{"id":51573,"date":"2020-09-15T18:59:16","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T00:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildfires-put-republican-meteorologist-candidate-in-hot-seat\/"},"modified":"2020-09-16T00:59:16","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T00:59:16","slug":"wildfires-put-republican-meteorologist-candidate-in-hot-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildfires-put-republican-meteorologist-candidate-in-hot-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildfires put Republican meteorologist candidate in hot seat"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=b36da655-04fb-4525-9c38-4f2ddf7e69a9&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1342\" alt=\"KRQE-TV chief meteorologist Mark Ronchetti stands in front of a \u201cgreen screen\u201d as he gives the forecast in 2006 at the KRQE studios in Albuquerque. Ronchetti, a former meteorologist, is competing for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination to take on Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">KRQE-TV chief meteorologist Mark Ronchetti stands in front of a \u201cgreen screen\u201d as he gives the forecast in 2006 at the KRQE studios in Albuquerque. Ronchetti, a former meteorologist, is competing for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination to take on Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jaelyn deMaria\/The Albuquerque Journal via AP file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>U.S. Rep. and Democratic Senate nominee Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n accused rival Mark Ronchetti on Monday of engaging in \u201cirresponsible and dangerous climate denialism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luj\u00e1n highlighted a video clip from a Republican online forum in March in which Ronchetti said that \u201cfires aren\u2019t caused by anything other than a spark or a lightning strike. \u2026 Climate change doesn\u2019t cause fires, come on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ronchetti responded Monday with an acknowledgment that climate change needs to be addressed and that both \u201chuman activity\u201d and drought are responsible for the vicious wildfires.<\/p>\n<p>Ronchetti also partially endorsed the view that poor forest management is to blame.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been studying weather my entire professional life, and so let me be perfectly clear \u2013 climate change is a real phenomenon that needs to be addressed,\u201d he aid. \u201cWildfires in the West are caused by a variety of factors including lightning and human activity. These fires are made far worse by poor forest management in addition to drought conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KRQE-TV chief meteorologist Mark Ronchetti stands in front of a \u201cgreen screen\u201d as he gives the forecast in 2006 at the KRQE studios in Albuquerque. Ronchetti, a former meteorologist, is competing for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination to take on Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n.Jaelyn deMaria\/The Albuquerque Journal via AP file U.S. Rep. and Democratic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51573"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}