is the dryness, their heat, and often high velocity that makes the Santa Annas so memorable.

The difference this year was that the Santa Annas and the Diablos were the hottest, driest, and among the hardest ever seen. They did more damage and killed more people than any did before. The death toll and property damage rivalled that of the three big hurricanes of 2017 that hit Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico – Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

There are those who will discount the record wind driven California wildfires. They might say, “There seem to be record disasters somewhere all the time.” “There have probably been bigger fires in the area’s prehistory.” In addition, the damage came from the fires burning inside towns and small cities. Of course, these did not exist 200 years ago. This is likely true, but California has had a unique bad experience. California began an extreme drought in 2011. It lasted until the end of 2016. The drought was followed immediately with the second wettest winter on record and that was followed by a spring and summer with almost no rain after April.

Was the winter a fluke with the drought returning immediately?

The amount of energy in the Atlantic hurricanes this year was one of the top five ever going back to the year 1851. Were the three big hurricanes just bad luck too?

I mention these things because they happened in places likely to be noticed by U.S. citizens. We know now that public opinion about changing weather patterns is noticed and taken into account only when events happen near home or places people know well and care about. For example, how many Americans know or care what the wildfires were like in western Canada last summer even though we suffered here from smoke originating in British Columbia?

I raise these questions because psychologically remote, weather-related disasters will not change public opinion, at least unless they get much worse. That great denier of most science, Donald Trump and his appointed minions show no detectable movement, although the cost of the disasters might affect their big tax cut plans a bit.

In the meantime, Trump’s nominee to be the new Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), proves to be a denier of climate science. As a congressman he even introduced a bill to end research into climate. He also joined with an Oklahoma U.S. Senator, Jim Inhofe, to tell us that because it still snowed in the winter there was no global warming.

Meanwhile, there is some good news about the United States and the fight to halt global warming. This is where it really counts — in physical units.

A new report from the General Accounting Office (GAO), which is a congressional agency, tells that United States’ electricity use is 7 percent lower now than back in 2008. In addition, U.S. consumption of gasoline has barely risen over the last ten years. Most importantly, US carbon dioxide releases were 14 percent below lower in 2016 (the latest data) than a decade earlier (2005).

Public policy professor Joseph Aldy at Harvard’s Kennedy School told “Business Insider” that coal consumption in the U.S. went down 42 percent in the last ten years. At the same time natural gas use increased 27 percent and wind power really surprised with a 387 percent increase.

Of course, President Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry want to have us subsidize coal production with our taxes and our electricity bills. Will they be successful? Back in 1907, a hundred years ago, would then-President Theodore Roosevelt have had any success if he’d announced a plan to restore the horse and buggy to its “rightful place in America” to make us “great again” by government purchase and tax cuts for horse-drawn carriages and a subsidy to all Americans who bought horses?

Dr. Ralph Maughan of Pocatello is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He retired after teaching there for 36 years, specializing in voting, public opinion and natural resource politics. He has written three outdoor guides, including “Hiking Idaho” with Jackie Johnson Maughan. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.