California Wildfires Are Five Times Bigger Than They Used To Be - Slashdot
source link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/06/13/1828246/california-wildfires-are-five-times-bigger-than-they-used-to-be
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California Wildfires Are Five Times Bigger Than They Used To Be
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Marco Turco, a climate researcher at the University of Murcia in Spain, and colleagues designed the study to try to identify how much of the increase in the burned area of California fires was due to climate change, and how much to natural variability. They conducted a statistical analysis of temperature and forest-fire data for California summers in the period 1971 to 2021. They then drew on modeling that shows how the last several decades might have evolved without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The result: Burned area grew 172% more than it would have without climate change. Manmade effects began to overwhelm what would be expected without greenhouse gas pollution after 2001, the researchers concluded.
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That should reduce forest fire smoke in the summer:)
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Send in all those unemployed bums with rakes to clear out the leaf litter, just like in Finland. Yeah, that'll work. Guaranteed!
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No leaf litter from Douglas Fir and Ponderosa Pine. Pine needles aren't the hazard. They just smolder if they are on fire.
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Just in case someone actually thinks we have anyone using "rakes to clear out the leaf litter" in forests here in Finland.... we don't. Never heard of it. It's one more thing Trump lied about just because no-one can check these things, right? https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
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Not raking them. -Don
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Please step up and volunteer to "rake" forest floors in CA, UT, CO, NV, OR and when you are done feel free to head up to Canada to help them do the same since you believe Dear Leader and his solution.;)
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NBC News, a Left-leaning outlet, says it is the liberal politicians who are to blame. Specifically, their lack of forest husbandry in the name of 'natural' forests.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-led-choked-forests-now-it-s-time-clear-n1243599
Also nobody believes your 'fellow republicans' line. "Hello, fellow teenagers! What's hip, jive turkeys?"-
That same article showed we shifted away from controlled burns in 1910, over 110 years ago. And in the 20th century California was a purple state, voting for Republican presidents in 60% of elections. This wasn't left leaning policies, it was simply a shift in policy by the US Forest Service which shouldn't have happened.
And of the 50% increase in wild fires, only 32% of that is being attributed to global warming. The other 18% has other causes, likely including a lack of controlled burns. Considering we haven't been doing controlled burns for 110 years and increased wildfires didn't start to accelerate until global temperatures began to increase significantly in the 80's, it would be silly to think the lack of controlled burns is the primary driver of increased wildfires.
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Controlled burns mostly affected red counties in CA, and they lobbied heavily to squelch them.
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The Australians have a similar problem.
Their forests (called bush, but the idea is the same) literally evolved to survive regular fires, and several of their large tree species need fire to reproduce, but because people have built houses in the bush they demand the fires are put out, instead of being left to burn, with the resulting fire becoming larger and deadlier.
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I get that the overton window is way, way out of whack, but there's nothing "left" about NBC. You can call them left when they get behind something as simple as a universal healthcare system...
As for controlled burns, it's about money. The fires are happening on Federal Land. 1/2 of the political establishment keeps threatening to destroy the entire global economy via debt ceiling negotiations if they don't get spending cuts and they refuse to touch the military budget, even when Generals are saying "en
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Get sober. Get off the drugs.
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You forgot: Tree-hugging hippies.
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I'll just take a branch off an unburned tree, march it into the chamber, hold it up and declare wildfires to be a hoax.
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Yep. Something like that. I am sure a lot of morons would cheer you on and deeply _believe_ you to be right. Because belief changes the world. Right? Right?
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I mean, the right wing bubble has been fined at least $1.7 Billion for lying to its viewers (so far)... and people in the bubble still believe them. And those people vote. So... yes?
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In some way yes. But votes can actually do very little for big problems.
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If you've ever seen videos of California city council meetings where members of the public are permitted to participate I can assure you that you wouldn't even earn a podium finish for craziest person in the room. You wouldn't be in bad company though so have a pamphlet or newsletter handy because people will ask for a copy.
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Obviously that must be _all_ continued forest mismanagement which is getting worse! Cannot have anything to do with climate change because that obviously does not exist, or if it exists it must be non human-made or of it is human-made somebody else is responsible! China! It must be China! Hence no need for us to change anything and all is well.
Or something like that. Standing on the accelerator while driving towards a cliff and thinking closing your eyes or blaming somebody else will make if all fine.
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Obviously that must be _all_ continued forest mismanagement which is getting worse! Cannot have anything to do with climate change because that obviously does not exist, or if it exists it must be non human-made or of it is human-made somebody else is responsible! China! It must be China! Hence no need for us to change anything and all is well.
The solution is obvious: we need more rakes [google.com].
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Unless you're already dead, it's already happening. And if you're the sociopath you pretend to be, then there's no appealing to someone whose has no sense of empathy or obligation. For those of us who have kids, yeah, having the world fucked up to the maximum possible degree so shareholders can make a bit more profit seems a profoundly idiotic and wicked thing to do.
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Unless you're already dead, it's already happening. And if you're the sociopath you pretend to be, then there's no appealing to someone whose has no sense of empathy or obligation. For those of us who have kids, yeah, having the world fucked up to the maximum possible degree so shareholders can make a bit more profit seems a profoundly idiotic and wicked thing to do.
I'm sorry.
I just don't see these tiny blips in weather as being a trend that will spell the downfall of man or civilization as we know it in
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Make up your mind. Are you a denier (and not just a denier of AGW, but of the properties of CO2 and thermodynamics), or just a heartless bastard? It almost looks like you're justifying a total disregard for humanity with a vague kind of denial, invoking probably the most moronic anti-science talking points (like "weather"). I mean, how intellectually lazy can you be. Just stick with "I don't give a fuck", at least that's a position of some kind. Don't try the pretense of anti-science idiocy, which makes you
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Hey look, an honest republican.
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Hey look, an honest republican.
Nope...not registered to any party.
I'm likely mostly libertarian....I'm middle of the road mostly...slightly liberal on social issues, slightly conservative on fiscal issues.
But then again, I base my terms of liberal and conservative on what they really were only a short couple of decades and before were...not the extreme slides we're seeing today.
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What a psycho thing to think. But you may also be kidding yourself. Nobody knows is death is permanent on an individual level. You may just get reincarnated right into the mess you helped create. Or not. Still, thinking only of yourself is not a healthy state of mind.
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Nobody knows is death is permanent on an individual level. You may just get reincarnated right into the mess you helped create.
Well, if there is reincarnation, since I don't recall any previous life details, I'm guessing in the next one I won't know about this one either...so, I'm gonna have fun.
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That's so fucking selfish. I remember having some sort of epiphany as a young kid (like, 5)... that every other human is like me. Not like me, me, obviously, but that they have emotions, can feel happy, sad, have their own family, their own story, and they live life as intensely as I do.
I will never live someone else's life. I will never truly understand them, whether it's my neighbour, my child, or a random human 100 years from now. But what I know is, they will live through their life. And if there is s-
You figured all that out around 5 years old? Amazing.
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TLDR: Fuck you, I've got mine.
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Are you positive someone didn't set those fires? Seems Canada has a few enemies these days.
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I don't know. Maybe aliens from Alpha Centauri did it.
Does it fucking matter? If climate change is making periods of low precipitation and higher temperatures more prevalent, does it matter whether it's an idiot tossing out a cigarette butt, a lightning struck or evil foreign saboteurs lighting fires? This is literally like missing the (burning) forest for the trees.
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You cannot actually prevent forest fires reliably if the forst can burn. If the conditions are right, the sun and a drop of water may do it. Essentially every forest that can burn well will do it sooner or later. There is a reason trees all have long-optimized strategies to survive forest fires and these are far older than the human capability to set them on fire.
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I did not read the linked-to articles, but I bet they didn't account for arson/accidental fires started by humans & things like failing high-tension lines that cut through the forest.
I believe over half of the fires in Canada are attributed to human-caused fires, not climate change. And sorry to report, but according to Canadian officials they are not seeing an increase in the number of wildfires.
But why should any of those facts stop politicians from claiming the cause is climate change?
Remember, the C
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And I'll ask you what difference does it make? If the conditions have changed so that it some regions, wild fire season is literally half the year, that's the problem. The problem isn't people starting fires, it's that it becomes so dry that gasses from an internal combustion engine can create ignition. So why would you fixate on claims of human-caused fire, when the problem is that regardless of ignition force, forests are far drier and the drought seasons are longer (and in some parts of the world almost
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Until it isn't. And we're surprised that the actual wild fire is far larger?
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Correct, You can have a lot of small fires each year, or a big one each decade or so. The small fire removes leaves and scrub, but the big trees remain largely untouched. The big fires get the big trees burning and destroys all the potential lumber.
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Canada and many western states have so-called "wildfire seasons" each year. There is a normal amount of wildfire activity each year, sometimes the fires are put out quicker than others, sometimes they are not.
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Yes, it "used to be a thing" for thousands of years when native people did it. It was outlawed by the government in 1850. In 1968, after realizing that no new giant sequoias had grown in California’s unburned forests, the National Park Service changed its prescribed fire policy. In 1978, so did the Forest Service. 125,000 acres of wildlands are intentionally burned each year in California. It should be more, but NIMBY homeowners and lumber industry lobbyists fight against it.
Of course, this is all old news and has absolutely nothing to do with recent increases in wildfires which are due to climate change, but anything to distract people from what's really going on right?
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How can you claim this has nothing to do with the increase in wildfires, when the wildfires are larger, and hotter, as time goes on?
How long do you think deadfall trees sit on the forest floor in CA before they rot to a non-combustable state, exactly? From what I've seen, due to the humidity of the region, it's much more than 50 years for a larger tree.
Underbrush grows over time. With burning only 125,000 acres a year, the amount of undergrowth is going to grow... every year, on average. Burning 125,000 acr
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"Increases in wildfires"? What do you mean, the number of fires or the ground the fires burn? Are we really looking at actual increases in the number of wildfires each year, or does the number simply fluctuate around a norm?
And if the issue is the amount of ground that burns up, isn't that a function of the fire suppression techniques employed? (Meaning we don't put the fires out as quickly as we used to, so the fire consumes more acreage?)
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When I started looking at the comment, I knew people would blame it on "not enough preventive fire". I also knew, that like most good slashdotters, most people commenting wouldn't have bothered to read the actual scientific paper.
If they had, they would have seen that the study does in fact include "Nonclimatic factors that have been implicated in changing wildfire characteristics include land management that has facilitated fuel buildup which favors increased burn severity as well as both increased suscept
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Additional quote for the actual paper (you should really read it before commenting):
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We(all the people not just burger people) will reduce co2 emissions when we will start to run out of oil (and it's happening soon) not because we care about others. And it will be very painful for the middle and lower class.
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because the season when it's safe to do those burns keeps getting shorter, on account of all the climate change.
You need to do preventative burns during the wet season or you just start a big 'ole Forest Fire. To be fair there is probably more that could've been done... on the Federal Land. For some reason it's been hard to get funding for preventative action [npr.org] -
California outlaws fire breaks, and forest management. The federal government if prohibited from going on federal land to manage the fire until AFTER the forest is burning down. All the forestry budget gets siphoned over to the aviation division to pay contractors to dump water / retardant. This is BIG money, and things are this way because of the lobbyists and the people who go along with it for political reasons.
The fires are started by lightning and arson.
The forests where always managed by the local
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My dad was an ecologist and was called as an expert witness in multiple cases. In 1971, the US Forest Service adopted a 10-acre control plan for 90% of all fires. By keeping the fires so small, it led to a buildup of fuel, making future fires harder to control. In 1983, fire management policy (used to be fire control policy) expanded to allow the federal agencies to choose how to manage the fire (contain, confine, or control). Under current policy, only 2% of wildfires in USFS jurisdiction required large-scale suppression efforts. The policy is to "suppress wildfires at minimum cost consistent with values at risk while minimizing the impacts from suppression activities” (NPS 1990b). Since the USFS and other agencies are intervening less frequently, naturally more acres burn.
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The study accounted for all of that.
"To further evaluate potential nonstationarity in the climate-fire relationship that can occur due to exogenous determinants, we demonstrated that models built using various subsets of the data, or considering detrended fire and climate data, return statistically indistinguishable regression parameters suggesting a limited influence of nonclimatic factors in modulating climate-fire relationships during the study period."
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Consider me skeptical of these very broad and chicken-little claims. Weather patterns have not changed that much since 1971. Temperatures have not changed that much since 1971. "Climate" has not changed that much.
So something else has to be a factor.
How has land management funding changed in that timeframe? How has land management and underbrush management changed since 1971?
From where I sit (in a different part of the country, with a dry climate and forests which do not burn as readily or as deadly as they did in the 1960s-1990s due to superior land management approaches), this seems like a fairly obvious place to look instead of jumping to "well, it must be climate change!"
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what has changed since 1971 (particularly in CA) is the amount of housing/structures in and around forests. a fire that might have been left to burn itself out back then would now threaten a few mcmansions, so it must be put out immediately.
also, when land is clear-cut, saplings are replanted -- but heaps and gobs of other random brush takes over for a few decades (until the forest canopy develops enough to block out light, choking out the understory). but it's this brush that builds up and creates the tin
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Weather patterns have not changed that much since 1971. Temperatures have not changed that much since 1971. "Climate" has not changed that much.
Why do you think that?
The Western Megadrought [scientificamerican.com] is something very specific, very measurable, and very obviously a contributor to forest fires:
The searing "megadrought" that has gripped the southwest U.S. for more than two decades is the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years. The region hasn't seen a more severe drought since the start of the scientific rec
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The information you posted indicates the drought is cyclical in the region and makes an unsupported claim that climate change itself is making things worse than ever before... it may be worse, but there's no evidence that it's caused by "climate change".
The graph going back to 800 looks suspiciously like historic sun output levels, but may be unrelated. I seem to recall there being drought in Europe in the 1600s as well at roughly the same timeframe.
The second link also contradicts the first pretty blatantl
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Ah, an actual scientist at work I see. Or... Wait, are you just jumping to conclusions without any source, apart from your personal beliefs, and think those are superior to any statistical data that shows otherwise?
Because I know you need something simple to read (seeing how you didn't even bother to look at the scientific paper, otherwise you would have seen that land management changes were taken into account), here it is: https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
Please note that the comic is a few years old already, and th-
Curiously, CA does land management differently than states like WA and SD, and those states have seen a regression in fires during the same drought periods. Interesting...
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If you are serious about having a discussion, please include sources. Otherwise, your claims are nothing more than wishful thinking.
For instance, the simplest of google search shows that you assertion about WA is just false [wikipedia.org] (just look at past year data to get a sense of increase; even though for it to be receivable a statistical analysis would be needed/better).
But we get it. You don't like CA. This is all their fault. Climate change doesn't exist, and has no impact on wildfires. What were those scientists
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You might want to check the end of this handy graphic. https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
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Sounds familiar.
Old farmers in my home town: "it just don't get cold like it used to."
Also old farmers in my home town: "this global warming shit is a liberal conspiracy!"
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People have a very short memory.
https://www.noaa.gov/news/us-had-its-coldest-february-in-more-than-30-years
Guess what? Weather patterns shift over time. This is a known symptom of much bigger factors than AGW. Things like volcanoes which literally blot the sun for periods of time. The large glowing orb that transgresses our sky on the daily. Things like that.
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On the same note, I was quite cold last night, between 3am and 4am. Surely, that's a sign global warming is a hoax.
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A 5-fold increase over 50 years averages to a 38% increase every 10 years. If we are going to have only a 50% increase in the next 27 years, the rate of increase is less than half of that of the past. It's still increasing, but much slower than before. Which is, kinda, good news.
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Increased housing, putting fires out instead of letting them burn, no winter control burns,
But of course, we have a narrative to propagate to get more funding for our next research grant.-
The study accounted for all of that. It turns out none of that stuff has mattered much in the past.
"To further evaluate potential nonstationarity in the climate-fire relationship that can occur due to exogenous determinants, we demonstrated that models built using various subsets of the data, or considering detrended fire and climate data, return statistically indistinguishable regression parameters suggesting a limited influence of nonclimatic factors in modulating climate-fire relationships during the stu
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