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Is Climate Change Affecting Bushfires?
TapeCutter writes "After the devastating firestorm in Australia, there has been a lot of speculation in the press about the role of climate change. For the 'pro' argument the BBC article points to research by the CSIRO. For the 'con' argument they quote David Packham of Monash university, who is not alone in thinking '...excluding prescribed burning and fuel management has led to the highest fuel concentrations we have ever had...' However, the DSE's 2008 annual report states; '[The DSE] achieved a planned burning program of more than 156,000 hectares, the best result for more than a decade. The planned burning of forest undergrowth is by far the most powerful management tool available...' I drove through Kilmore on the evening of the firestorm, and in my 50 years of living with fire I have never seen a smoke plume anything like it. It was reported to be 15 km high and creating its own lightning. There were also reports of car windscreens and engine blocks melting. So what was it that made such an unusual firestorm possible, and will it happen again?"
The answer is no. ... we had to rely on the 22nd amendment to get the job done.
Despite Al Gore and Michael Moore's best efforts, climate change did not get Bush fired
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
More fundamentally, no one drought can be directly attributed to global warming, just as the current cold winter in NA can be considered as casting doubt on global warming.
Over time, global warming may make droughts such as the one that exacerbated the current AU fire situation more common. During the change, the vegetation left over from the wetter period before global warming will result in some spectacular fires, but it will only be in hindsight that we can say fires were a result of the change.
Some years ago, Fine Homebuilding did an article about houses that did and did not survive wildfires in California. The houses that survived had certain characteristics. They were clad with non-burning material like stucco. They had metal or tile roofs. They didn't catch heat under the eaves. They didn't have trees near the house. The plantings they did have mattered. There was one kind of ground cover that was full of water and that would burst if heated, releasing the water and cooling the fire.
The Australian houses I have seen (in pictures, I haven't been there) had almost none of the characteristics of the houses that survived the California fires. So, my question is; if you live in a country that has bush fires, why don't you build your houses to accommodate that fact?
The ever increasing severity of wildfires in Australia, North America, and elsewhere have nothing to do with any hypothetical climate change. It has everything to do with honest to Cowboy Neal human intervention.
Every year, dry areas with lots of vegetation catch fire. This is natural. Every year, humans that are stupid enough to build flammable houses in fire prone areas fight the fires and put them out. This is not natural. If the fire was let to burn out on its own, the thick and highly flammable undergrowth would turn into fertilizer for the larger, healthier, and more fire resistant plants that have historically survived such wildfires. Unfortunately, because society likes to coddle the retards that build in fire prone areas, the undergrowth survives year after year and becomes thicker and thicker. Then when the conditions are especially ripe, like during a drought and wind storm, the brush that had been saved for all those years suddenly goes up and creates a massive fire with the fury of all the years that human intervention prevented nature from taking care of the problem. Lo and behold, the massive super fire is much more destructive than the natural fires would have been. Good job.
Flood prone areas with human settlement have the same problem. Levees prevent the natural yearly floods and deprive the land of the silt deposits that would have normally been left after the flood plains have lived up to their name. This causes the land to over time sink and become less fertile, and then when the levees fail OH MY GOD BUILD AN ARK THIS IS THE WORST FLOOD EVAR!!!1
tl;dr climate isn't the problem, retards fighting nature is
David Packham is our foremost expert in this area, he "wrote the book".
It is clear that when you let 35-50 tonnes of fuel build up per hectare by not backburning then you will get these sized fires.
We have had similar fires in the 1850s, 1870s, 1930s, 1980s. The common factor is the amount of fuel ready to be burnt.
Shouldn't Climate Change have actually reduced fuel load by killing the trees?
It has a lot to do with the fact that the Government departments failed to conduct the necessary backburning.
There will always be arsonists, lightning strikes and stray cigarettes. We can't stop ignition. We CAN reduce the amount of fuel available to a bushfire. Climate change has nothing to do with proper back burning.
let's just wait for the findings of the Royal Commission before debating the merits of global warming vs green policy vs urban sprawl. The scale and ferocity of the firestorm has devestated entire communities. The sooner politics are removed from the debate the sooner the answers may be found. Neither side of the debate is immune from point scoring or spin. The fact remains that the indigenous Australians have used seasonal burning as a land mangement practise for thousands of years.The foolish guidelines allowing people to build combustable homes within heavily wooded areas without sensible conditions has led to the worst loss of life,both human & animal in the recorded history of the continent.To say the cause of this tradgedy is global warming is stupid
"Fires like this are normal."
This is incorrect, fire is normal but this one was not (regardless of the death and destruction). There is a metric called the Fire Danger Index that is used to issue warnings and declare total fire ban days, it is calibrated on the 1939 fires having an index of 100, IIRC the ash wednesday fires that I also witnessed had an index of 70-120. The abnormal conditions for this fire saw the index in the unheard of range of 150-200.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Your post ignores:
1. Science
"the vegetation left over from the wetter period before global warming will result in some spectacular fires"
Much of the bush in the area (indeed the entire state) has been burnt several times since our last "wet period" over a decade ago. In the summer of 2006-2007 Melbourne was blanketed in smoke for two months where as the normal situation might see smoke for a week or two.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Climate change hasn't affected bushfire occurrences significantly in any way. This is all speculation and from a very unscientific standpoint as far as I can tell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfire#Significant_bushfires
Notice where many of these fires occur...Australia. And the documented dates go back to 1851. Climate change has nothing to do with anything, a bushfire is longstanding and naturally occurring event, and has been observed that way for 150 years on record.
Where is the data that shows that fires have occurred more often and burn longer and stronger AND the reason so is climate change and not the fact that suburban sprawl introduces woodland areas to power lines, lit cigarettes as litter, and other human fire related causes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_wildfire
There is the same issue with wildfires occurring in California. And an even bigger threat or cause of wildfires than global climate change is still lit cigarettes being discarded in woodland areas. More on that later.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2327145120071023
Here's a short article from Reuters discussing some basic wildfire facts in California.
* During Santa Ana conditions, fires can be easily ignited by nature, in the case of lightning, or by humans. Some are arson, while others can be sparked by machinery operated near dry brush, campfires or carelessly tossed cigarettes. Downed power lines also pose a fire hazard. Once the wildfires are whipped by the winds, they spread quickly and are extremely dangerous and difficult to fight.
* "Fire Season" officially begins in early summer and lasts through October, though officials say that as the state suffers through cyclical drought conditions, they consider the season to be almost year-round in Southern California.
http://ca.prweb.com/releases/20061010/6/prweb393120.htm
In September 2002, a wildfire that scorched 247 acres on the Camp Pendleton, California base was started by a cigarette butt tossed by a passing motorist.
In January 2001, a motorist driving along Interstate 8 in San Diego County flicked a cigarette butt onto the center median, sparking a fire that burned more than 10,000 acres, destroyed 16 homes and charred 64 vehicles.
http://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/40452047.html
In Texas, people cause 95 percent of wildfires. The Texas Forest Service says residents should not engage in activities, such as throwing out lit cigarettes, welding and burning debris, that could lead to an accidental wildfire start.
So we are causing a vast amount of wildfires. In some places even 95 percent.
Maybe climate change plays a large role in bushfires, but I need way more evidence to convince me that it's not people being careless with litter, downed power lines, or household electrical fires, etc. causing the majority of these fires.
We wait until its too late to act.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
We have - guess what the results are: the ones you ignore.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
2. Oil is formed by compressing organic material for a long long time. This means that, prior to life, this CO2 was already in the atmosphere. Meaning, life formed under conditions of higher CO2!!!
Confusing wording, but there is bit of accurate information in it. Much of the world's petroleum is believed to have been formed during periods that were warmer than now, with higher levels of C02, perhaps as much as 2-3x higher or more. While possibly a paradise for some kinds of plants and algae, it should be mentioned that such periods were also accompanied by Anoxic Events and enormous waves of mass extinctions.
Oh, y'all know there's no such thing as global warming. The bible says so.
It's about time y'all stop believing in that junk science and realize that inteligent design is how God made us.
I know this because the nice young man on AM560 said so, and he's got an associates degree in divinity with minors in atmospheric science and marketing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
1. Water vapor levels aren't being artificially increased.
2. The CO2 absorbed by that organic material has been sequestered for millions of years. The climate required for our lovely little civilisation began a few thousand years ago and depends upon that sequestration.
3. Global temperatures are easily tracked back via examination of ice cores and other scientific methods, back long before thermometers and writing with which to record any observations made.
4. Global warming begets climate change, so functionally they are one and the same. Close observation of past events allows prediction of future events.
5. You have no clue and blindly parrot propaganda without consideration of facts or logic.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Nope, you can't
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
Use the LHC to create a black hole to suck all the heat out of the planet and thus prevent climate change!
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
I think one of the primary issues is we haven't let native Australian's burn the bush the way they always have in the cooler months of the year (say around May or June). I remember seeing something about this on the ABC that because the burning was being done in those cooler months the intensity of the fires were greatly reduced and the most volatile fuel was burnt.
This also had the effect of leaving the less volatile fuel in the ground, so the soil had a higher carbon content and was less prone to bushfires. Ironically, the Aborigines in question were being paid by a power company to do the burning because it offset the power plants carbon emissions.
The reality of Australia's management of the land is we have a lot to learn from Native Australian's, and that's a humility that goes beyond just saying 'Sorry'. Until we grasp that, as a nation, we will have more of these bushfires.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You entirely miss the point because you ask the wrong questions. It is not about testing climate change. During the Cuban Missile Crisis they hypothesized that if one country launched an nuke, we'd all launch them and it would be the end for us all. That was untestable, but we avoided it anyway on far less testable science than we have today to suggest that climate change is occurring and will alter life on this planet. If the sum of humanity's knowledge suggests that under a certain situation (launching a nuke, or business as usual carbon emissions) something bad has a probability very close to 1 of occurring, it is probably best to avoid it.
Science is frequently about using proxies and models to test whether something will occur without actually having to perform an experiment (which may be impossible). This type of science has been regularly used for climate change. So let's lay out the basics really quickly:
So, science hasn't given up on climate change yet. It's not as if they are saying "there, we've proved it, now we only need to respond." No, scientists are providing as much evidence as possible to help us understand just how much this will or will not affect us.
If they haven't given up on climate change yet, why have you? While you sit there convinced that it's not occurring, we continue to blindly provide an input (carbon) into an extremely dangerous system (climate). All of the knowledge we have says that there is an extremely high probability that doing so will result in extreme shifts and war, famine, drought, etc - and you want to wait for a directly testable hypothesis? Goodness.
And in the meantime while the plant might be being destroyed?
Water it and stop the cat from eating its leaves.
No it hasn't. That period includes The Little Ice Age, which, among other things, froze out the Viking colony on the West Coast of Greenland as well making it impossible to grow grapes for wine in England. If you're basing your post on the Hockey Stick Graph, you need to be told that it's been repeatedly demonstrated to be an artifact of badly handled data, and thoroughly debunked.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Climate change isn't the theory. It is the effect. The theory is that greenhouse gases raise the temperature of the atmosphere of a planet. This has been well tested with small scale experiments and large scale observations (such as observing the atmospheric composition and temperatures of Mars and Venus). There are a lot of details that go into climate change, but the general idea is very common sense:
Step 1: Shine some light in the visible spectrum on an object through a gas that doesn't absorb a huge amount of energy at most of those wavelengths (for example, from any random object that you might see that has a 5780 K blackbody temperature).
Step 2: Choose an appropriate gas (like CO2 or methane) that will absorb a lot of energy from the blackbody emissions of that object (Stefan's Law).
Step 3: Watch the temperature of that gas rise.
Do you get the gist? It isn't rocket science. If you add a shitload of CO2 to the atmosphere, the temperature of the surface of the planet is going to rise.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
That may contribute a small amount, but the main cause is ...whales!
Since we stopped hunting them(for the most part), they have been increasing in numbers.
When you have more whales, you have more whale breath- great clouds of steam!!
Cow farts? Bah! Whale farts make Neptune tremble and weep!
And don't get me started on rabbits...
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
There are different ways of acting.
Stopping dumping tons of crap into the atmosphere is unlikely to make things worse. Now trying to fix things by releasing some other chemical to try to balance the problem could backfire.
The first is like "Shouldn't we understand the complete ecosystem of the lake before we stop using it as a garbage dump?". It's generally unnecessary to wait to have a 100% complete understanding. Maybe the fish are dying for some other reason, but stopping dumping junk is unlikely to make things get any worse.
The second is more like "The lake seems too acid, maybe we should compensate by dumping several tons of base to neutralize". Now this kind of solution will require a complete understanding, lest it turns out that wasn't the problem, and things become even worse than before.
You have been misinformed:
1. This is simple high school science. Water vapour in the atmosphere is at it's "satuartion point" and is totally dependent on pressure and temprature, this is why you get dew drops forming in the desert overnight. Any amount of water vapour you pump into the atmosphere will fall out as liquid within days.
2. Coal is the biggest contributor to GHG, the carbon locked up in coal, oil, etc was never present in the atmosphere all at the same time (unless you want to go back before multi-cellular life appeared).
3. Opinion that is not supported by fact or mathematics.
4. The term "climate change" was introduced by skeptics who pointed out that the term "global warming" could be construed as biased.
If you would like to post a link that backs you up we would all be interested, as it stands you are simply trolling by parroting psuedo-skeptical talking points.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
...just regurgitate what famous people tell you. Like how to "save" the ice caps.
If you really, really wanted to save the polar ice caps, you'd create a time machine and travel back..say, 19,000 years ago. Back when the polar ice cap extended down into what is modern day Illinois.
Which predates SUVs and industrialization by around...19,000 years or so.
That is one of the global warming metrics, right? Save the shrinking polar ice cap, right? You'd need to go back to a time when you can't blame humans. Even then, you'd have to go back yet again to the previous ice age, or any of the numerous ice ages.
In order to understand that simple scientific concept, you'd to do more than regurgitate Al Gore and co.
I guess that you fail to consider that the "shitload" of CO2 (from all sources, including man-made) account for a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So if 0.5% constitutes a "shitload", what would you call the other 99.5%?
And since you brought up observations of Mars and Venus, perhaps you can explain how the recent warming trend has also been detected on Mars? That would lead the cause of warming to be something the planets have in common - the Sun. Empirical measurements show solar output higher, so wouldn't you think that the most likely explanation would be the most logical one, rather than simple-minded "explanations" of processes that we don't nearly understand?
First, the Earth's atmosphere consists of about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon, and trace other gases (including water of about 0.5% and CO2 of about 0.05%). Nitrogen is not a greenhouse gas, oxygen is not a greenhouse gas, and argon is not a greenhouse gas. Thus, of the 32 K greenhouse effect, CO2 plays a very important role. Water is the dominant greenhouse gas, but it primarily serves to amplify the effect of other greenhouse gases since warmer air can hold more water. Additionally, water isn't as significant as it may appear (having a tenfold higher concentration than CO2) because it will precipitate out at colder elevations. Thus, CO2 and methane are the primary greenhouse gases that are really driving the greenhouse effect (with their effect amplified by the water vapour).
Second, the possible effects of a slight increase in solar intensity have been noted. They are too small to account for the increase in atmospheric temperature if they exist. And even the largest potential effect could only account for about a quarter of the warming that has been observed.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
We restrict our energy sources so tightly that we cannot continue to feed our growing population and starve to death
How would driving smaller cars and using energy more efficiently cause people to starve?
By the Bushfire CRC and the CSIRO:
http://www.bushfirecrc.com/research/downloads/climate-institute-report-september-2007.pdf
From the concluding remarks:
"In this study, the potential impact of climate change on southeast Australia is estimated. Simulations from two CSIRO climate models using two greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions scenarios are combined with historical weather observations to assess the changes to fire weather expected by 2020 and 2050. In general, fire weather conditions are expected to worsen. ...
The number of "extreme" fire danger days generally increases 5-25% for the low scenarios and 15-65% for the high scenarios. By 2050, the increases are generally 10-50% in the low scenarios and 100-300% for the high scenarios. The seasons are likely to become longer, starting
earlier in the year.
These results are placed in the context of the current climate and its tendencies. During the last several years in southeast Australia, including the 2006-07 season, particularly severe fire weather conditions have been observed. In many cases, the conditions far exceed the projections in the high scenarios of 2050. Are the models (or our methodology) too conservative or is some other factor at work?"
Add to this, the fact that the place is tinder dry precisely because of the preceding 12 years of extreme drought AND the cutbacks to brush clearing and back-burning ("green" policies are an excuse for councils and state governments spending less $$$ - just like every other service they've cut), and you've got the "perfect (fire) storm" conditions we had on Black Saturday.
Given that climate change isn't going away, and that all the models indicate SE Australia will get drier and hotter, and given that governments aren't going to be increasing spending in this area any time soon (OK - maybe they'll be shamed into doing something for a couple of years before the new programmes get cut back again), it is HIGHLY LIKELY that this sort of thing will become a frequent occurrence (say every 2-3 years somewhere in SA, VIC, NSW).
By the way, NASA have a fantastic pic showing how anomalous the heatwave leading up to Black Saturday was against recent summer averages:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36900
Of course, while we were burning down south, the banana benders up north were setting new records for floods.
I was working under the assumption that the GP was indicating that we were suggested to step back into the stone age. That would be the entire population of earth, without modern technology to assist us. Really, I think the farthest back we would go would be to agrarian society, but that would have significant drawbacks.
Say something cataclysmic happened tonight, and in the morning there was no power grid, no city water, no supply chains for food, fuel, etc. I'll focus on only the United States, because I am more familiar with it, and finding numbers relating to it.
According to the 2000 US census, just about 226 million people lived in 3,629 population centers that could be considered "Urban". That's just over 79% of the US population.
Assuming these people had exactly what they started out with before they went to bed, they typically would have 0 to 14 days of food supply on hand, and assuming the use of any water supplies available (i.e., toilet tank water, bottled water, etc), they may have a 3 to 4 day supply of water. Right now, if there is sufficient snow on the ground, some people may be smart and gather all the fresh fallen snow that they can. Virtually no one has any provisions for collecting rain water for drinking or cooking use.
In up to 11 days, people will begin dying of dehydration. In up to 28 days, mass starvation would take effect. Sometime between day 1 and day 10, people will begin using force to horde supplies from weaker people.
Some people will realize the futility of remaining in an urban area, and attempt to leave. In a best case scenario, starting with a fully fueled vehicle, and ideal cruising conditions, passenger vehicles can travel 400 miles. That's a best case. In reality, it won't be just one person saying "we have to get out of here", it will be hundreds of thousands. One accident, vehicle running out of fuel, or mechanical failure, and all vehicles behind them will come to a stop.
The 21% living in "Rural" areas may have a better chance. If (IF) they are lucky, they have a fresh water supply that does not depend on electricity. Most rural homes I've seen are supplied with water from electric pumps. If they are lucky, they have a good on-hand food supply. If they are lucky, they already have a food crop that can be harvested on a regular basis.
In reality, the numbers dwindle. Less than 1% of the 79% of the urbanites will be lucky enough to get to somewhere survivable, but they won't be alone. Less than 25% of the 21% rural dwellers will have the necessities on hand for continued survival without our modern infrastructures. i.e., how do you plow a field without a tractor (no fuel). How do you trade bare essentials with your neighbors who you can't reach without a car (no fuel).
But, if the 285 million people in the United States did manage to disperse from the urban centers, to areas that could sustain them temporary for food, water, and shelter, and they managed to have or improvise hand tools to cut down trees, make fire for warmth and cooking, it would be absolutely disastrous for the environment.
This is an easy game to play. Go into your garage and shut off the main breaker (or pull the main fuse in older homes). Shut off the water and gas mains. Take all the money out of your wallet, and your credit cards, and stick them in an envelope somewhere safe that you won't touch them. Now, survive for 6 months.
In reality, if we stepped back to the "stone age" tonight, only small pockets of humanity would survive, and they would be the rural dwellers who live in fresh water rivers, have farms, and can live off the land. Everyone else will die.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Climate hange cannot destroy the planet, the life on it, or even the human race. It can - and very likely will - simply make things extremely uncomfortable (= billions die) for us, as growth zones of various plants change and weather patterns become chaotic for the duration of the change.
However, those who most profit from not cutting fossil fuel consumption will be able to use those profits to shield themselves from the consequences, so resistance is useless.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The real issue is that there is currently no unambiguous method of measuring the global temperature
No, the real problem is that "global temperature" isn't a meaningful thermodynamic quantity. Global atmospheric heat content is, but no one has a clue what that is because we need to know both temperature and humidity (ie, both wet and dry bulb temperatures) to determine it.
However, global ocean heat content appears to be measurable, and appears to be rising.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.