Hawaii has several Firewise websites that seek to educate homeowners about best practices. The state has also written fire mitigation plans and developed fire risk maps. Notwithstanding these planning efforts, Lahaina was obliterated by a wind-driven wildfire. The catastrophe is likely to exceed 100 fatalities and cost billions to rebuild the town.
A series of vegetation-related events set the stage for this catastrophe. First was the 20th-century elimination of the native fire-resistant forest vegetation by pineapple and sugar cane plantations. Next was the abandonment of those plantations and their replacement by invasive grasses. Add in terrain-driven high winds common to parts of Hawaii plus seasonal drought and all that was missing was an ignition source, which has yet to be determined, but, once again, wind-downed power lines may prove to be the culprit.
After I made these observations last week on a firefighter’s website, which got me banned from the site (🤣), Sharon suggested I re-visit the topic here.
In my original comment on the firefighter site, I noted that Hawaii has no “Firewise-type program.” The firefighter blog’s owner responded to me with links to Firewise information websites. Although helpful, I explained to her that information is not a “program” that will move the needle at a community-wide level. Moving the needle requires enforceable building and vegetation codes, zoning, and ordinances, as I explained in a subsequent comment before being censored.
If it is to be effective, “Firewise” must be more than putting information on a website, doing analyses, drawing maps, and formulating plans. Firewise must also include on-the-ground actions. In Maui, that would have included replacing the invasive weeds with native species plantings. In their abandoned status, these former plantation lands are a time bomb — a deadly nuisance — that tragically blew up, as knowledgeable folks had warned for years. In other words, but for the invasive grasses, this tragedy would likely not have happened. Government is in the best position to require the former pineapple and sugar cane plantation owners to abate this nuisance. Unless and until that happens, the Lahaina tragedy will repeat itself elsewhere.
Mitigating the invasive grass threat would also have been much less expensive than wholesale Firewise refurbishment of Lahaina’s existing housing stock. Now, of course, Lahaina has the opportunity to replace its housing fire-wisely, with, one hopes, new and enforced building codes and zoning.
Fascinating that no matter how much proof we have about more and more hottest temperatures ever recorded along with the most deadly wildfires in US history, at least until the next most deadly fire comes along, so many want to avoids the real cause and want to find who’s to blame in the location of the fire, rather than who’s to blame for what we’re doing to heat up the whole planet into an inhospitable place with rapidly growing dead zones of natural disaster.
No Andy, fire preparedness doesn’t prevent disasters like this any more than hurricane, earthquake or tornado preparedness prevents disasters. It may help keep the body count lower, but it doesn’t prevent a natural disaster in any way.
I went and looked at the historical satellite imagery around Lahaina and the plantations have been gone and replaced with invasive grasses for more than a quarter century. To blame 100+ deaths on that is irrational!
As always is the case, fuels have only a moderate influence on these kinds of catastrophes compared to wind speed. That’s because when you double fuel loads you don’t change burn severity too much, but when you double wind speeds the amount of energy released increases exponentially. It’s why you make a campfire burn hotter by blowing on it, not by smothering it with fuel. It’s why rockets carry as much as 80% liquid oxygen to 20% fuel.
Anyone with a windmill who calculates electricity generation will tell you that the amount of energy you can generate in a 10 mph wind quadruples when the wind speed doubles to 20mph.
In Maui there was a high wind event at the time multiple fires across the island broke out and one weather station recorded a peak gust of 85mph! You simply can’t protect cities from burning down to the ground in a firestorm like that. A single ember landing on a house in a steady 30mph wind with no one around to put the ember out can burn that whole house down in a matter of hours.
It’s time we stop blaming the victims of climate change’s deadly weather patterns while pretending that we’re putting limits on the fossil fuel industry. Truth is every major Fossil fuel producers other than coal has plans to continue to increase production without consequence as long as they pretend like they’re going to decrease production.
We need to wake up to what is going on and stop claiming firewise solutions for low to moderate intensity fires are going to protect us from high intensity fires. They never have and never will.
Was the 1871 Pashtigo Fire caused by anthropogenic climate change, too? No meteorologist or other climate scientist has attributed the Maui fire to man-caused increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Doing so also detracts from sensible local mitigations that could make a difference. Cop-out of the worst sort.
Topographically-induced winds of 80+ mph are common-place in Hawaii. Nothing to do with the far-distant typhoon either.
Are you really burying your head in the sand when it comes to the near unanimous agreement among meteorologists and climate scientist that say climate change is amplifying the severity of major weather events? If so where’s your reference?
Here’s one of hundreds I have: “A sweeping new report by top climate scientists and meteorologists describes how climate change drove unprecedented heat waves, floods and droughts in recent years. The annual report from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) compiles the leading science about the role of climate change in extreme weather.” https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1147805696/climate-change-makes-heat-waves-storms-and-droughts-worse-climate-report-confirm
Also maybe thoroughly read the references you provide so you can make your point rather than my point. As your link clearly says, the Pashtigo Fire was a weather-driven event:
“It had been an unusually dry summer, and the fire moved fast. Some survivors said it moved so fast it was “like a tornado.” The sudden, convulsive speed of the flames consumed available oxygen. Some trying to flee burst into flames.”
That’s the exact type of weather that killed 100+ people in Maui!
And to your point, unusually dry weather is common on the dry side of the islands. And also to your point, unusually high winds are also common… And most common of all is 8 billion often misguided humans will consistently provide a source of ignition 99 times out of a hundred when we have an extremely high fire risk and we tell everyone to be careful. So what happens when all that converges into one extreme moment soon after we measured the highest amount ever in human history 417ppm of Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere?
The need to blame and excuse these events as something we can fix without reducing carbon emissions is getting old and tired and there’s less people that believe that lie every day. People are already laughing at the climate denial rhetoric you presenting, but it’s gonna get worse for you.
The next step beyond moderators getting fed up with your denial and banning you like they did at Wildfire Today is that the fossil fuel industry executives and the people who deny climate change will be more than banned, they’ll be jailed for how much damage they’ve been advocating for/profiting from. Every behavior has its consequence and it’s been over 111 years since newspapers started warning us about climate change:
Coal Consumption Affecting Climate – August 14, 1912
“The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.” https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814.2.56.5
Or maybe you’d like to go back 127 years to Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius who described global warming for the first time: https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
Most people know there is a distinct difference between weather and climate. There might be some ways to tell if a weather event was just a ‘normal’ extreme event, or if it was specifically and significantly enhanced by ‘climate change’.
I’m a realist. Yes, we should take steps to reduce man’s footprint on our atmosphere, especially pollution.
Leave it to a guy with a fake name to cite his “hundreds of references” as justification for his statements. No idea who you are, what your qualifications might be, or why you use a pseudonym — I can only hope you aren’t being funded by taxpayers.
You are mostly correct about the wind. Most everything else is cherry-picked gibberish. Publicly attacking someone else’s credibility while hiding behind a pseudonym is cowardly. Trying to get someone to take your arrogant rants seriously when you don’t even have a name is just dumb. (So is responding to trolls, but we all have our weaknesses.)
I suggest you go back to “reducing your carbon emissions” and lay off the verbal attacks and pseudo-science, “Oly.” Or grow some cajones and use your real name if you are going to attack others or continue to pretend you are making intelligent statements. Ask anyone with a windmill, if you need a second opinion.
Bob,
A simple reading of the language and tone, and a simple Google search of “Olyecology”, shows it Deane Rimerman. Frequent troll poster and anti-humanist on this and other boards. Been banned from multiple platforms for their posts.
Thanks Anon: Deane used to use his real name in these exchanges. Sorry to see him resort to subterfuge in his assertions and attacks. Must not have much faith in his own pronouncements these days. This certainly doesn’t do anything for his credibility, such that it has become.
Thank you for exposing that. Should have known.
It also appears that downed powerlines started the fires. Wind-downed powerlines that start fires – there’s nothing “FireWise” can do about that..
Undergrounding power lines is being wise about fire.
How many of these ignitions are caused by adjacent vegetation (“trees”) vs. arcing in heavy winds or heavy smoke? Is there any information on that? Could better-managed right-of-ways allow power to remain on for pumps and lights during these events? Putting existing lines underground at this juncture is going to be impractical for a very long time, if ever.
Since the 2020 Oregon wildfires, I’ve seen a dramatic up-tick in right-of-way vegetation management in my locale, including under the high-voltage transmission line that runs 500 feet from my house.
Undergrounding power lines is commonplace in the Netherlands and Germany. Of course, there are differences (e.g., population density), but burying power lines is practical. In my 12-house cul-de-sac, all the power lines are buried, although the feeder lines going into the cul-de-sac are above-ground.
Ironically, the cost-effective time to underground power lines is after a major disaster. World War II was the disaster from which Germany and the Netherlands rebuilt their power grid underground. The Maui and Camp fires are opportunities to underground these communities’ power lines, too.
Another irony is that the most cost effective time for the federal government to consider reforestation planning and long-term forest maintenance strategies these days is also following a major disaster.
For many years the most cost effective time to do reforestation planning and develop — and perform — forest maintenance strategies was following a timber sale. Not surprisingly, those plans and practices were profitable, safer for wildlife, less polluting, and aesthetically more pleasing.
We need better reforestation planning and forest maintenance strategies on our public forestlands. The current wildfire boundaries would be an excellent starting point. This has been a legitimate “national emergency” for too many decades. We can do better.
Just remembered this from a post in September 2020:
https://forestpolicypub.com/2020/09/19/repost-usfs-research-confirms-most-ca-fires-occur-in-areas-of-wui-with-sparse-or-no-vegetation-but-more-people/
I haven’t been able to find my email exchange but a couple of years ago I was corresponding with folks at OSU college of forestry regarding the amount of wildfire fuel encountered in the forest versus the amount of fuel that a wildfire would encounter in a typical community, like Paradise, CA. If memory serves me right, that additional community fuel increases the intensity of a wildfire exponentially.
During the recent Tunnel fire in the Columbia River Gorge, one of the fire updates stated that firefighters would be spending their day “clearing overgrown vegetation and laying hose” around homes. If being Firewise (including creating a defensible space around a home) wasn’t an important aspect of controlling a wildfire, why would wildland firefighters waste their time doing it? That may be a simplistic way of looking at it, be the lack of homeowner responsibility in making their homes fire resilient when living in fire-prone areas is what’s contributing to what are being called “mega-fires”. That’s not to say that a warming climate isn’t a contributing factor, but it’s certainly not the singular cause for the increase in intensity and spread of recent large wildfires.
Because most homeowners living in these areas aren’t being responsible and making their homes fire resilient, it’s important for local officials to implement regulations that will require homeowner responsibility and ensure community resilience.
In the long run, it’s hopeful that these regulations would help reduce the expenditure of my Federal tax dollars on wildland firefighters “clearing overgrown vegetation and laying hose” to save someone’s house who refused to be proactive in protecting their own property.
Indeed, some people seem to prefer their shade and privacy over fire safety. I am in favor of mandatory fuels management around private homes. The owners can do it, or the government can force it, their choice. If you don’t cooperate, you’re putting your own neighbors at risk.
Most of the fuel lying around the homes that burned in the Hawaii, Paradise, and Almeda Drive Fires were other homes. Plus gasoline, propane, dry grass in some instances, and firewood in others. The heat from these events can melt metal. I think a good sprinkler system and irrigated crops or landscaping can be successful, but if the electrical companies shut off the power because of lawsuits that won’t work, either.
Has anyone calculated the costs of these programs, and then done an analysis of their success or failure after a wildfire?
Sure is a lot of certainty coming from folks who probably never got within 300 miles of this fire. Folks, I know it’s 2023, but let’s recap-“I read a research paper,” “Check out this blog post” and “look at these Google Earth photos” are not making you seem like an expert. Unless you’ve put some boots in the dirt it may be wise to have a little humility in your analysis.
Thanks for posting here, Andy!
1. I really don’t understand people who say that this is “all about climate” as if, we didn’t have fires before. No amount of computer simulations by scientists smarter than I can override my observations and knowledge of history, sorry. I do think it’s important to decarbonize.. but blaming everything bad on climate change is not true; stating untruths creates distrust; distrust doesn’t build the kind of relationships we will need to jointly mitigate and adapt. So I think it’s actually counterproductive.
2. I think Andy has a point. Here’s my underlying philosophy- force creates pushback, so first, let’s fix everything we can without forcing people.
I have a friend who lives in the WUI who is trying to make change.
Sheriff is in charge of evacuation, and is not interested in identifying routes.
HOAs make random decisions randomly
Homeowners don’t want to cut down trees, or can’t afford it.
Grant programs seem to be almost a competitive nest of programs that don’t favor your hood unless you are in an area identified as low income. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to favor those communities but for practical purposes (fuelbreaks, PODs) people can be both poor and rich at the landscape scale.
What we need is some kind of alignment, an organization responsible in each community, and figuring out gaps and overlaps among programs, plus helping communities with programs. Even Breckenridge did not like being regulated and they are not far-right … so regulation should be a last resort. I’m not sure all the attention of the Wildfire Commission and so on is really at the scale that can be helpful in all this.
Why the emphasis on cutting down trees if the primary spread is structure to structure as in the Oakland, Camp, Tubbs, Marshall, and Lahaina fires? Are these even wildfires?
Many of these fires seem to leave scorched but surviving trees surrounding houses that burn down to their foundations. The other thing these fires have in common is strong winds. The houses are at something like 15% moisture content, the trees are at 60% moisture content. The fuels management prescription as I understand it is to get rid of the low maintenance shaded windbreak and replace it with full sun plus some kind of expensive mowing regime that selects for annual grasses.
Woody, my friend lives in the Conifer/Evergreen area that Jim and AmazonWoman are discussing here. The primary spread is not structure to structure. Strong winds can be a factor, for sure. Here are some before and after photos of fire mitigation as practiced in the Front Range treed areas. Note that the Marshall Fire was in grasslands.
https://splinteredforesttreeservices.com/before-after-gallery-tree-services/
It would certainly be an improvement if the “firewise” tree removal recommendations were scoped to conifers. But that’s not how it gets communicated to the public, so instead I get people here in coastal California who want me to take out 80 year old live oaks while their homes are surrounded by thin redwood plank fences – because the media coverage focuses on “wildfires” and downplays structure to structure. According to the wildfire model, kiln drying and milling wood makes it safer than the highly flammable trees.
The Marshall Fire started in grasslands but almost all the damage was done within the suburbs. The area there that I am most familiar with is Superior, which is largely irrigated and mowed lawn. The shopping mall that burned was surrounded by a large parking lot. I visited about 9 months after the fire and there wasn’t much evidence of tree mortality (I didn’t have before and after pictures, but saw very few stumps).
After the Camp fire someone built a statistical model based on burned homes and it turned out the most dangerous thing to have nearby was a neighbor, not a tree. That report mentioned that the Tubbs fire was also primarily structure to structure but didn’t give a reference unfortunately.
I had always heard that the Oakland fire was spread by Eucalypts but when I finally read a report it was mostly structure to structure.
All the photos of living trees surrounding empty foundations have prompted a conspiracy theory that the houses were taken out by space lasers. Apparently that’s easier to believe than the idea that the trees are more fire resistant than the houses.
I apologize for being pre-irritated about this, I don’t mean to go after you in particular. But the messaging around trees and fire safety seems badly broken and homeowners are right to be skeptical.
No the Marshall fire was in a grassland with houses. Actually it wasn’t WUI with a reasonable definition of “wildland”.. it was in “formerly rural/urban interface”. So to me there is “real” WUI, RUI (rural urban interface) and FRUI (formerly rural urban interface). Both Marshall and Maui had some degree of FRUI.
I don’t think there’s an official description but I’ve heard the Marshall Fire described as an “urban firestorm” rather than a wildfire.
The initial spread around Marshall Road came through grassland with houses as you describe. But the reason the Marshall Fire is well known is because of what it did in Superior and Louisville. I don’t know Louisville but Superior is a suburb of irrigated lawns, wide streets, and parking lots. And by all accounts I’ve seen, the spread there was structure to structure. See marshallfiremap.com and the ProPublica and NYMag articles for examples.
The Camp Fire spread a substantial distance from its ignition point to the town of Paradise. It burned quite intensely through thick forest, and soon met an area burned 10 years before, loaded with tree ‘carcasses’ hidden among the thick brush. 60 MPH embers can light a LOT of stuff on fire.
That does not support the argument that cutting down living trees in the town of Paradise would have defended the structures there.
No one proposed cutting trees in Paradise. Again, when a fire has 60 mph winds behind it, it is very hard to fight it safely. Forest management works well in advance of ‘normal’ wildfires. It gives firefighters a safe chance to contain the fire.
We saw what happened in Berry Creek, where very little forest management was accomplished. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6337002,-121.3935557,2264m/data=!3m1!1e3?authuser=0&entry=ttu
Zooming in
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6382238,-121.3944945,283m/data=!3m1!1e3?authuser=0&entry=ttu
Earlier in this comment section, you said “some people seem to prefer their shade and privacy over fire safety. I am in favor of mandatory fuels management around private homes. The owners can do it, or the government can force it”.
The reference to shade and privacy there sure sounds like you’re talking about forcing homeowners to cut down trees – at the owner’s expense, without distinguishing between tree species, without data showing that it’s effective let alone cost-effective, ignoring the obvious beneficial effects of living trees on wind speed and relative humidity, and without considering what kind of vegetation will replace the trees.
Dismissing these concerns as a preference for privacy over safety is not helpful.
Many states have very clear descriptions of “Defensible Space”. Some even spell it out in great detail. I am merely interested in homeowners following the laws, for the good of their neighborhood. PLUS, it’s THE LAW! If they cannot follow those laws, then it will be done for you, at your expense. That certainly seems fair to me. Poor people would be able to get help, to get the work paid for.
Years ago, during the Blacks Fire, in Colorado, video showed fire crews doing fuels work in peoples’ yards. Work that should have been done by the homeowners. Fire crews rarely have the time to do that on running fires.
Yeah. Good Idea. Turn that land over to the experts on fire: government. No tort liability government.
The thousand acre and larger fires in Oregon are all on federal land and growing.
The Wiley Creek fire in Linn county (Wiley creek runs through Foster, just east of Sweet Home Ranger District hdqts on the Willamette NF. I heard on the radio yesterday that a State of Oregon Incident Command team is in charge of that fire on USFS land. ?? The news press release reader also reported the use of tethered machinery building fire trail on ground as steep as 100%!!! Weyerhaeuser is a proponent of tethered feller bunchers and forwarders. Safety. Operator in an armored cab.
I saw the recovery photos of a 46A D-8 cat with rippers that went over the side when the road gave way on super steep ground in the Coast Range. The first recovery was the body of the cat skinner. Later, the rest of the cat was recovered. The Medford safety canopy. The fuel tank and seat and equipment operator deck, the ripper attachment. The cat blade. One complete track frame. The track. The engine. All that was left at the “deflation plain” was the cat frame and one track frame minus tracks. All yarded to the road above and hauled away. There will be a failed chain link, a stranded tether line. All the equipment and labor is contractor labor and equipment. And liability. Every owner and contractor has liability. Except for the federal government.
Hawaii Electric Co. will be the deep pockets for the losses by victims of the Maui fires. News organizations are already reporting the infrastructure of the Hawaii Electric in the fire area is being inspected and examined. Gee. Probably twice. Once by State of Hawaii personnel, maybe FERC, and also by the carrion feeders of the plaintiff’s bar. Conflagrations are their feeding grounds. Today, on the “48 mainland states” PacificPower is in the crosshairs, and already has lost a multi million lawsuit for the Labor Day 2020 Echo fire in Lincoln county, Oregon, in the “fog belt” coastal rainforest. Gale force east wind compromised PacificCorps lines with windfall trees. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns PacificCorps. The plaintiff’s bar will make that well known. Envy and greed in the jury pool is unavoidable. PacificCorps has the same chance of prevailing in a jury trial as Donald Trump in counties or states where he lost election by 4 to 1. The Maui electric monopoly is about to find out what a “shakedown” is all about.
PG&E lost a $32 BILLION claim for Camp Fire, with 84 deaths and a totally destroyed small town in the Sierra foothills. Lanai is pricier and likely many more deaths. Not a good time to own any part of Hawaii Electric. Never a good time to risk fire from federal lands as a real threat to private property and lives.
The rumors are Blackrock owns the electric grid of Lanhania and they failed to turn the power off before the winds took down power poles , lines and it had failed to maintain brush/ flammable material removal under those transmission lines..at least one resident took videos of downed lines arching on the ground setting stuff afire..
That covers why the fires started…
The failure to alert the populace with the emergency sirens surely added to deaths…the man in charge of that low IQ decision cited his reasons as a fear the residents would think a tidal wave was coming and run uphill into the fire..I wonder how much is his salary ?..
Don’t wake up any victims asleep at that time and surely someone was, and without sirens blaring by the time they woke up breathing smoke the firestorm was upon them and their last moments…that is very very sad….why even have government . Or why is government always the highest paid…Could it be a monopoly? And finally i read there was a previous fire in Lahania in 2018 burning someones home / rebuilt and now destroyed again…the waters of the Pacific Ocean right there and not a thought about a very powerful emergency saltwater pumping system to stop a town being destroyed…by fire…all why i keep as far as possible from community/ human/thinking…it is seldom about pragmatic decision making…apparently the famous 150 year old tree in Lahania survived the fires wrath and a famous landmark church…maybe a clue people need to dial into God and Nature. God Bless those who treasure their homes and family and lost so much..
The Wiley Fire started on private land that is protected by the State of Oregon. That is why there is an Oregon State Command Team on that fire.
Andy,
One thing to note that somewhat pertains to this topic, is despite all the programs in California, a home not in compliance with Firewise/defensible space laws, can be cited, yet it is the local DA who has discretion to actually do anything about it, legally and in terms of fines and forced action. With most fires in rural areas, and as elected positions, can you guess how many DAs want to enforce the rules? The lawyers rule everything yet again, even in the face of human stubbornness.
Otherwise I agree with you, this isn’t a climate crisis event, it’s a “bad s*** happens sometimes”.
I also have to think that sometimes a home will pass an inspection, without actually meeting the proper criteria. Whether it is a ‘wink-wink’ situation or an actual bribe, some affluent homeowners get a special deal on their properties.
Or that the Inspectors would rather be doing something else, and are just phoning it in. Isn’t all that OT pay and life in fire camp more fun than poking around someones house for violations of defensible space?
https://theconversation.com/hawaiis-climate-future-dry-regions-get-drier-with-global-warming-increasing-fire-risk-while-wet-areas-get-wetter-211379
Your linked article reports on models of Hawaii’s climate future. Of course, future modeling cannot explain present or past events.
One sentence of the article addresses Hawaii’s past: “Hawaii has seen a generally rising trend in the amount of land that burns each year as the local climate warms.” But its citations don’t support the sentence’s conclusion that a warming climate accounts for a rising trend in land burned.
As to a rising trend in the amount of land that burns, here’s what the article’s source citations states:
Total area burned statewide increased more than fourfold from 1904 to 1959 to peaks in the 1960s–1970s and mid-1990s to present. From 2005 to 2011, on average, 1,007 wildfires were reported across the state per year (±77 SE), burning an average of 8,427 ha yr-1 (±2,394 SE). Most fires (95%) were <4 ha, while most area burned (93%) was attributed to fires ≥40 ha. Ignition frequency was positively correlated with human population across islands. Wildfires were most frequent in developed areas, but most areas burned occurred in dry nonnative grasslands and shrublands that currently compose 24% of Hawai‘i’s total land cover. These grass-dominated landscapes allow wildfires to propagate rapidly from areas of high ignition frequencies into the forested margins of the state's watersheds, placing native habitat, watershed integrity, and human safety at risk. There is an urgent need to better assess fire risk and impacts at landscape scales and increase the integration of prefire planning and prevention into existing land management goals.
To summarize, more people (not rising temperatures) mean more ignitions. More nonnative grasslands (not rising temperatures) mean more flammable fuels. Nothing about anthropogenic climate change here.
As for warming, here’s what the article’s citation says:
Warming in Hawai‘i is largely attributed to significant increases in minimum temperature (0.072°C/decade, p < 0.001) resulting in a corresponding downward trend in diurnal temperature range (−0.055°C/decade, p < 0.001) over the 100-year period. Significant positive correlations were found between HTI, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the Multivariate ENSO Index, indicating that natural climate variability has a significant impact on temperature in Hawaiʻi. (emphasis added).
In sum, low temps have been increasing, but not high temps. And “natural” climate variability, not increases in atmospheric CO2, has had the “significant” impact.
[Please don’t misunderstand these comments to be “climate change denial.” Why I even need to add this caveat is its own frustration. Sheesh.]
Anonymous1: Your linked article reports on models of Hawaii’s climate future. Of course, future modeling does not explain present or past events.
One sentence of the article addresses Hawaii’s past: “Hawaii has seen a generally rising trend in the amount of land that burns each year as the local climate warms.” But its citations don’t support the sentence’s conclusion that a warming climate accounts for a rising trend in land burned.
As to a rising trend in the amount of land that burns, here’s what the article’s source citation states:
Total area burned statewide increased more than fourfold from 1904 to 1959 to peaks in the 1960s–1970s and mid-1990s to present. From 2005 to 2011, on average, 1,007 wildfires were reported across the state per year (±77 SE), burning an average of 8,427 ha yr-1 (±2,394 SE). Most fires (95%) were <4 ha, while most area burned (93%) was attributed to fires ≥40 ha. Ignition frequency was positively correlated with human population across islands. Wildfires were most frequent in developed areas, but most areas burned occurred in dry nonnative grasslands and shrublands that currently compose 24% of Hawai‘i’s total land cover. These grass-dominated landscapes allow wildfires to propagate rapidly from areas of high ignition frequencies into the forested margins of the state’s watersheds, placing native habitat, watershed integrity, and human safety at risk. There is an urgent need to better assess fire risk and impacts at landscape scales and increase the integration of prefire planning and prevention into existing land management goals. [emphases added]
To summarize, more people (not rising temperatures) mean more ignitions. More nonnative grasslands (not rising temperatures) mean more flammable fuels. Nothing about anthropogenic climate change here.
As for warming, here’s what the article’s citation says:
Warming in Hawai‘i is largely attributed to significant increases in minimum temperature (0.072°C/decade, p < 0.001) resulting in a corresponding downward trend in diurnal temperature range (−0.055°C/decade, p < 0.001) over the 100-year period. Significant positive correlations were found between HTI, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the Multivariate ENSO Index, indicating that natural climate variability has a significant impact on temperature in Hawaiʻi. [emphases added]
In sum, low temps have been increasing, but not high temps. And “natural” climate variability, not increases in atmospheric CO2, has had the “significant” impact.
[Please don’t misunderstand these comments to be “climate change denial.” Why I even need to add this caveat is its own frustration. Sheesh.]
Here are two perspectives on whether “climate change” had anything (or everything) to do with the Hawaii Fires.
Michael Mann thinks Biden should declare a “Climate Emergency” because it would immediately create “more funding” (7 minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BzIeQg9R7M
Cliff Mass thinks more funding is needed for “inexpensive weather stations”: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com
If people don’t think “climate science” has been politicized, they should listen to Mann. I think he is very clear on that point.