U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's conspiracy theory about big wildfires wasn't the first

Rural wildfires have been topics of wild conspiracy theories before Marjorie Taylor Greene, now a U.S. representative from northwest Georgia, "theorized that a space-based solar generator, used in a clean-energy experiment with the goal of replacing coal and oil, could have beamed the sun’s energy back to Earth and started the fire" that destroyed Paradise, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reports.

"California wildfires have been ripe for conspiracy for years, but Greene’s comments surface at a time when a sizable segment of the American population is treating false conjecture as fact," write reporters Hailey Branson-Potts, Joseph Serna and Alejandra Reyes-Velarde. Branson-Potts knows wildfires; she's from Perry, Okla., north of Oklahoma City.

The Camp fire that destroyed Paradise was sparked by equipment of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., "some of which was nearly 100 years old," the reporters note. "The company pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter last June."

That didn't stop theories like the one Greene espoused in a 2018 post that has since been deleted but was found by Media Matters for America. The House took her off committees by a party-line vote Thursday after "unprecedented punishment that Democrats said she’d earned by spreading hateful and violent conspiracy theories," The Associated Press reports. "Greene tried to dissociate herself from her 'words of the past' . . . but she didn’t explicitly apologize for supportive online remarks she’s made [such as] the possibility of Jewish-controlled space rays causing wildfires."

Conspiracy theories can be hatched when people seek explanations for events that seem so strange they defy traditional explanations. "When fires are extreme or wind-driven, their burn patterns can seem completely illogical to the uninitiated, and thus ripe for conspiracy as people try to make sense of what happened, said Jack Cohen, a wildfire expert and retired U.S. Forest Service firefighter," the Times reports. "Cohen said he first started hearing conspiracy theories about space-based directed-energy weapons after high-definition drone images showed the Camp fire’s pattern of destruction. People he said, are 'obscenely obsessed' with what causes wildfires and fill in the blanks when they can’t explain them."

Sometimes, theories can turn into action that is harmful or dangerous. "Last year, firefighting crews in Oregon encountered groups of people who were convinced that wildfires burning there were started by antifa," the Times reports. "The people were stopping residents from moving on local roads and, in at least one case, prohibited firefighters from going onto their property to help set up a defensive position for oncoming flames." Fact-checkers, including USA Today, debunked the claims.

Here is Greene's Facebook post about the California fire: