California Wild Fires Bad

Spread the love

My only remaining Republican friend, Paul Douglas, provided this information.

Considering the top 20 most destructive California fires from Cal Fire’s database, 6 of those have happened in the last 10 months.

The worse so far is the Tubbs Fire last October, and that was HUGE. Nearly 6,000 structures were burned, 22 people were killed. The sixth on the list is the Carr fire, with just under 1,500 structures burned and six killed as of this writing, but that fire is still burning.

I’ll just add this. There was a moment in time between about 2 and 3 years ago, when it was apparent to me and many others that fires were getting worse. But the data was just coming in. There were studies that stopped their data roughly a year or a year and a half earlier that showed no statistically convincing increase. The delay in data range is normal. You get your data, clean it up, then Reviewer three adds eight months to the publication process, etc. so most studies are one or maybe two years late. Anyway, I was being told over and over again that I was wrong whenever I talked about fires. Much of that came from those who were sufficiently in the game to pretend they were not denying climate change, but who chose to get into the contrarian game despite the huge moral cost of doing so.

Well, we were right. We told you so. Shame.

Eventually, of course, the wildfires will stop. Like the surgeons say, the bleeding always stops. Eventually. One way or another.

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.

Spread the love

11 thoughts on “California Wild Fires Bad

  1. Tamino recently posted on the subject of wildfires:

    https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/california-wildfires/

    https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/climate-disasters-billions-and-billions-of-dollars/

    https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/this-is-what-climate-change-looks-like/

    There’s been a bit of chatter from both science-acceptors and deniers about whether there’s been any change in fire frequency, and if so what the positive/negative factors may be. Most of the commentary I’ve seen though (from both sides) succumbs to the normalcy bias and thus misses a fundamental point – that systems can change phase/state with no apparent linear gradation of parameters. It doesn’t matter what happened somewhere 10, 20 or 50 years ago – it’s what’s coming that’s important now.

    And the bottom line of the story that describes changes wrought by human-caused global warming is that we’ve altered conditions such that fire and other extreme events are more likely to have increased impact on regions and ecosystems where previously they did not. If we don’t keep our eye on that ball we’re toast.

  2. Oi, Greg, I thought you said there was a four-link buffer to being shunted to the moderation queue?! 😉

  3. “these flawed forest management policies largely championed by environmentalists as being responsible for the present wildfire challenges being experienced in the state and instead tries to falsely speculate that man made greenhouse gases are the culprit”

    Let no crisis go to waste. Once again, the Enviros begin their never
    ending manifestoe of AGWing.

    Poor emissions, is again the fall guy rather than governmental unit
    policy.

    1. Fire is a complex phenomenon, with multifactorial ætiology. No one has said that the current slew of wildfires across the Northern Hemisphere is due solely to global warming caused by human fossil carbon emission. However it is inescapable from the empirical evidence that the opportuntiy for initiation of fire is increased by global warming, as is the opportunity for increased severity.

      You are trying to draw a false dichotomy. This is a logical fallacy, and a sign of either ignorance or mandacity. Or both.

    2. Bernard, BillyR is the exemplar of the mdern right wing: no education, no integrity, and dismissive of rational thought and science. Don’t waste time bothering him with facts.

  4. “As a result, scientists have found human-caused climate change to be a major contributor to forest fires in the western United States, like the ones that burned through California’s wine country in October.

    “In the Sierra Nevada, about 50 percent of the variation [in wildfires] is explained by climate,” said Jon Keeley, a senior scientist at the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California Los Angeles. “When we look at Southern California and coastal California, there’s no relationship between climate change and fire.”

    Droughts exacerbated by climate change also have contradictory effects between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Keeley noted that droughts dry out trees, making them more prone to ignite, but they kill off Southern California’s quick-growing bushes and grasses, which actually reduces the fuel available to burn. ”

    https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/12/16762120/los-angeles-california-fire-climate-change

    Bernard, it too only twenty seconds to find a reference.

    I provide support, k9 dean gives squawk. People give me an ear,
    while dean they would like to kick this rear.

  5. More broadsides for Bernard.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/business/energy-environment/wildfires-and-climate-change.html

    ““We face the increased risk of fires almost everywhere,” said Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, who is co-chairman of a working group for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” IPCC

    “Next March, the working group of which Dr. Field is co-chairman at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. group, will publish a report that discusses wildfires as part of a broader look at the effects of climate change and the vulnerabilities of certain areas.” 2014

    “In the Arctic regions, fires fueled by the carbon-rich peat might release a vast amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

    “These fires are happening more often in that region,” Nick Sundt, a former firefighter who now directs climate communications for the World Wildlife Fund, said of the Arctic. “They’re bigger.”

    Those emissions hold true in parts of the tropics as well.

    “Indonesia and Malaysia have extensive peatlands that are extremely sensitive to fire,” Dr. Ganz said. “Once these peatlands are burned, enormous amounts of greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere, making the climate change issue worse over time.”

    Bernard, let me know when you want “no mas.”

    1. BillyR, I’m not sure that you understand the concept of presenting an evidenced argument that supports your case…

      Or perhaps you do, but you know that your position is untenable.

      Either way, thanks for the laughs.

  6. So… BillyRussia provides supporting evidence for Bernard J.’s argument… and calls it a broadside? BillyRussia’s grasp of English seems to be slipping.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *