Sharon

Hair on Fire (or Not) About Wildfires: Wild Earth Guardians Blast From the Past

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I’ve been thinking about the need to adjust “acres burned” for fire for resource benefits.  Because folks actually use the total acres in climate studies.  If suppression tactics have been changing, then that would need to be integrated into a model (it seems to me) relating weather and climate variables to acres burned. But then are all acres burned “bad”? Maybe we should decide what is meant by “bad” first, and then see if there has been a change in “bad” acres associated with anthropogenic climate change. I’m not saying AGW isn’t a factor; I’m just saying we would understand the complex interactions among fuels, weather, suppression strategies and tactics, ignitions and so on much better if we focused on problematic fires and not counts or acres.

Anyway, if we go back in time, we can see the view that fire suppression itself is a bad thing. Check out this blast from the past- only 10 years ago, a press release from Wild Earth Guardians., posted by Matthew.

As we saw a previous post, suppression folks are doing pretty well in the SW at managing for resource benefits. WEG also mentioned “breathless reporters gave statistics of ever increasing acreages of devastated forestland.” Maybe it’s not as scary as portrayed. Maybe the AGW signal is small compared to other factors. Maybe the FS and WEG are in agreement on this. Like prescribed fire, though, to have social license to manage for resource benefit the FS needs to have a good track record, preferably locally. To do that perhaps sometimes fires need lots of resources. I’m not going to second-guess playing it safe.

New Mexico experienced several expensive fires early this summer, the largest was the Silver Fire covering nearly 217 square miles in the Black Range. Fire costs in the U.S. have topped $1 billion so far this year; less than last year’s $1.9 billion, but the fire season is not over. The Thompson Ridge fire alone cost $16,326,136 before it was declared contained. Rising plumes of smoke could be seen on the horizon of Santa Fe and Albuquerque and breathless reporters gave statistics of ever increasing acreages of devastated forestland.

But, the numbers tell a different story. The four major fires in New Mexico this summer covered a total of 184,024 acres or nearly 288 square miles, but just 16% of that area burned at high severity. In all 213,289 acres have burned to date in New Mexico. While there is still a chance for late season fires, the total burned area for 2013 is significantly less than the 372,497 acres burned in 2012.

“Once the smoke cleared, the environmental benefits of the 2013 fire season were obvious,” Said Bryan Bird, Wild Places Director for WildEarth Guardians. “Though flooding is always a risk, these fires do more to clear fuels and reduce fire hazard than we could do with mechanical treatments and a large chunk of the federal budget.”

Burn Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams take action immediately after fires to analyze the area within the burn perimeter and take action to minimize immediate damage from flooding, which can have severe consequences downstream. The BAER teams measure fire severity to analyze the loss of organic matter from the forest. In areas of low fire severity ground litter is charred or consumed, but tree canopies remain mostly unburned and the top layer of soil organic matter remains unharmed. Areas of moderate severity have a higher percentage of both crown and soil organic matter consumed. Areas of high severity have lost all or most of tree canopy organic matter and soil organic matter is wholly consumed.

The numbers reported by the BAER teams for the 2013 fire season in New Mexico put into perspective the burn results. Of all acres within fire boundaries over 10,000 acres this summer, 59% (109,290 acres) were ranked as unburned or low severity. Another 24% (44,880 acres) was moderate severity. Finally, just 16% (29,125 acres) burned at high severity.

The Joroso Fire, located in the Pecos Wilderness, burned primarily in mature Spruce Fir stands with high levels of wind blown material. These conditions create an environment where high severity burns are much more likely than the other fires, so it is instructive to remove it from summary statistics. When removing this fire from the analysis the overall numbers demonstrate even less severe effects on the vegetation: 61% remained unburned or burned at low intensity, 25% burned at moderate severity, and only 13% burned at high severity.

Fire fighting in the United Sates has become a very costly endeavor. While most fires are extinguished quickly, it is the very small portion of wildfires that are not immediately controlled and result in significant financial burdens to states and the federal government. Already this year the Forest Service has exhausted its fire-fighting budget and has had to tap other budget line items. And yet, it is not clear that committing such resources is necessary or beneficial when human life and property are not immediately at risk.

“Fire is an essential process in western forests and we cannot eliminate it. Resources need to be reserved for protecting lives, not supporting huge operations in the backcountry.” Said Bird. “We can fire proof communities, but we cannot fire proof the forest.”

Current Status of the Boundary Waters Motorized Towboat Controversy

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A towboat operator tied a canoe to an overhead rack ahead of taking a camping party into the BWCA. TONY KENNEDY, STAR TRIBUNE

Ah.. Wilderness.  Based on the ongoing discussion here, I looked up the Act and at amendments.

There seems to be a 1978 amendment on the Boundary Waters that said existing motorized boat use could continue.

Then I looked up the current status and it looks like there is a court case to reduce the number of motorized towboats.

“Older visitors and visitors with limited mobility-use towboats, and an injunction would risk reducing these visitors’ opportunities to experience the BWCAW,” Brasel wrote in her 27-page decision on the injunction. “Moreover, a total ban would likely disrupt Forest Service’s work of gathering and analyzing data regarding motorboat and towboat usage.”

The judge had ordered Wilderness Watch and the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the BWCAW, to work out an agreement on towboat use before a trial is held. But the two sides so far haven’t been able to agree on how much use is too much, and Brasel said she wouldn’t make that ruling at this point.

“Because the record is completely muddled as to how such a limit should be calculated, the Court declines to pick what would be an arbitrary number,” Brasel noted. “But a limit may be appropriate upon a further‐developed record.”

To me,  it seems like the court case should start a public process in deciding how many boats and where, with NEPA and public comment.  Such  decisions, about federal lands,  would be best informed by all the experiences, views and research that can be brought to bear not a few folks in a closed room. That’s how it often works.. litigation kicks off a public process, and doesn’t replace one.

Some Info from the NICC Wildland Fire Summary and Statistics Annual Report 2022

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Here’s the 2022 NICC Wildland Fire Summary and Statistics Annual Report.
If you want to look at their tables, it helps to know their abbreviations.. so here’s a map.

This one raises some questions about more starts and average acres, maybe to be answered later.

It looks like annual wildfire acres burned is not necessarily jumping up from year to year. Also, 2022 had above average number of fires and below average acres, which might be due to the fire suppression folks doing good work. There may be elements of weather and resource “good luck,” as well. As far as I know, all these acres include WFU acres.

Since each region is different, this one shows more (above average count) of wildfires in the Southeast, and more acres burned in Alaska.

Later in the report is a great deal of information on the management of fires and resources that might be of interest to other TSW readers.

To Intervene, or Not to Intervene? The Case of Isle Royale, Wolves and Moose

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A pack of wolves after they killed a moose at Michigan’s Isle Royale National Park. (January 24, 2023) AP Photo/Rolf Peterson, Michigan Technological University.

AP had an interesting story about the reintroduction of wolves on Isle Royale, a National Park that is an island. Wolves apparently had only been there since the 1940’s. Even in Wilderness, there are disagreements about when intervention should occur and to what end.

Scientists believe the island’s first moose swam to Isle Royale around the turn of the 20th century. Wolves arrived in the late 1940s, apparently crossing the frozen lake surface from Minnesota or the Canadian province of Ontario. Though technically part of Michigan, that state’s shores are farther away.

Moose provided an ample food supply for the wolves, which in turn helped keep moose numbers in check. Both populations rose and fell over the years, influenced by disease, weather, parasites and other factors. But inbreeding finally took its toll on the wolves, whose numbers plummeted between 2011 and 2018.

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The scientists’ annual report, based largely on aerial observations last winter, estimated the rebuilt population at 31 wolves— up from 28 last year. It said the wolves appeared to be forming three packs, with others wandering alone or in smaller groups. The moose total was roughly 967, down from 1,346 last year and 54% decline from about 2,000 in 2019. Ecologists are celebrating what they hope will be a healthier herd.

“It’s been hugely successful,” said study co-leader Sarah Hoy, a research assistant professor and animal ecologist. “That’s what everyone was hoping for.”

But the early results haven’t settled a debate over whether people should rescue struggling species at Isle Royale or other designated wilderness areas, where federal law calls for letting nature take its course.

“We have felt and still believe that the National Park Service should not have intervened and set up this artificial population of wolves,” said Kevin Proescholdt, conservation director for the advocacy group Wilderness Watch.

Some experts said they should be allowed to die out, as have other species that once occupied the island, including Canada lynx and woodland caribou, which had the same predator-prey relationship as today’s wolves and moose.

“Species come and species go,” Proescholdt said, arguing that the federal Wilderness Act “directs us to let nature call the shots and not impose our human desires.”

Park officials and Michigan Tech scientists contend the absence of a top-of-the-food-chain predator of moose and beaver would have been ruinous for the island’s forest. Even now, its balsam firs continue to deteriorate from moose browsing and an attack of tree-killing spruce budworm, the report said.

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The moose population’s 28% drop from 2022 is one of the biggest one-year collapses ever seen at the park, it said. While wolf predation is partly responsible, necropsies indicate the biggest cause was starvation from overpopulation.

Even though relatively few moose calves appear to be surviving to adulthood, there’s no reason to worry about the moose’s immediate future, Michigan Tech biologist Rolf Peterson said. They’ve fallen to 400-500 before and bounced back. But the warming climate, tick infestations and other long-term challenges will remain.

For now, the park’s ecosystem is getting healthier thanks to the wolves’ return, he said, suggesting the decision to intervene was correct.

“The old hands-off approach to managing national parks, figuring everything will turn out OK, is probably not sufficient,” Peterson said. “Our footprint is all over the entire globe.”

If hands-off is not sufficient for National Parks, then, why would we think it is for Forest Service or BLM? Or perhaps it’s not a question of hands-offness so much as who gets to decide when to be hands-on and for what reasons.

Not All Acres Burned Are Bad Nor Due to Climate Change- White House Factsheet Misses Region 3 WFU Successes

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Wooden Corral sustains no damage from the Pass Fire
Firefighters strategically used fire to reduce the existing fuel load as the Pass Fire approached the area, which saved the wooden corral structure.

So, wildfires used to be bad. Enter Smokey Bear.  But we wised up and discovered that we need to live with fire, and if we don’t want to have destructive wildfires, we need to manage fuels on landscapes including using prescribed fire and wildland fire use (see photo above). But as far as I can tell, if we’re not careful, we mix up WFU acres with “true” wildfire acres, and then use the total in statements about wildfires and climate.  And if we do, we’re back where we started, assuming all wildfires are bad. Let’s not do that.

Or we could use numbers of wildfires like the EPA..

 

Is number of wildfires an indicator of climate change? Seems like before you made that claim you would have to separate human ignitions from lightning..

We hear that (1) wildfires are caused by (anthropogenic contributions to) climate change.  And yet we know that not to be true, in a plain English sense of causality, as wildfires have long predated humans.  If we pushed back, we might hear (2) “wildfires are made more likely due several factors, one being an increased frequency in some weather conditions conducive to wildfires and those that make firefighting more difficult, some or all of which is due to anthropogenic climate change (AGW).” So how does 2, which I think most of us agree on, mutate into 1? Sloppy public affairs folks?

Here’s what the White House said on June 8

More than 100 million Americans are under Air Quality Index Alerts due to smoke drift from historic wildfire activity throughout Canada, which is facing one of its worst wildfire seasons on record.  There are over 425 active wildfires in Canada and nearly 10 million acres have burned, 17 times the 20-year average.  Since January 1, 2023, 19,574 wildfires have burned 616,486 acres across the United States.  Most current large fire activity in the United States is concentrated in the Southwest.

These latest events are another stark reminder of how the climate crisis is disrupting communities across the country. That’s why from day one President Biden recognized climate change as one of the four crises facing our nation, and why he made historic investments to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen community resilience.

So I suppose you can pivot from the Canadian fires to climate change but the US story is not exactly pivotable.    And here’s what NIFC said on June 22, 2023 about the US.

Since January 1, 22,052 wildfires have burned 636,031 acres across the United States. These numbers are below the 10-year average of 25,006 wildfires and 1,478,575 acres burned.(my bold)

But to further complicate things, some of these fires here (and in Canada) are being managed for resource benefits.. or whatever the current terminology is.. (thanks to the Hotshot Wakeup for info on the Pass Fire) so more acres (without destroying things of ecological or human value) are actually a good thing. That’s what our folks have trained for, and what we all want done. As far as I know.

The largest fire is the Pass Fire in NM that shows 55, 683 acres as of today.

The overall strategy on the Pass Fire is to allow the low to moderate intensity of the fire to play its natural role on the landscape as firefighters take appropriate actions to keep the fire within the designated planned boundaries while protecting private land, infrastructure, and natural resources. The Gila National Forest is a fire-adapted ecosystem. It is dependent on fire to play a natural role in restoring the landscape to more natural conditions while preventing the occurrence of extreme fires in the future.

So for this fire, the largest one currently on the board, lots of acres are a good thing, attributed to good management and possibly to some good luck with weather conditions.

NIFC on the 22nd had this one, the Pulp Road fire, at 15,642, I think it’s at 16K or more now.
This fire was an escaped prescribed fire by the North Carolina Forest Service. Escapes tend to be caused by other things than AGW, but perhaps AGW could play a role.. we’ll have to see what the investigation discovers. Anyway, for this one acreage over the target is a bad thing, but dubiously attributed to climate change.

The next largest is the 10,279 Wilbur Fire on the Coconino

The Wilbur Fire is being managed with multiple strategies to meet suppression and resource objectives. Those objectives include the release of nutrients back into the soil and the reduction of hazardous fuel accumulations. Objectives also include protecting critical infrastructure, watersheds, wildlife habitat and culturally sensitive areas from future catastrophic wildfires.

Again, more acres here are good.  I wonder if there’s a place where WFU acres are tracked separately from total acres, or how difficult that is to do. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a table that included:

Prescribed fire acres

Wildfire Use Acres

Unintentional Wildfire Acres

The sum of the above two (WUA plus UWA)  would be the total wildfire acres.

Then the Unintentional Wildfire Acres (or True Wildfire Acres) could be broken down by

Lightning

Human  with subcategories that included:

Escaped prescribed fires

Escaped WFU fires.

Arson

Accidents by individuals

Equipment (powerlines etc.)

Or maybe that table already exists somewhere?

For now, it’s June, the season’s off to a slow start here in the US, and let’s celebrate the folks who are successfully using managed wildfire!

Friday News Round-up: Wind vs. Environment and Politicians From Different Parties Agreeing

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From left to right, Siemens Energy North America President Rich Voorberg, Utah Office of Energy Director Gregory Todd, Colorado Energy Office Advisor James Lester, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Gov. Mark Gordon and Nevada Office of Energy Director Dwyane McClinton participate in a groundbreaking ceremony June 20, 2023 for the TransWest Express transmission line in Carbon County. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile)

We’ve been covering the tension between protectionist interests and renewable energy developers.
Here’s a few more.

1. Prairie-Chicken Listing Expected to Put Wind Farms in Crosshairs
At TSW we can’t afford a subscription to Bloomberg Law but here’s the link for those who have access. Definitely sounds interesting.

A Biden administration proposal to list the lesser prairie-chicken as endangered in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico could stymie oil and gas development in the largest U.S. petroleum basin, environmental attorneys say.

And one warns it could devastate another energy source—wind power.

2.  Wind turbines dry soil in Chinese grasslands.

Paper by Wang et al. open access.

 Our research shows that the operation of wind turbines will cause significant drying of soil, and this drought effect differs significantly according to season and wind direction. Our results show that 1) the soil moisture within wind farms decreases most significantly, with a decrease of 4.4 % observed; 2) in summer and autumn, the declines in soil moisture in the downwind direction are significantly greater than those in the upwind direction, with the opposite occurring in spring. (3) Wind farms aggravate the soil drying in grassland areas, which may have impacts on grassland ecosystems. Therefore, when building wind farms, we need to better understand their impacts on the environment.

I’m not pointing this out to say “wind turbines are bad”; more to say that this is one piece of information that has not yet been included in future models.  With the quantity of wind turbines some project, they themselves will  have impacts on climate and need to be included in models. But we don’t know how many there will be, nor exactly the impacts.  And so it goes…

A Special TSW Feature.. Members of Both Parties Agree on..

3,  New Transmission Lines Should Take Less Than 12 Years to Get Approved and… Climate Urgency

Thanks to reporter Dustin Bleizeffer of Wyofile- the whole story is interesting. Mark Gordon is the R Governor of Wyoming.

 

Though Gordon and the Interior officials often clash on energy and federal land use policy fronts, they all hailed TransWest Express — as well as the Chokecherry Sierra Madre wind energy project that will energize the line with 3,000 megawatts of power — as vital steps toward boosting clean energy to help address a climate emergency.

“We know that the time to act on climate is now,” Haaland said. “From coastal towns and rural farms to urban centers and tribal communities, climate change poses an existential threat. Not just to our environment, but to our health, our communities and our economic well being.”

“Gathered here,” Gordon said, “we see the first steps that we’re taking to make sure that we take the action that’s absolutely necessary to keep us from climate peril.”

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“Because there is an urgency as we see climate change, we know that we don’t have time to waste,” Gordon said. “We have to move with diligence forward to make sure that we address the issue of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with alacrity and diligence and with dedication.”

4.   We Should Use Current Information in Decisions and Note Conflicts of Interest

Roger Pielke, Jr. testified at a Congressional hearing. You can read about it on his Substack.

Here’s a place of agreement as well.

Specifically, I referred to the misuse of outdated climate scenarios and our old friends RCP8.5 and RCP4.5, which you can read about in more detail below. Readers here will know that outdated climate scenarios are a big problem.

For me, it was notable that my testimony was favorably received by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) on the right and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) Tim Caine (D-VA) on the left.

In fact, in his closing remarks Senator Whitehouse read from a recent post The Honest Broker on conflicts of interest in climate research:

Experts monetizing their expertise is one important reason why people become experts, and there is no problem with people seeking to make a buck. But where expertise and financial interests intersect, things can get complicated. That is why there are robust mechanisms in place for the disclosure and mitigation of financial conflicts of interest . . . All of this is just common sense. Your doctor can’t prescribe you drugs from a company that pays him fees. You wouldn’t think much of a report on smoking and health from a researcher supported by the tobacco industry.

In case you wonder what that has to do with climate, it turns out that some papers defending RCP 8.5 happen to be from people in consulting firms whose models are based on 8.5 and are advising their clients based on 8.5.  Which is not wrong, necessarily, as Whitehouse says, but needs to be disclosed.

The TSW Fair Reporting Award Nominations Requested- Stories on the Proposed BLM Public Lands Regulation

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From this Pew study https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/07/13/u-s-journalists-differ-from-the-public-in-their-views-of-bothsidesism-in-journalism/

First, I’d like to express my disappointment with the journalism community on this topic. There are many interesting things in the Proposed Rule, but it’s like news sometimes is simply a springboard to a Preferred Narrative. So we haven’t heard much about the complexity of peoples’ views, especially since the recent House hearing, where partisans pontificated about it. Our friends at the Center for Western Priorities posted three stories this morning that basically said it’s a great thing for people who have our interests (obviously all right-thinking people) and Republicans are bad. Oh, and we have zero skepticism about what this Administration says, even though politicos have never been famous for telling the truth.

“Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?”- Voltaire.

The star who stands out so far is Sammy Roth of the LA Times who received or found the solar industry’s comments. And that was a great find. But I’m looking for something deeper. And I can’t find all the possible contestants for this award without the help of TSW readers.

So.. I am proposing the TSW Fair Reporting Award. I will send the beverage of choice, and the honor of being the first recipient of the TSW Fair Reporting Award, to the reporter who, in the view of me and other TSW readers, does the best job of presenting a variety of views on the Proposed Rule fairly, as well as digging below the surface. We’re hosting this in the hope of helping people write their public comments in a meaningful way, other than saying “it’s swell the way it is” or “it’s the worst thing ever.” Extra points for interviewing people not on an obvious side.. not ranchers, oil and gas folks, ENGOs and so on. We exist and have opinions, and maybe the story would look different if our voices were heard.

Nominations of reporters and stories are open below, and you will all get to weigh in them openly in the comments. We can potentially add criteria as well. We may disagree on how well different stories meet the criteria, and that conversation will be interesting as well. I reserve the right to make the final decision, as, well someone has to and it might as well be me. And if we round up some excellent stories, we can give out more than one award.

Also, if anyone knows anyone of the philanthropic persuasion, and actually anyone is welcome to sweeten the reward pot.

What could be more to our democracy than quality, fair reporting on complex issues; reporting that takes a more than superficial look at the claims and views of both “sides”?

Two Exploratory Mining Projects in Arizona: One Litigated, One Streamlined with FAST-41

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This photo claims to be an exploration drilling rig for mining. Any better photos, please submit!

From E&E News:

Environmental groups are suing the Forest Service to halt mineral exploration in Arizona’s remote and biologically diverse
Patagonia Mountains.
The legal fight is playing out in close proximity to a separate mineral project the Biden administration hopes to fast-track. Groups including the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition, the Center for Biological Diversity and Earthworks filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, challenging the agency’s approval of the Sunnyside and Flux Canyon exploratory mineral drilling projects.
The legal challenge zeroes in on the Forest Service’s approval earlier this month of exploratory drilling in an area of the Coronado National Forest that the groups say contains nesting and foraging sites for the threatened Mexican spotted owl and Western yellow-billed cuckoo, as well as habitat for endangered jaguars and ocelots. The Forest Service said it does not comment on ongoing litigation and referred questions about the lawsuit to the Department of Justice, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to the lawsuit, Arizona Standard LLC, a subsidiary of Barksdale Capital Corp., a Canadian metals exploration company, would be able to drill up to 30 new well pads to look for copper, lead, zinc and silver. Separately, the agency approved the Flux Canyon project, which would allow Arizona Minerals Inc., a Nevada-based corporation held by South32 Ltd., an Australian mining and metals company, to develop more well pads to identify silver, lead and zinc deposits.
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The lawsuit also says that the cumulative impacts of such drilling projects would “transform this mostly undeveloped landscape with a constant disruption of noise, lights, dust, human activity, and vehicle traffic for the foreseeable future.” The Forest Service’s conclusion that the Sunnyside project didn’t require a full environmental impact study and that Flux Canyon required no environmental assessment is “arbitrary and unlawful,” the groups said.
“These oversights, omissions, misreadings, and failures violated NEPA,” attorneys for the groups wrote in the lawsuit. The Patagonia Mountains are also home to a separate mining project that the federal government is fast-tracking, which environmental groups say adds to the cumulative impacts on vulnerable species.
The Biden administration in May announced it is moving to expedite the review and approval of a manganese and zinc mine in southern Arizona, South32 Hermosa’s $1.7 billion underground mine and processing plant. “It’s clear these cumulative impacts will be significant for wildlife,” said Laiken Jordahl, an advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Here’s a link to the description of the FAST-41 for the South32 Hermosa mine.

Does anyone know whether the litigation process is different for Fast-41 projects?

Introducing the Climate-Model Burger and Friedman’s Law of Disciplinary Symmetry

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I was surprised by the intensity of the discussion around the wildfire post. I don’t think we’re going to solve the “how dire is the climate situation and what is the best policy solution?” here in the humble TSW world. However, we can talk about what we know about, that is, forests.

First, there seemed to be a tendency to attack Cliff Maas’s views on bad meteorological luck being a component of what made wildfire smoke go to New York.  I’d like to bring up two ideas here. One was the concept that a meteorologist doesn’t know about climate.

Are weather and climate related?  Here’s what NASA says

“The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time.”

NOAA has a page about it as part of the National Centers for Environmental Information. (If the USG ever needs to save money, they might want to look at duplication of efforts among agencies in the climate/environmental arena).

Though they are closely related, weather and climate aren’t the same thing. Climate is what you expect. Weather is what actually happens.

Let me invoke Friedman’s Law of Disciplinary Symmetry, which states, “if two or more disciplines are necessary to understand a phenomenon, then neither can be invoked as the sole source of scientific authority or knowledge on that phenomenon.”

This is equally true for wildfires. We can imagine that meteorology, the different fire sciences, plant scientists (what plants are there in what complexes and fuel conditions?) plus practitioners should all be involved in discussions of both “why did this happen?” and “what will happen in the future” .
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The Climate-Model Burger

I developed the Climate Burger analogy trying to explain to people how climate models work, and why some people (including me) are skeptical of some of the confidence placed in them for real-world predictions (not research use). I’d like to have an analogy that incorporates the linear process, so if you can think of one, please post in the comments. Also if you have questions or clarifications. It’s pretty simplified.

When people talk about climate modelling, they tend to talk about the whole burger. But it’s really composed of three layers. First there’s the

bottom bun.

Those are the assumptions that go in to projecting future CO2 levels, land use, and other factors that go into the meat layer. This includes economic models and various combos of assumptions. Some of us are leery of economic models, and economists themselves tend to be humble about projections. I think this is the point where some skeptics leave the discussion especially older folks from different fields. Back in the old days, you couldn’t be more certain of a projection than the uncertainties within each variable you used to estimate it. (There are mathematical ways of stating this from statistics that engineers and others learn). When people talk about RCP 4.5 or 8.5 or whatever, they are talking about the assumptions in the bottom bun.

The meat

This takes the CO2 and other variables from the bottom bun and runs them through atmospheric models, which tell us things like future global temperatures. This is the true realm of climate modeling, and most of the people we think of as “real climate scientists” work in this arena.

I honestly have no clue about the atmospheric physics assumptions. I do know that I once asked if modellers did sensitivity analysis on the assumptions (in a meeting at the Temple of Modeling, NCAR in Boulder) and the scientist we spoke with said it was too complicated to do that..that there wasn’t enough computing power available. Perhaps that’s not true or has changed.

The top bun

The top bun then takes those outputs and translates them into impacts. But there are at least two serious problems with the way this is done.

1. Impacts to plants and hence to animals, and to fuel conditions, are actually a function of microscale changes (imagine a tree on a north slope versus a south slope- in the same climate, those are very different micro-environments as perceived by trees- hence in Colorado we can see different species on each aspect). We don’t really understand (1) the environment as a tree perceives it (2) how that might change (3) how much plasticity an organism has to changes (4) how those changes would influence predators, diseases, mycorrhizal associations and their interaction (4) conditions for establishment of seedlings (5) genetic variability of seedlings and so on.

(Note: I’ll point out here that some people feel that you don’t need to understand those things to understand the broader picture- that’s a philosophy of science question we can discuss at greater length.)

2. Impacts are also a function of human beings.. the very same human beings who were working with the environment prior to climate change projections. So.. people can plant trees. People can fight wildfire with different suppression strategies. People can and do develop new firefighting technologies. But these are not possible to enter into models. So.. most impacts don’t consider “adaptation” at all. Like projecting wildfires without fire suppression; or going backward in time. Modeling fuels of the past, but not changes in suppression strategies and technologies. Or in agriculture, the existence of plant breeders or switching

To me, where “the emperor has no clothes” is in the top bun. Yes, the assumptions in the bottom bun are probably not very accurate either. One of my unpopular ideas is to away with them and just talk about potential future concentrations. Then policy makers could talk about different ways to get to the desired concentrations with all their possibilities and imaginations open.. without the sidebars and assumptions of the RCP’s. I think that would clarify discussions greatly and make the trade-offs clearer.

Clearly, the top bun as it is today privileges certain sources of information (biophysical modeling) over other scientific disciplines (fire scientists, practitioners, meteorologists, agronomists, forest ecologists, social scientists and so on) not to speak of practitioners (water managers, fire suppression folks and so on). I’m not the only person who thinks this.. there’s quite a list of disgruntled disciplines and practitioners, if you listen.

But don’t believe me! Here’s some earth scientists saying some of the same things in Earth Science-ese

Note that the concept of Siirila-Woodburn et al. paper in Nature Reviews was to characterize uncertainty and suggest ways of dealing with it.

And from the same paper:

Making science usable for decision- making requires strong trust between the parties 245. This trust often develops over deliberate, long- term collaboration 246, with mutual understanding of the science, models and tools being discussed and demonstration of the credibility, saliency and legitimacy of the new approach(es) 247. Institutional, technical and financial capacity to implement these approaches must also be overcome 233. Scientists must also recognize that practitioners are often directly responsible, sometimes even personally liable, for the outcomes of decisions made, which makes them hesitant in the application of new climate science 236, especially if perceived as not fitting with existing knowledge or policy goals 233,248.A path forward can be made by including Earth scientists, infrastructure experts, decision scientists, water management practitioners and community stakeholders, in a collaborative, iterative process of scientific knowledge creation through a co- production framework 41,42,249,250. This process helps to ensure that new science is suited to challenges at hand and can provide meaningful input into decision- making processes.

And..

Thus, at the same time that science evolves to increase predictive understanding of the mechanisms of hydroclimatic change, management practice must evolve to accommodate uncertainty regarding the changing patterns of current and future hydrologic variability. Developing a robust strategy and selecting investment options that balance competing societal objectives and multisectoral interactions (such as the interaction among water and energy 186 or water and carbon 207 reduction goals) requires new approaches to integrate water resource planning. Frameworks and planning methods for decision- making under deep uncertainty that acknowledge and accommodate imperfect knowledge regarding the probabilistic range of possible future conditions such as decision scaling 241, robust decision- making, dynamic adaptation pathways 242 and scenario planning can identify scientifically informed adaptive strategies that leverage best available science without overstating its confidence 243.

But back to the Climate-Model Burger..what do you think of this analogy? How could it be improved?