Report produced by the White House Office of Management and Budget: “Over the last decade, suppression has cost the USDA Forest Service and the Department of the Interior an average of $2.9 billion per year.”
And:
“But according to the analysis, a central estimate across the 10 future climate scenarios shows that lands in the National Forest System would experience a near doubling of the area burned by mid-century (2041-2059). In one scenario, the area burned by wildfire would quadruple (estimates range from a 42% to a 306% increase).
“Suppression expenditures also are projected to rise. A middle-of-the-road estimate is a 42% increase in costs by 2050, to $3.9 billion, while some estimates suggest that costs would increase by 84%. In the decades after 2050, costs could rise by 17% to 283%, with a median annual expenditure of $4.9 billion by late century. The team accounted for inflation by converting all future spending to 2022-dollar equivalents.”
A few issues:
1) As mega-fires burn in the nest 20 years, there might not be lots of contiguous ‘fire-suppressed’ forests left.
2) As those burned areas re-burn, we should see a massive reduction in the amounts of fuels on those landscapes.
3) Burned landscapes should have less fire intensity, but larger acreages.
4) Future fires on burned landscapes should cost less to respond to.
Agree, Larry. As I recall, Rains led a FS assessment of suppression costs circa 2000; would be interesting to have his thoughts on these forecasts.
From my seat in the peanut gallery: 1) advances in technology and equipment contribute to soaring costs – Incident Commanders like to acquire resources and use them – even when/if they are not effective. 2) safety considerations often lead to bigger fires, thus higher costs. (Often warranted in my view. I led the 30Mile Fire investigation and our team felt that the crew took unsafe actions in spite of the fire having escaped beyond their ability to contain). 3) Intentional ignitions (ie backfiring, burning out) can contribute to acres burned and total costs. How is that accounted for?
I’d add to Jim’s 3 beneficial fire watching requires suppression dollars, not that I’m against managed fire, but it costs $. I’m also interested in Rains’ findings from 2000.
I did write a 2-page reply. Provided to the Blog manager. She may post.
Be careful about placing any faith in the climate models, because they have been uniformly wrong. While our climate has warmed slightly over the satellite era, it has warmed far less than the models predicted.
Why? They far overestimate the feedback from water vapor, which is likely not even positive but negative. The reason they far over estimate water vapor feedback is that the greenhouse warming from carbon dioxide is soo small by itself. We would just yawn, if they treated water vapor properly.
The positive feedback from water vapor is the greenhouse effect, namely warming. But water vapor produces clouds that cool the planet. And rising water vapor produces thunderstorms that also cool the planet. The climate models know about the greenhouse effect from water vapor but little to nothing about the negative feedbacks.
One large effect from enhanced atmospheric CO2 is the greening of the planet. That has a substantial effect on the growth of forests and therefore their propensity to burn. Sherwood Idso did a great job showing how enhanced CO2 produces rapid growth with pines.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Prove it?
Show peer reviewed research that proves it? Not just some experiment in a lab?
Also, funny that you never have a word to say about public/private forest management, but pop up anytime the word ‘climate’ is on the Smokey Wire.
Agenda much?
Also, funny you keep making demands of real people, complete with insulting jabs, yet are too cowardly to come out of hiding. Maybe you have noticed that “climate change” has been a very expensive aspect to public forest planning the past 35 years. But as a demanding nobody, there’s the credibility problem. Do your own damn research if it’s important to you.
Dr. Fulks is an expert on climate change and that is why he comments on that topic. If you want to define that as “bias,” just remember that nobody cares what you nobodies think. There’s a reason you continue to hide in the shadows.
I have some generalized frustration about the right hand side and left hand side of wildfire communicating with each other.
FACT- the USG is spending beaucoup bucks on mitigation, PODs and new technologies.
FACT- one US agency (OMB) assumes all those investments and people won’t make a difference.
Because it’s too hard to model. So they ignore it.