Examining media coverage of the California wildfires has been interesting.
My favorite is The Hotshot Wakeup, (might be paywalled) who wisely asks us to hold our opinions until we get the results of investigations and reviews.
I think it’s illuminating to look at what AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science, sort of a professional society for scientists with a definite political veneer) tells journalists via Sciline. It’s interesting to think you can cover wildfires in the LA metro area (a fairly unique place in terms of wildfire) and spice it up with quotes from people who are not talking about the LA Metro area.
Check out the AAAS recommendations below the asterisks. Meanwhile, Michael Shellenberger interviewed Jon Keeley of the USGS, someone whose work we are familiar with, talking real time about these specific wildfires.
Two people are dead, and 80,000 have been forced to evacuate neighborhoods in Los Angeles thanks to fires raging out of control. According to the media and some scientists, climate change is causing the fires. “Researchers believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions that are conducive to wildland fire, including low relative humidity,” reported the BBC.
But one of the country’s top fire experts disagrees. “I don’t think these fires are the result of climate change,” Jon Keeley, a US Geological Survey scientist, told Public. “You certainly could get these events without climate change.”
Keeley has researched the topic for 40 years. In 2017, Keeley and a team of scientists modeled thirty-seven different regions across the United States and found that “humans may not only influence fire regimes but their presence can actually override, or swamp out, the effects of climate.”
Keeley’s team found that the only statistically significant factors for the frequency and severity of fires on an annual basis were population and proximity to development. “We’ve looked at the history of climate and fire throughout the whole state,” said Keeley, “and through much of the state, particularly the western half of the state, we don’t see any relationship between past climates and the amount of area burned in any given year.”
What about scientists who claim that the dry conditions are unusual? “If you look at the past 100 years of climates in Southern California,” said Keeley, “you will find there have been Januaries that have been very dry. And there’s been autumns that have been very dry. There have been Santa Ana winds in January. So these sorts of conditions are what contribute to a fire being particularly destructive at this time of the year. But it’s not the result of climate change.”
It’s true that “We are seeing changes in Santa Ana winds,” said Keeley. “For example, we’ve looked at fire history going back to the middle of the 20th century. For the first half of that record, Santa Ana winds were more common in September than they are today. They were less common in the winter than they are today. It appears that we are seeing a shift in the distribution of Santa Ana winds.
“But we have no basis for saying that’s due to global warming,” Keeley said. “There’s no evidence that climate change has impacted Santa Ana winds.”
And the fires appear to have started in the residential areas, not in the wildland vegetation known as chaparral. “It doesn’t appear that the wildland vegetation had a lot to do with the fire because the fire didn’t start in the wild land areas. That started within the urban environment. And whether these are unique? I would say, definitely not unique. Fires in Southern California are not an abnormal event. We get them all the time throughout the year. The fact that we have a high-intensity fire in Southern California, that’s a normal event.”
The issue is, overwhelmingly, more people in harm’s way. “If you look at fire history in the San Gabriel Valley, which is where the Eaton fire occurred 50 years ago, we didn’t have events where fires burned into communities. In part that was due because the urban environment was surrounded by citrus orchards. And that’s what buffered the communities from the wildland areas. And if fires started within those citrus orchards or burned into them, they generally burned out. Today, we don’t have citrus orchards. We just have more homes.”
This seems like a bit of a theme.. agriculture manages vegetation, until they move away, and then vegetation grows up and dries out (like Lahaina).
Why, then, does so much of the media coverage focus on climate change? “It all depends on who the journalist interviews,” said Keeley. “If they interview a climatologist who really doesn’t know very much about wildland vegetation and also has an agenda of demonstrating climate change, they’re going to see climate as a major driver.”
It all depends on whom the journalist interviews, so see the AAAS list below.
Are such forest preventable? Said Keeley, “I don’t think these fires are 100 percent preventable. We can reduce the probability of a fire. You can reduce the probability that they’ll be destructive. There are things you can do. But, these fires are a normal part of the environment. Chaparral fires have been around for at least 20 million years. So we have a greater probability of a fire during a Santa Ana wind event. And we have a greater probability that people are going to be affected by that fire because there’s more people out there on the landscape.”
************************************
Here are the sources AAAS recommends. Remember, this part of Calif is chaparral or brush, not forest.
Wildfire Resources
Covering the Southern California wildfires? Need expert quotes and science resources for your news stories? SciLine has several FREE resources available for local reporters to use.
Wldfire prevention
- Prescribed burns with Lenya Quinn-Davidson (Expert interview clip)
- Wildfire resilience: buildings, water, and land use (2022 briefing)
Potential causes of wildfires
- Wildfire and climate change (Quick Facts)
- Climate change and wildfire with Dr. Patrick Gonzalez (Expert interview clip)
Possible after effects of wildfiresImpacts on communities
- Wildfire smoke and children’s health with Dr. Stephanie Holm (Expert interview clip)
- Outdoor air quality and wildfire smoke with Dr. Tracey Holloway (Expert interview clip)
- Wildfire smoke and outdoor air quality with Dr. Joseph L. Wilkins (Expert interview clip)
- Wildfires: Climate connections and community impacts (2021 briefing)
Recursos en español
- Incendios forestales y cambio climático (Datos breves)
- Dr. Joseph L. Wilkins: Humo de incendios forestales y calidad del aire exterior
- Dra. Tracey Holloway: Calidad del aire exterior y humo de los incendios forestales
- Lenya Quinn-Davidson: Quemas controladas
- Dr. Daniel Sturmer: Deslizamientos de tierra
**************”Want to speak to an expert directly? Our expert matching team (M-F, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. EDT) can rapidly connect you to articulate, knowledgeable experts – for free!
SciLine is a free service for journalists and scientists based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society. Editorially independent, nonpartisan, and funded by philanthropies, SciLine has the singular mission of enhancing the amount and quality of scientific evidence in news stories.”
Financial support for SciLine is provided by the Quadrivium Foundation, with additional funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Heinz Endowments, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Rita Allen Foundation. AAAS provides in-kind support. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.359.6383.1479-a
And yet, philanthropies have their own philosophies and interests. We expect that this does not influence the scientists selected or not selected, or the outlets supported or not supported.
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I wish this was screamed at high decibels to the National, and world populations! As most of us know, this statistical evaluation is congruent with common sense. However, we all know common sense went out the door in the 1980’s!
It is refreshing to have fundamental agreement on what’s causing these destructive fires – at least as far as the climate change nonsense goes…..
A great read!
There is a lot of wisdom in that article.
Those of us who work Global Warming issues know that extreme weather and extreme wildfires are nothing new. They have always occurred and always will. It is foolish to attribute them to slowly rising atmospheric CO2. The incremental warming from more CO2 is very small. John Clauser, the 2022 Nobel Laureate In Physics, points out that cloud cover (albedo) is a hundred times more powerful than a small increase in CO2 at driving our climate.
When I lived in Santa Barbara, we regularly had a strong hot wind off the desert, called a Sundowner. When someone deliberately set a fire above a housing development about 1990, 400 homes went up in flames before firefighters could marshal their resources. It would have swept to the ocean, had the wind not died. Similarly, the Eagle Creek fire in the Columbia River Gorge barreled toward my current home and the suburbs of Portland in 2017. But again, the wind abruptly died down and the danger soon passed.
Nothing will stop these firestorms, until the fierce winds die down. But this is not to say that defensive measures are impossible. Management of fuels is clearly helpful, including prescribed burns and planting orange trees in place of chaparral in Southern California. Here in Oregon, we have a great natural firebreak called the Columbia River. But in the Eagle Creek fire, even that was breached.
Contrary to ill-informed journalists, drought is not the only requirement for the firestorms. You need to have good growing conditions prior to that to rejuvenate the chaparral. Precipitation records at LAX show that Los Angeles received twice normal rainfall in the winters of 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Did rising CO2 play any role? Yes, enhanced atmospheric CO2 causes just about every plant to grow better – much better. We can now feed the world’s population, thanks to enhanced atmospheric CO2, fertilizer made from natural gas, and improved seeds.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
I back Jim Z. and Gordon on this. It is great to see the media finally paying attention to historical documentation rather than suspicious climate models when it comes to an understanding of these wildfires. 200 years ago Los Angeles County was mostly Spanish missions, enslaved local Indian families (“converts”), and thousands of grazing sheep and cattle. It would be interesting to determine the range of chaparral at that time, and also any records of widespread wildfires. As sheep and cattle were replaced by orchards, and then orchards replaced with closely-spaced wooden structures, could it be that County wildfires have increased in severity and extent due to this change in fuels more than any other factor? Or have widespread wildfires always been part of the County’s history?
Los Angeles is the product of colonization, fossil fuel extraction and mass consumption so anyone who believes that that city and county haven’t altered the climate is delusional, a shill or both.
Absolutely agree, but it’s not climate altering on any scale, it’s more of a localized footprint. I always say that when folks get serious about improving our surroundings, stop filling in estuaries, quit using cement (one of the dirtiest of construction materials) stop raw sewage and pollution from entering our oceans, quit making golf courses in the deserts, or mountains etc!
While I think it is likely to be difficult to attribute these particular fires to any particular cause besides the obvious (a very wet period followed by a very dry period), I also think one is making too strong of a statement by saying that climate change had nothing to do with it.
If you’re going to poo-poo people talking about climate change in the context of these fires, do so correctly: talk about how difficult it is to tell the difference between small scale, local climatological disturbance caused by global system changes and multi-year to decadal climate cycles (which all areas of the West Coast of the US experience) or plain and simple interannual variation. Talk about how it MIGHT be playing a role, and certainly yes we’ve had hottest year after hottest year in a row, and yes the regional wind patterns and precipitation patterns do appear to be changing, but high intensity, wind-driven fires in this ecosystem and place are not historically unusual. And what we really we need to focus in this case are the things that can be directly and immediately addressed via local and state policy, like fuel management around WUI areas and the loss of agricultural buffer zones, etc. Keeley is a close-but-no-cigar on this.
I don’t think there’s a powerful need to go hard in the paint on “this can’t be attributed to climate change”, because we don’t actually know that! A study in ten years may in fact provide a solid argument that anthropogenic climate change played a large role in this situation. At most as scientists we should be being agnostic on the matter, at present, because we are all well and truly ignorant of all the causal factors at play.
If I were asked I’d be inclined to say ‘It might have done, and it might not. At minimum I’d have to do a literature review to begin to answer that, and that wouldn’t necessarily provide a definitive answer, but I can say this…” and talk about what can practically be done now, and which most wildland land managers widely agree on: fuel reduction is at least useful, if not outright necessary, on this landscape, if you want to influence its fire behavior, and that is probably going to require some substantial change from the State of California.
Of course, no one is asking me, as I am but an anonymous peon of a working scientist.
A careful read of this report will reveal that much of what this critic is saying is incorrect. No where did anyone say climate change had nothing to do with these fires. What was stated was that these fires were not caused by global warming. The primary factors were a 9 month drought that continued into January, Santa Ana winds that were more severe than usual, and a direct or indirect human ignition. The cause of these fires was the combination of these factors. Historically we have seen a similar autumn and winter drought in past years, also we have seen similar extreme Santa Ana winds, eg 2011 southern California experienced a Santa Wind event with windspeeds of 140 mph. Nowhere was it stated that global warming is not happening or didn’t exacerbate these conditions. Fire scientists are primarily concerned with writing off such fire events as due to global warming, while ignoring other more tractable factors.
Indeed, facts and logic need to rule over political conspiracy theories. Suddenly, there are so many YouTube fire experts, climate shamans and water whisperers, pretending to know all about why this is happening. Blaming “poor forest management” and firefighter hirings just doesn’t ‘hold any water’. Fire hydrant systems weren’t designed to operate like some people think.
Seriously, this same situation almost happened with the Station Fire. It burned west at high speed, aimed at urban Pasadena. Luckily, the weather changed, and the fire burned north, up into the mountains. Chances are, such fires will happen again.
Hi Jon, are you the Jon Keeley quoted in the article? If so, thank you for weighing in!
What exactly did you mean by
“Fire scientists are primarily concerned with writing off such fire events as due to global warming, while ignoring other more tractable factors.”
I’m asking because fire scientists come from a variety of disciplines, who may have different takes on “what should be done.” Are you speaking of a certain variety of fires scientist?
Sharon
Yes I am the Jon Keeley quoted. Fire scientists are concerned with media statements that these fires were ’caused’ by climate change. All serious scientists know that climate change is real. However, as pointed by some climatologists such as in a recent interview with Glen McDonald at UCLA, climate change is not demonstrated by any single event but rather trends. The factors accounting for these fires is that they resulted from the nexus of 3 events: a long 9 month drought extending into January, an exceptionally severe Santa Ana wind event, and a human ignition source. All of these have happened in the past and it remains to be demonstrated that anthropogenic climate change has played a role in this event. One earlier study did attempt to parse out the role of climate change on drought severity and came up with the conclusion that it caused the drought to be 10-15% more severe. Demonstrating that this caused the recent fire catastrophe is unlikely, particularly with 80 mph winds. Climate studies that conclude anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is causing more extreme conditions falls short of a clear mechanistic model of why winds were more severe. This is likely due to the proximity of high and low pressure cells and I haven’t seen any models demonstrating ACC is behind this.
There is no question that while the factors behind this fire event have happened in the past, the current fires were catastrophic beyond anything we have seen to date. To write this off as due to climate change distracts from other far more tractable issues. Pacific Palisades is in the Santa Monica Mountains and going back to the 1900s we have seen large (>10,000 acres) fires during winter droughts coupled with Santa Ana Winds, but few fatalities and limited loss of properties. Over much of the 20th century California has grown at the rate of 300,000 people a year (just since 2000 we have added 6 million people). Providing housing has resulted in urban sprawl into watersheds of dangerous fuels that increase the possibility of human ignitions, both directly and due to the expansion of the electrical grid. But most relevant to the recent catastrophe is this urban sprawl has placed more people at risk, as evident by this week’s losses. It is very eloquently described by UCLA scientist Stephanie Pincentl in a recent interview.
This article quotes you and also discusses some likely links to climate change: https://apnews.com/article/fire-devastation-climate-change-santa-ana-winds-a46e2bb6785b1e325f6076fb22c8fcc5
“Fires have gotten faster,” Balch said Wednesday. “The big culprit we’re suspecting is a warming climate that’s making it easier to burn fuels when conditions are just right.”
“Summer fires are bigger usually, but they don’t burn nearly as fast. Winter fires “are much more destructive because they happen much more quickly” said U.S. Geological Survey fire scientist Jon Keeley.”
“There is a clear link between climate change and the more frequent dry falls and winters that provide fuel for fires, Swain said.”
“There’s no sure link between Santa Ana winds — gusts from the east that come down the mountains, gain speed and hit the coast — to human-caused climate change, said Daniel Swain, climate scientist for the California Institute for Water Resources.
But a condition that led to those winds is a big plunge in the temperature of the jet stream — the river of air that moves weather systems across the globe — which helped bring cold air to the eastern two-thirds of the nation, said University of California Merced climate and fire scientist John Abatzoglou. Other scientists have preliminarily linked those jet stream plunges to climate change.”
Hi SP: Your comments would be a lot more credible if you weren’t operating from a fake name. The article doesn’t say that “climate change had nothing to do with it.” That is just your interpretation and bias.
Climate is usually defined as a 30-year average of local temperatures, rainfall, wind, snow, etc., and is entirely based on changed weather conditions in order to change the average. Because weather changes constantly, and particularly between night and day and through the seasons, and because catastrophic weather events are always taking place during the course of a year, and because climate is markedly different for different locations all over the world, how could “climate change” be a factor in this event — or in similar events that have been increasing in frequency the past 35 years?
Historical documentation doesn’t support the idea of “climate change” along the Pacific Coast, in the mountains, or in most other localities, and has always appeared to be more of a political invention than an actual reality. Literature review used to be more important than now, for the same reason that our news media used to seem a lot more accurate and less biased toward promoting politics than now. “Peer reviewed science” has largely turned into a publication racket dependent on taxpayer funding (“politics”) and “pal review” support and would just be a distraction to seriously consider at this time for any reason. Opinion, based on experience and observation.
“Historical documentation doesn’t support the idea of ‘climate change’ along the Pacific Coast, in the mountains, or in most other localities, and has always appeared to be more of a political invention than an actual reality.” Skepticism or denial? (Or is this a distinction without a difference?)
They are two different words with two different meanings, Jon. My statement is based on “historical documentation” — which both John Keeley and I are very familiar, but for different geographic regions. My OPINION is based on this evidence.
I am SKEPTICAL that “climate change” has anything to do with these fires for reasons stated. Where does DENIAL fit in with your interpretation? I think you are continuing to grasp at straws with this effort.
“Climate change denier” is actually in the dictionaries. Here’s Cambridge: “a person who does not accept that climate change is happening, or does not accept that it is caused by human activity such as burning fossil fuels”
Wikipedia: “Climate change denial (also global warming denial) is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none.[4] Climate change denial includes unreasonable doubts about the extent to which climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions.”
I’m not seeing the point of trying to deny denial.
Jon: The Wikipedia definition is bogus and obviously written by someone who believes in “scientific consensus” as fact, and by assigning “unreasonable doubts” to those that question this authority. No reasoning involved. It could have been written by you or a Sierra Club rep, and was likely submitted by a climate crisis believer, based on assertions and adjectives.
The Cambridge definition seems fairly accurate. Now do the same thing with “climate change skepticism,” where Cambridge says: “Climate change skepticism is the term used to describe doubts about climate change. It can be broken down into two types: epistemic skepticism, which is doubt about the scientific consensus, and response skepticism, which is doubt about the effectiveness of action taken to address climate change.”
Do you understand the difference? There remains a huge gulf between the two. Everybody knows the climate is changing, no denying that. Are people responsible? I’m skeptical of that claim, and also claims of “scientific consensus.” Like Cambridge says.
It must be gratifying to be among the 2 or 3% of scholars who transcend the scientific consensus on humanity’s influence on Earth’s biosphere, right Doc? Let’s hope your insurance company is as confident.
Hi Larry: Thank you for your continued attention. “Gratifying” isn’t the right word for challenging the supposed scientific status quo, it’s just how science works. The results are typically hostile, defensive, and/or costly, but sleep at night is good. Do your job and sometimes it involves getting blisters. My research and resulting opinions remain uninsured, so no problem there.
This adds a little twist to the climate change discussion: “There is little evidence that warming has made the winds more potent, Swain said, but with climate change, California’s dry season is extending into the early winter, when the Santa Ana winds typically take shape. This, he said, “is the key climate change connection to Southern California wildfires.” Daniel Swain is a climate scientist out of UCLA vs John Clauser mentioned in Gordon’s comment, who received a Nobel Prize in quantum mechanics entanglement theory.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/los-angeles-fires-climate-change#:~:text=There%20is%20little%20evidence%20that,connection%20to%20Southern%20California%20wildfires.”
There is the valid point that these conditions in SO Cal have happened before this time of year, but there is also the understanding that climate change causes extreme conditions to occur more frequently. There is a lot to be found on this with an internet search, but here is one:
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/attribution-studies/index.html
I do believe in long-term changes in our climate, it’s been happening since time began. But, to say man is causing most/all of it (as the beneficiaries of tax dollars are proclaiming), and taxing me for carbon is just plain wrong! Our records on weather only go back a hundred fifty or so years. Algorithms developed to dial back in time are situational at best, and influenced by the programmers, so that dog won’t hunt – neither!
So now let’s blame “the beneficiaries of tax dollars” and “the programmers.” Conspiracy theories are a lot easier than science.
Jon, the “science” is there and has been for decades! Housing densities in the burned area are at unacceptable levels, the wildfire preparedness was woefully inadequate, leadership was more concerned over promoting equality – whatever that means and lack of treating those two years of fuel buildups from record precipitation! All these factors are easily identifiable; to claim Santa Anna’s were a surprise just doesn’t hold water….
I had a great friend lost to cancer last year. He was a biometrician and programmer for the FS, at one time. He and I spent many good days toward the end of his life, reliving firefighting “back in the day” and recanting past work. He could take any information – raw data, and make it say whatever output he wanted. Tell me it can’t be done, just prove it for once….
One comment on this article is needed. At this point we don’t have definitive evidence on location of ignitions in these fires. The important point about chaparral is that the fires that destroyed >10,000 homes were not driven by chaparral fuels. Rather the primary fuel appears to be the homes, which is common in high density neighborhoods, and since homes are made of dried materials they are at semi-equalibrium with ambient conditions and since RH was 5% or less, homes were extremely flammable.
Jon: “HEATMAP,” which caters to renewable energy sources, claims chaparral was the initial source of ignition, and then quotes you: “But the L.A. fires didn’t start or spread in a forest. The largest blaze, in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, ignited in a chaparral environment full of shrubs that have been growing for about 50 years. Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, said that’s not enough time for this particular environment to build up an “unnatural accumulation of fuels.””
I would agree with you, though, that the principal cause of these wildfires is an “unnatural accumulation of fuels” — in this case, the close proximity of wooden structures, as in Paradise, Bandon, and Maui, but far more extensive. Connective landscape vegetation may have been a problem as well. Essentially, constructing residential housing on an old prairie or savanna is basically moving massive amounts of dried firewood from a forest into an open landscape. The problem remains fuel management, whether forest, chaparral, or homes.
After the 1906 fire, San Francisco was in such a hurry to rebuild that building and fire codes were largely ignored for several years while emphasis focused on better water supply for firefighting. Subsequent codes and investors favored brick buildings, but then these needed to be made more secure against future earthquakes, and not just fires.
50 year old manzanita patches ARE highly flammable, and burn very hot with that much wind behind it.
I’ve seen what happens when brush species are allowed to flourish, within the Rim Fire. I’ve also seen it within Yosemite National Park. After 30 years, those brush patches are, literally, impenetrable. Those patches within the Rim Fire burned so hot that thinned plantations adjacent were decimated. That 30 year ‘experiment’ has been proven to be a failure. In Yosemite, that ‘experiment’ has been applied to thousands of acres, and we’re seeing a conversion to brush and oak, from pine, fir and cedar.
Thanks, Jon! This reminds me of the Marshall Fire in Colorado.
Interior 4000′ rain shadow desert loses heat to the universe more than low level coastal areas that are warmer. Morning comes , sun rises, solar heating landforms and air. Cold high pressure seeks low pressure warm air. Through mountain passes, colder, denser, heavier air flows downhill, canyons are Venturi makers, flow rate volume increases speed out the deflation plain into coastal valleys, the now compressed cold air warmed by Boyle absorbs water vapor and water while drying fuels. Regular for millions of years. Daily. Exacerbated by cold events on desert, heat anomalies on coastal hills and plains. And for 16,500 years at least, man made fire has added multiple ignition sources Chief Moore advises should be used as opportunity to “use unplanned ignition” for prescribed fire. Insane.
Would work well in Florida. Highest elevation in Florida is 374 feet. California 16,000′ + whatever Mt Whitney is. The topography of CA defeats prescribed fire because heat still rises and the fuels are on steep ground.
Indigenous fire? Major trails were ridge top. Burn the trail as you pass through it. Ease of travel next season. Yes, landscapes could burn. Yes, people had seasonal awareness.
What worked when the interglacial warming began probably is mad man’s work today.
If I were in charge with unlimited funds, I’d go see Cal Tech for a solution. With a time frame limit. Enticement is to advance science and improve humanity. Question? How to get responsible, achievable forest and range fuel control and reduction while saving as much wildlife and habitats possible.
Then carry out the recommendations. No challenges. No appeals. Do it. Accept set backs. Change the design tics. Carry on. All the environmental change was human caused. We proactively are capable of progress. And remember you will never get there demanding 100%. Take 95%, and press forward.
Interesting, John! I think your suggestion (of turning over the fire biz to high tech folks) is being considered, the problem is involving people and yet moving forward.
I don’t know if I posted this link before, but there is a great book on the climate history of California for the last 10,000 years published by UC Press.
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-west-without-water/paper
The author believes in man-caused climate change, but the book is about “natural” climate change in California. The natural climate changes in California make man-caused climate change predictions insignificant in comparison.
Lots of references as you expect. Should be required reading for every forester in the west.
One comment on this statement: “The largest blaze, in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, ignited in a chaparral environment full of shrubs that have been growing for about 50 years. Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, said that’s not enough time for this particular environment to build up an “unnatural accumulation of fuels.””
I left California in 1978 for good, but did get my degree in forestry from Berkeley. I do remember that the chamise stands in southern California came to “full-stocking” and burn potential in about 20 years.
I wrote several papers on different aspects of that ecological type. My thought was good thing I don’t have to solve this problem!!! Even “un-natural” type conversions came with a host of issues and problems.
Somebody with more recent history in southern California should comment on this.
Weaponized wildfire is hardly a new phenomenon so any arsonist with an axe to grind will find the way to unleash one of the oldest tools of war against vulnerable populations.
Christian Nationalists support Donald Trump because they’re convinced he’s the Antichrist who will enable them to conquer the Seven Mountains. The End Times fulfill a prophesy and welcome a supernatural extraterrestrial to create a one-world government. No higher being could be anything but predatory. It’s dystopian fantasy run amok but Trump’s people are broke, broken, disaffected, debt-ridden, desperate and determined to destroy civil society to wipe their slates clean so they can string up the bankers who enslaved them.
It’s just that simple.
Yow. I vowed not to respond to your fevered imagination before, but this is too nutty to let pass. Larry, your statements and hateful bias are ridiculous and have no bearing in reality. It would be great if you could add to the discussion, but this is just silly, bordering on concerning.
Yes, I agree.
And the nutty analysis continues below.
Pot: meet crack.
In 2022 this scribe did a 2000 mile loop to Vermillion, South Dakota where the number of cattle feedlots in Kansas, Nebraska and eastern Colorado draining the Ogallala Aquifer is staggering. The Arkansas River was dry at Dodge City, Kansas and days later Gaia smashed through that entire region covering much of it in dust from haboobs.
That June, thousands of confined feeder cattle valued at some $2000 per head died from unseasonably hot temperatures driven by anthropogenic warming. Ag producers have destroyed shelter belts to plant industrial crops that deplete aquifers and drought blows toxin-laden topsoil into downwind states. Spring wildfire seasons begin in eastern Colorado, western Kansas, the panhandles of Oklahoma, Texas and other Republican-held areas where moral hazard and poor ranching practices routinely decimate the high plains.
Today, the Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer is being depleted six and a half times faster than its recharge rate and nearly all the groundwater sampled from it is contaminated with uranium and nitrates from industrial agriculture. Nebraska is buying land to build a Platte River canal to tap into Colorado’s water. Yet, Republicans in red states are howling because the federal government and states are buying land to protect it from desertification.
Starting on the 25th of February, 2024 dead fuels and drought created by human climate interference, poor farming and ranching practices plus the care less attitudes among the MAGA crowd drove three large wildfires in Oklahoma and the evacuations of some OKC metro areas where fire officials said grass fires were “popping up everywhere.” Forecasters predicted the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas could expect extreme fire seasons that would be thirty days longer than normal as the region warms and eastern red cedar spreads through central Trumpistan. And they weren’t small fires either as the Smokehouse Creek Fire Complex spread over 1.2 million acres of the Republican Texas panhandle where sixty counties faced disaster declarations.
Strong westerly winds and low relative humidity across the southern and central High Plains created conditions where the grassland fire danger indices reached the extreme category as far north as southwestern South Dakota with moderate and high risk for other MAGA-held counties.
And, those same conditions are expected again this year because Republican is simply another word for Earth hater.
Larry, cherry picked information and lack of understanding at what you are seeing! For one, the Arkansas River is already over appropriated in the state of Colorado, meaning – more water is used than there is water in the River. It has some underground flow but the above ground doesn’t exist during watering. And, Colorado is “blue”….
The 2000 head of feeder cattle were the only ones out of MIlLIONS being held in that tri-state region. What happened? No one is saying, but it certainly wasn’t just hot. Google it, read about the temps from surrounding producers and read their perspectives.
As for Oklahoma fires, same thing as Cali; wet years followed by drought, same old broken record!
The Mesa Verdean ancients who occupied the Green Table for nearly a millennium grew to a population of about five thousand creating spectacular architecture and art-of-fact but ultimately consumed every living thing atop Chapin and Wetherill Mesas. Matrilineal and matrilocal, their resulting exodus took them east over the Continental Divide (possibly not for the first time considering their hunter-gatherer past) into the Rio Grande valley and settled Santa Fe where their descendants were all but wiped out by the invading Spanish forces. Puebloans in New Mexico accept their stations as members of the Fourth World. Theirs is a cautionary tale of ecological destruction followed by extirpation: a trophic cascade where human is the apex predator and decimates a landscape.
Rangers at Mesa Verde National Park drive home a narrative of preserving ecosystems to visitors. There are specimens of Rocky Mountain juniper that date to the time of the departure of the puebloans: about eight hundred years old. The bark was used in most of the ways northwest Indigenous cultures used (and still use) it.
Have we reached peak human? Should liberals and progressives just say: “to Hell with biodiversity” and join the Earth haters in a final orgy of death, consumption and/or prayer? Coexist or kill them all and let Gaia sort ’em out?
Just a hundred and fifty years ago bison, wapiti, bighorn sheep, pronghorns and deer cleared the grasses driving fire years on the High Plains and if dry fuels remained in the fall tribes burned the rest.
The Anthropocene is now and time to rewild some of the American West eventually becoming part of a Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell in Montana along the Missouri River through North Dakota to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Pecos River through Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, western Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
Clear the eastern red cedar and second growth conifers then restore aspen habitat, prescribe burns, begin extensive Pleistocene rewilding using bison and cervids, empower tribes, lease private land for wildlife corridors, turn feral horses from Bureau of Land Management pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and buy out the welfare ranchers Tony Dean warned us about.
European settlement and the Industrial Revolution in the New World took hardwoods for charcoal then humans allowed fast-growing conifers to replace lost forests. Desertification driven by agricultural practices, overgrazing, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and urban sprawl have turned much of the United States into scorched earth. So, when modern building materials burn it is climate altering.