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Studies: Wildfires Worse Due To Global Warming
An anonymous reader writes "According to scientists we can look forward to more devastating wildfires like the ones scorching Southern California because of global warming. "The fires in California and here in Arizona are a clear example of what happens as the Earth warms, particularly as the West warms, and the warming caused by humans is making fire season longer and longer with each decade," said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck. "It's certainly an example of what we'll see more of in the future.""
Global Warming is the nickname of the guy who started the fires.
Any time someone says "look how bad winter was" they are (rightfully) chided for treating a variation in weather as being "climate".
Well who does not remember years and years of past California wildfires. Guess what, drought happens. You can't declare one "climate change" just because it's scary.
And you can't even see that climate change makes drought more likely without way more data than we have. A warmer climate could mean some areas are dryer, others wetter. But actually overall it would mean more moisture in the system, not less...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We would like to give our heartiest thanks to the politicians that have made it illegal to clear under-brush or to provide any reasonable wildfire suppression activities.
No brain, no pain.
First of all, it's "climate change" now and not "global warming"... some spots are having much cooler temperatures instead.
Secondly, droughts happen. The history of California is the history of water politics mainly because most of SoCal is a semi-arid desert. San Diego in particular has a giant desert separating us from the rest of the country -- even LA.
Thirdly, unless you've just moved to San Diego, you're quite aware of the 2003 and 2007 fires. These were (also) not the result of global warming.
Fourthly, there's good reason to believe that at least some of the ones this week were started by (d-bag) arsonists.
It's over-broad statements like this from "scientists" that give credence to the assertion that climate scientists are thinking with the social policy side of their brains instead of the factual side. /signed
Native San Diegan; MRC/former CERT member; non-scientist.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Make the ice caps melt faster, flood San Diego to put the fires out!
Here is the list.
Every year there are devastating fires somewhere. But we have to look at the acreage and number of fires.
Last year was a light fire year. About 20% lighter than the 10 year average.
So far this year, we are about 15% behind the 10 year average in the number of wildland fires. And we are about 50% behind in the number of acres burned.
http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/n...
Honestly, I still expect overall the world's climate will be getting wetter with global warming. There might be some regions that will get drier, but warmer oceans mean more evaporation. Warmer temperatures mean the air can hold more moisture resulting in higher humidity. Eventually that higher humidity has to result in more rainfall somewhere. But even if higher humidity doesn't result in rain, higher humidity does result in less aggressive fire behavior.
I am not a climate scientist. I have a lot of people scoff at me when I say this, but they never explain how I am wrong. I can read the projections but the projections never seem to include the increased levels of ocean evaporation that I expect.
First off, I am *not* a climate change denier.
That said, wildfires are a very complicated topic and man is responsible for their increased size and devastation. However the man made activity that has a huge impact here is fire fighting. This has been known for many decades. The problem is that the natural cycle of fires leads to smaller fires. These smaller fires prevent fuel from accumulating and they provide a patchwork of natural firebreaks to a degree. Our habit of stomping out every single fire as it starts just leads to more and more fuel accumulating over larger and larger areas. The result is the larger and more devastating fires.
Preventing the natural burn cycle sets us up for larger fires. We need to be more strategic about our fire fighting in rural and wilderness settings.
You're right. Here's a photo of one:
http://www.constantinereport.c...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Very true and very few scientists would ever suggest that.
What it typically means you devote your life to pursuing the truth of some small aspect of the universe and study, test and discuss the various theories surrounding this area.This means that you can be considered an expert on the subject.
The "others" are a bunch of people who pull opinions out of their arse at best or purposely malign the truth for their own ends at worst.
For you to say such things betrays a level of ignorance that is truly awesome to behold - assuming you are not just trolling for the sake of it which just makes you a common garden variety douche bag. Regardless of your own insignificant thoughts and motivations the thought process you describe appears to be a relatively common one.
But fear not, the reasons for your ignorance and/or troll-like behaviour is something studied, tested and discussed in the field of psychology by scientists!
Wow first four comments are global warming deniers and all post within six minutes. Earn that pay, boys!
Sorry, AC. But the deniers of science here are those who deny the effect of fire suppression policies and land management policies. Sometimes it really is the politics.
The huge factors here are (1) fire suppression policies not allowing natural burn cycles to occur, fuel unnaturally accumulates and it does so over larger areas and (2) land management where people are allowed to build in fire prone areas but not allowed to clear brush to a "safe" distance. The result is larger fires and fires that are a high risk to homes.
CO2 is only one of many man made problems and it is not always the leading contributor.
Let's make a deal, global warming (or climate change, or whatever the buzzword of the week) deniers: You can keep your SUVs, your ACs turned to 60 degrees and all your other toys. And once the waters rise you drown like good old idiots and don't try to climb up on my mountains.
Deal?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As someone that has been in regions where these wildfires have happened, I can tell you it is actually bad forest management.
Here's the thing. In nature, forests burn on occasion. Always have. Its part of the natural process. Some species either actively encourage the fires or rely upon the fires as part of their life cycle.
Okay, now that it is established that if left alone the forests will occasionally burn... what happens if you don't cut trees down and cut brush back on occasion and instead just leave the whole thing to take care of itself.
It burns.
I live in California and that has been the cause of most of our wild fires. We used to have forest management to the extent that we would subcontract logging companies to go through the forests and thin them out a bit so there was room for new growth and the whole forest didn't go up like a roman candle every 10-30 years (depends on the plant species and local climate).
Well, that was stopped and the logging companies aren't allowed to operate in our forests anymore because they're not environmentally friendly.
Fine... you're now putting nature in charge. And nature is going to burn that fucker down on its own schedule.
Global warming might have something to do with this sort of thing but it is NOT what is causing the vast majority of forest fires in the US. They are caused by moronic forest management that is itself guided by crystal rubbing mystics that will say out of one side of their mouth that the environment is harmed by direct human management and then say out of the other side that nature's natural processes are all our fault.
These people are idiots.
And just to preempt the first fucktard that responds to this post saying I have his misguided asshattery wrong... I don't. I live here. I've seen this happen over years. I saw was we were doing before. I saw what you did, I watched the forest prime itself like a coiling spring, I saw the fires, I watched the clean up, and I've been listening to you same slack-jawed halfwits ever since point fingers at anyone besides yourselves.
Do the Earth a favor and listen more and talk less.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
In case it wasn't clear, wildfires are predominantly caused by accumulation of a sufficiently large amount of sufficiently dry combustible material. Once it's there, it will inevitably catch fire one day or another, arson or not. And climate change has the potential to modulate that "sufficiently dry" attribute. It is equally true that humanity is actively modulating the "sufficiently large amount" attribute (for example by suppressing small undergrowth fires and by not cutting the undergrowth that would otherwise be removed by these fires), which doesn't make things any better. But arson has relatively little to do with it.
On the other hand, putting human beings (specifically, the shareholders of your company) ahead of entire eco-systems makes you a suicidal+ecocidal idiot and a nihilistic life-hater; kind of a super-villain.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I agree with your overall sentiment. In many cases it is beyond a joke and misguided attempts to help the environment often hurt it, as is the case with banning the disturbance of brush around homes and communities.
While you are correct that the banning of DDT was at the time unfounded scientifically--the egg shells seemed to be thinning that year generally and may not have had anything to do with DDT, but alas it was never really researched. However, had DDT continued to be used on the scale that it was, modern research has showed that mosquitoes would have adapted and become resistant in just a couple of years, ending the use of DDT anyway. Put in another way, banning DDT did *not* directly lead to the deaths of millions of people. Perhaps banning DDT was even a benefit, because now it is used by some countries, on a much smaller scale, to a good effect in controlling malaria.
First of all, it's "climate change" now and not "global warming"... some spots are having much cooler temperatures instead.
It's still global warming, in spite of republican efforts to relabel it climate change. Stop prevaricating.
Secondly, droughts happen.
Red herring. That's totally orthogonal to this point. Stop prevaricating. Also, the current drought is unusual even in Northern California, where the water comes from. You didn't even bother to mention that, most likely because it's inconvenient to your point. Stop prevaricating.
unless you've just moved to San Diego, you're quite aware of the 2003 and 2007 fires. These were (also) not the result of global warming.
This is about global warming making wildfires more likely and worse, not about global warming making wildfires possible. Stop prevaricating.
Fourthly, there's good reason to believe that at least some of the ones this week were started by (d-bag) arsonists.
See last point. Stop prevaricating.
It's over-broad statements like this from "scientists" that give credence to the assertion that climate scientists are thinking with the social policy side of their brains instead of the factual side.
No, it's stupid shit like you just posted that lets stupid people feel smug about stupid decisions even though they have nothing to be smug about.
/signed
Native San Diegan; MRC/former CERT member; non-scientist.
I personally am in favor of the scientific process. You might consider accepting it as well.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When you throw out bullshit like that DDT was banned for treating malaria mosquitoes why should we listen to you and the fact that by spreading the bullshit that DDT was banned for malaria really makes you wonder about the education of the moderators.
Look it up, DDT was not banned for malaria, it just became less useful as the mosquitoes were evolving to like DDT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
... according to the article there has been a three-decade pattern of fires getting worse in the West:
And the reason for that is well known, and has nothing to do with global warming.
It is caused by environmentalist interference in land management. The major factors are;
- Fuel load: Logging is stopped, or delayed for decades by lawsuits, even of diseased and fallen trees, which are left to rot. Brush clearing, deemed "unnatural", is also stopped. LOTS of little trees and weeds grow up between the big trees. When a fire finally starts, it soreads rapidly and burns big and hot, and is very hard to control. The hot burning sterillizes the ground, killing many types of seeds that would otherwise have fueled a post-fire recovery.
- Access restriction: Loggers and other visitors to the area are the main source of reports of fires when they're still tiny. With logging stopped and most recreational uses banned the woods are essentially deserted. A fire that would have been spotted in tens of minutes might have as much as days to grow before it is discovered. Once it IS discovered, the lack of roads and lack of clearng of those paths still there impedes fire-fighting: Regular equipment, or even four-wheel-drive SUV-based, fire equipment can't access much of the area, and must leave those areas it can access early, to avoid being trapped.
I think it's ludicrous that the blame for the anthropogenic forest fire severity increase is being deflected from the policies and policy-makers that caused it and simultaneously being used as additional "evidence" for global warming. It's tactics like this that cause people to distrust global warming claims.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Heh, now you accuse me of not providing links to support the claims I didn't make :-)
But if you like. A couple of studies (of many) predicting increases in wildfires due to climate change:
* Gonzalez et al 2010: Global patterns in the vulnerability of ecosystems to vegetation shifts due to climate change
* Moritz et al 2012: Climate change and disruptions to global fire activity
And a study (one of many) showing that climate is the dominant factor in the size of the wildfires we've been seeing:
* Littell et al 2009 Climate and wildfire area burned in western US ecoprovinces:
We demonstrate that wildfire area burned (WFAB) in the American West was controlled by climate during the 20th century (1916-2003)....For 1977-2003, a few climate variables explain 33-87% (mean = 64%) of WFAB, indicating strong linkages between climate and area burned.
By contrast, Mr Watts' "facts" are also nothing more than unsubstantiated declarations and assumptions, just like yours. A few random examples from your link:
* "This [CO2] percentage increase means nothing. Human CO2 emissions didn’t begin to rise significantly until after 1945": Keyword is 'significantly' - he claims the rise is not significant, but provides no justifications for this assumption, other than that the atmospheric percentage is "about as close to nothing as you can get" (it's a really small-looking number). No citations given.
* "...there is no way that this miniscule amount [of atmospheric CO2] can have any significant effect on climate." Another unsubstantiated declaration in his "facts" list. No citations given for this claim.
* "CO2 also lags short-term warming [historical graph] showing that warming causes rise in CO2, not the other way around if CO2 was the cause." - Incorrectly assumes that CO2 must either be a cause or an effect, but could never be both. No citations given for this "fact", either.
* "...global climate marches in lock step with sun spots, length of the sun spot cycle, and intensity of the solar magnetic field... total solar insolation (TSI) correlates very well with climate". Once more, he just claims this as a fact, with (wait for it) no citations given.
* "HadCRUT4 temperature curve showing that 56% of the warming since 1895 occurred prior to 1945"... according to his arbitrarily-drawn red lines. The HadCRUT4 temperature graph may well be accurate, but (of course) he provides no citation for any peer-reviewed source for his claimed "56% of warming" cut-off point (looks to me like the red line that claims to show this is just drawn to the peak of the biggest short-term fluctuation he can find, without regard to averages or trends or anything).
I could easily go on, but I have work to do. If Watts' unbacked assertions are what you consider "facts", then it's no wonder you usually don't bother to link to them.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian.
Please don't forget to prepare places for all your new neighbours from Bangladesh, West Africa, Vietnam and so on.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Here are several papers from just one scientist that counter the concept of human-induced climate change. And they were published as well. Now how accurate is that "0% of scholarly papers" claim? Especially in light of the fact that Dr. Easterbrook's climate model (which does NOT base itself on CO2) accurately matches the past - AND predicted the current 17 year pause in warming, something none of the IPCC CO2-based models accomplished.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
where do i sign up for this paid to post thing, Ive been posting for free for years!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's not environmentalists who don't want the burns. Environmentalists (their party affiliation doesn't matter) know that it's beneficial to have controlled burnings. The people who do complain are the land owners, who have acres of prime real estate perched on expensive hills. At least get your facts straight. You railing on environmentalists is hilarious in itself, but highlights a disconcerting pattern - that there are more people like you out there who will gladly and easily substitute their idea of reality for that which they perceive, where they can cleanly paint things in black and white, "them vs. us", team mentality, twisting their perception of the world and the facts it contains simply to give their team a perceived advantage, even though everyone knows their house of cards will come tumbling down at some point.
Grow up. Please. Do the world a favor - you are embarrassing yourself.
Translation: "I am scientifically illiterate - I get my scientific facts from newspapers and TV shows. I don't bother to research the relevant papers, and assume that things are either true or false based on who's telling me, rather than the content of their arguments. I have given up thinking, because it's scary, difficult, and challenges my perceptions of reality which keep me happy."