There’s a fellow Coloradan named Tisha Schuller who has a podcast called “Both things are true.” I’d like to point that out about what we might call the climate-industrial complex. Both things are true: decarbonization is indeed a worthy goal, and large sums of funding cause people to try to cash in, as Hoffer. As far as I can tell they do that by actually help decarbonize (engineering), develop complicated financial instruments to move funds around while folks rake off money at each stage (e.g. cap and trade), and make claims that things they always wanted to do they’re now doing for climate reasons (planting trees in urban areas, and so-called “natural climate solutions.) And I suppose the business/grift distinction is somewhat in the eye of the beholder.
In case you haven’t been following this, Roger Pielke, Jr. has been writing about the apparent unwillingness or slowness of many in the climate community to redo their work based on RCP 8.5.
Back in 2000 the SRES authors warned us:
“The broad consensus among the SRES writing team is that the current literature analysis suggests the future is inherently unpredictable and so views will differ as to which of the storylines and representative scenarios could be more or less likely. Therefore, the development of a single “best guess” or “business-as-usual” scenario is neither desirable nor possible.”
Today, RCP8.5 is deeply woven into the fabric of climate research and policy. Getting back on track will not be easy or without opposition. Understanding how we got here should provide a cautionary warning for how science can go astray when we allow self-correction to fail.
So when I say this headline, I was intrigued.
Only the most extreme climate models should be used to plan for future wildfire risk, study finds
Here’s what the Wildfire Today story says…
Carbon project insurance company Artio used data from three major wildfire events from across the globe, specifically the 2020 Pantanal fires in Brazil, the Gospers Mountain fire during Australia’s Black Summer in 2019-2020, and the record-breaking 2020 wildfire season in the United States.
The firm found that the amount of area burned in each of the fires was only predicted by severe warming scenarios. More moderate climate warming scenarios missed around half of the land that ultimately burned during the incidents.
The finding underscores how projects working to lessen wildfire severity globally may already be outdated, according to Artio CEO and Co-Founder Bilal Hussain.
“The main risk is that projects are designed for a climate that no longer exists,” Hussain told Wildfire Today. “Using outdated assumptions can result in projects being sited in areas that are now far more fire-prone, threatening the permanence of stored carbon and the credibility of nature-based solutions as meaningful climate tools.”
If you go to the link for the study’s “details” you find an infographic that is almost shorter than the news story. The company that did the report is called Artio and it “provides early-stage insurance for investments in carbon projects.” They apparently insure carbon credits (see graphic).
It was terrific while it lasted; folks could make money from selling carbon credits and other folks could make money from insuring the carbon credits.. and some from checking that the carbon credits behaved the way they should. Of course, there have been obvious conflicts of interest (and some not so obvious, check out Jessica Weinkle in a piece at the Breakthrough Journal, section about COI).
Meanwhile, other people are working on physical problems and solutions, as shown at the recent Red Sky Summit.
You can check out various technologies at Wildfire Today’s Innovation tab.
Yes, the military industrial complex is involved, as a commenter pointed out.
Ridiculous. A continuation of our military industrial complex fight against the wildfire problem we have created. How about you use those six figures of cost per year to reduce fuel loads around communities and use prescribed fire to maintain reduced fuel loads and restore ecosystem processes?
I don’t know why some people assume the worst. I think it’s more of a both/and rather than an either/or.
Enhanced technological suppression would be good in terms of initial attack, firefighter safety and so on. I don’t think anyone is saying fuels projects and prescribed fire would be gone if we got better at suppression.
Getting better at suppression could also mean people would be more accepting of PF and MF if suppression worked better (fewer escapes). And folks would have to be more upfront about which fires to suppress and which to use MF because “we couldn’t get there” and “it’s not safe” might be off the table. And AI (overseen carefully by human beings) might add some value.
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But perhaps the strangest thing about all of this is how the climate/wildfire folks are planning things to get worse, and the wildfire technology folks are planning to make things better. They’re both making money, but only one side can be right about the future.
“The firm found that the amount of area burned in each of the fires was only predicted by severe warming scenarios. More moderate climate warming scenarios missed around half of the land that ultimately burned during the incidents.
The finding underscores how projects working to lessen wildfire severity globally may already be outdated, according to Artio CEO and Co-Founder Bilal Hussain.”
Maybe not surprisingly, I went a different direction with this (emphasis on “only” predicted) – it supports the view that reducing fuels is not going to reduce extreme fire, and suggests a need for more honesty about what fuel treatments can be expected to accomplish, which may affect the rationale for doing some of them.
That would include rephrasing “wildfire technology folks are planning to make this better” as “wildfire technology folks are planning to make this less worse.”
I agree that the incentives in our economic system are driving private profits, and public benefits are mostly incidental (and often need government incentives).
Well this is one of those things…”extreme fire”.. is that “extreme fire behavior”? Or “Extreme fire effects on .. soils? wildlife? communities? To take this study to any practical level, they would have to be more explicit.
We can all think of specific areas.. like mine, there is only grass and it can only get so dry. Wind is the biggest problem with spread and suppression, and yet wind is not a function of climate change (according to the IPCC). Maybe there would be more days where it would be dry and increase the likelihood of wildfire, but that’s not the “extreme” in terms of effects.
Having read many tedious EA and CE documentation, they tend to use current research to explain impacts of fuel treatment projects. I don’t know what you mean by “honest”?
I used the word “extreme” to encompass what they call “major wildfire events.” What I mean by “honest” is telling people that whatever projects they do (and I guess we are talking about both fuel reduction and carbon storage) are only going to be effective under certain conditions (and the likelihood of those occurring). I’ll admit I don’t know how much “dishonesty” is occurring.