Right on cue, CBS news 60 minutes is expected link the recent California fires to “global warming”. Never mind that the fire was caused by arson, or that the area hadn’t burned in 40-60 years, leading up to a collection of dry dead underbrush which is part of the natural fire cycle. Never mind that La Nina made for a dry couple of years exacerbating the problem. Never mind that we get fires in California about this time every year. No, its the “Age of Megafires”:
THE AGE OF MEGAFIRES – Global warming is increasing the intensity and number of forest fires across the American West. Scott Pelley goes to the fire line to report. David Gelber and Joel Bach are the producers. Watch a preview http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5285410n
UPDATE: WUWT reader Jason writes to tell us that this story is a rerun, and originally aired in 2007. See it here. I’ll bet the intro will mention the California fires though. They may have even “freshened up” the report a bit for the current situation.
I wonder if CBS borrowed the title from the Christian Science Monitor 2007 report?
Here is a top 20 report from CDF, note that they poo-poo 1932. Note also that there were quite a number of 100,00+ acre fires more than 10 years ago, directly contradicting the interview in the CBS trailer.
NYT was saying it is all getting worse back in 1996. Curiously though, you won’t find a single mention of “global warming” or “climate change” in that story. It was all about forest management issues:
But the recent methods used to control the growth of Western forests has also been blamed. In view of this summer’s debacle, debate is intensifying on how to better manage these forests.
Loggers correlate today’s wildfires with a Federally mandated cut in timber harvests from national forests, from a peak of 12 billion board feet a year in the 1980’s to about 4 billion this year.
…
But after World War II, a Smokey the Bear ethic took hold in the West, and total fire suppression became a national goal. Without regular low-level fires, Western forests grew dense, and massive amounts of fuel built up.
Today, when a Western forest ignites, it often explodes with a force unknown in earlier times. Racing from tree crown to tree crown, fires last longer and travel farther.
Scott Pelley is the same reporter that went to Antarctic in 2007 at the height of the melt season to tell us that “Antarctica is Melting”. They called that one the “The Age of Warming” Of course Scott never told his viewers that it was the peak melt season or that Antarctic ice is above normal.
And finally, never mind that 100 years ago, we didn’t have CNN or 60 minutes or “Action News” to regularly scare us to death with dramatic visual linkages. Back then, fire were just another part of the natural landscape.
From my perspective , we live in the “Age of MegaFUD“
The number of wildfire ignitions has been dropping for 20 years. In 1988 there were 154,573 fires. In 2008 there were 80,094 — approximately half that. At the same time, the average acres per fire has risen. Here are the federal wildfire counts, average size, and fire suppression appropriations from the National Interagency Fire Center and other sources:
year #fires ac/fire Appropriations($1,000’s)
2008 80,094 66 1,943,477
2007 86,168 113 1,823,603
2006 96,385 103 1,746,091
2005 66,552 131 2,128,487
2004 77,534 88 2,347,040
2003 85,943 57 1,370,967
2002 88,458 78 1,560,349
2001 84,079 42 1,262,346
2000 122,827 69 849,755
1999 93,702 60 664,176
1998 81,043 29 586,559
1997 89,517 41 830,016
1996 115,025 58 484,591
1995 130,019 18 951,101
1994 114,049 41 369,061
1993 97,031 24 479,362
1992 103,830 24 317,669
1991 116,953 19 430,468
1990 122,763 44 498,700
1989 121,714 27 606,446
1988 154,573 48 417,632
More interesting info. Human-caused fires are down, but lightning starts are about the same. Over the last 20 years rapid and aggressive response to fires has declined as the USFS has adopted various forms of Let It Burn, such as prescribed natural fires (PNF), wildland fire use (WFU), fires used for resource benefit (FURB), appropriate management response (AMR), etc. The fire bureaucracy has changed it’s approach, and so many fires are left to burn until they get enormous.
There is a lot of money spent on firefighting. The funding is basically on-demand. If fire suppression budgets are overspent, the shortfall is made up later with emergency appropriations. It is a racket, and the fire bureaucracy has Congress and state legislatures by the shorthairs.
There are claims that snowpack has lessened, snow melt is earlier, and fall rains are later. But empirical evidence suggests that none of that is true — there have been no significant trends in any of those factors.
But it is true that photosynthesis happens every year, and biomass accumulates. In other words, fuels build up. With the decline in active management (another bureaucratic trend), fuels are reaching record levels.
Another factor is that anthropogenic fire was once common across the Americas. Indian burning was extensive in pre-Columbian times but largely was eliminated 100 to 400 years ago (depending on locale). In Western forests in particular, in the last 100 years we have experienced biomass accumulations to a-historical levels not experienced before in the Holocene.
Fuels and fire management are the overriding independent factors. The climate has not changed significantly. The latest numbers indicate that temps have risen a whopping 0.2 degrees C over the last 30 years. That is insignificant and possibly not even real, since the measurement systems have large uncertainty and various problems like UHI effects.
Regarding giant sequoia. The ages of the Big Trees are 1,000 to 1,500 years old. There are roughly four of those per acre. So to replenish the stand, one new seedling per acre must take root every 250 to 400 years.
Looking at things from that perspective, one realizes that regeneration in giant sequoia is not a problem. There is no purpose to many young seedlings per acre. That is not how that forest works. The desire to burn giant sequoia in catastrophic fires so as to aid regeneration is destructive and basically nuts (Taliban forestry).
Anthropogenic (human-set) fires kept those forests “clean” and enhanced the survival of trees to grow to phenomenal ages. In the absence of frequent, seasonal, tending fires the biomass has built up to catastrophic levels, so that fires today will kill the old giants. If we do not tend those forests, and mechanically remove the accumulated fuels, the old trees will die. Without human stewardship, priceless relics of great antiquity will be destroyed.
Forest fires are not a product of global warming, but of global madness: The madness of arsonists and maybe even extremist environmentalists who want us to believe in global warming by setting fires to our forests, after having lost the scientific argument on AGW. Copenhagen is 3 months away and they want to convince us that we need to ratify the son of Kyoto. -RUBBISH.
Many thoughtful comments on this thread. To put the current fire in perspective, I lived in Monrovia, CA from 1947 to 1962. The last time this particular area burned was in 1961, or perhaps 1960. That fire also threatened Mt. Wilson, burned both the front range of the San Gabriels and the back, up and over Mt. Waterman, the highest point in the range. Like the present case, it eventually was halted above Azusa, at the point where the San Gabriel River exits the mountains. Big canyon there helped to stop it. So, yeah, it has been almost 50 years since that area has been burned over.
Unmentioned above is the important factor that SoCal had record rainfall in 1904-5, more even than Krakatau’s results for1884. So, exuberant plant growth followed. The last two years have been relatively dry for SoCal and the combination of excess fuel + dry weather = momentary disaster. Like the Sequoias with which I’m familiar, the chaparral community of SoCal is also well adapted to wildfire.
In 1992, a wildfire was set at the northern end of Topanga Canyon during a period of high Santa Ana winds. It moved west, then down Malibu Canyon, destroyed many homes there and, in the evening, moved up Tuna Canyon, and back into Topanga. My wife and I, besides living high on the west side of Topanga, just below Saddle Peak, also owned 15 acres on the very top of the mountain (view from Pt. Dume to Mexico and out to Palm Springs). That property was completely burned, though the fire companies had no problem saving our house half a mile away and 800 feet lower.
When the fire was over, three days later, we went up to view the property. Every living thing, including many rabbits and several deer were completely incinerated. Burning brush had released an avalanche of rocks previously held back by the brush, so everything had changed. But the chaparral wasn’t dead by any means. Sensing opportunity, we immediately purchased 50 pounds of the largest available range of native wildflower seeds from many sources, mixed them with 100 pounds of vermiculite in a dog-sized wash tub and played Johnny Appleseed over the whole parcel, which has a 700 foot elevation variation.
Winter went, Spring came and we went to inspect the result. The wildflowers were spectacular lower down, and the chaparral was recovering, quickly. None of the individual plants had actually died in the “great fire.”
The great surprise was on the upper half of the property, a fairly steep mountainside. Few of our seeds had sprouted; instead the entire 7-8 acres were densly covered with blue lupines, a species we had never seen on the property before. There were hundreds of thousands of them, so many that it looked like a vast violet-blue carpet had been spread across the mountain.
Fast forward one year: There were no lupines, few of the sown wildflowers survived, and the brush was back in fine form.
If you’re a backpacker in LA, March would be a great month to head up Santa Anita Canyon, over the crest, and down into the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. You’ll see things you’ll never forget and will realize how little we people actually have anything to say about Nature’s whims.
The Age of Megafires?
Up above, Austin (19:35:12) : wrote this: Take look at the Peshtigo [USA] fire.
Worst fire ever. 1871. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_Fire
To summarize; Maybe up to 1.5 million acres burnt and up to 2,500 human lives lost way back then!
Recent USA fires that are measured in 100,000+ acres ( 40, 500+ hectares) are mega fires?
The million+ acre USA fires of 1871 are unknown to “60 minutes“?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s the same sad story here in Australia:
I live in Victoria, the smallest mainland state of Oz, about the size of England. We too have had massive fires prior to global warming, but our population immersion therein was much less in those times.
For Victoria alone, (ignoring South Australia and N.S.W, our two neighbouring larger tragically fire-prone states):
1851_____About 12.5 million acres (or a quarter of Victoria burnt, 12 lives lost.
1926_____Area burnt not given but five widely dispersed areas affected, with 60 lives lost. (also widespread in other states)
1939_____3.7 to 4.5 million acres burnt, with 71 lives lost
1944_____Grass wild-fires burnt 2.5 million acres, and between 15 – 20 lives lost. http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/nrenfoe.nsf/LinkView/E20ACF3A4A127CB04A25679300155B04358FFCDA5CA1F43FCA256DA6000942C9
Most of the tragic fires in Victoria carry a day-name, such as “Ash Wednesday” 1983 (a modest 210,000 hectares/ 47 human fatalities) and the recent “Black Saturday” 2009 (430,000 hectares/ 173 human fatalities). These are the consequence of a weather front coming through on the one day resulting in excessive winds, sometimes with the worst possible combination of a sudden change in direction by around 90 degrees, where long but weak fire flanks then become fronts.
In my opinion, the worst Victorian fire, on a pro rata basis was that of 1939.… see list above. It could have been a lot worse had not back in those days they had fire bunkers, a simple defence mechanism since forgotten despite that the following Royal Commission strongly recommended their adoption in risk areas!
In general, the size of the Oz fires have gradually reduced since 1851, maybe because of the obvious measures of controlled burns to reduce fuel build-up, and the creation of firebreaks, deliberate and incidental, including significant highway construction etc.
However, especially since WW2, there has been a dramatic increase in population growth, which appears to be the major cause of risk of relatively benign ignition of fires which may later become tragic windblown wildfires. (probably not so much accidental on hot-windy fire-ban days, when responsible people may avoid such mistakes). However, those dangerous days are when arsonists have their fun, as they apparently severally did this recent “Black Saturday” in Victoria, killing a lot of people.
In a recent 20-year study for cause of bushfires since 1976/7 in Victoria @ur momisugly
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/ABS@ur momisugly.NSF/46d1bc47ac9d0c7bca256c470025ff87/ccb3f2e90ba779d3ca256dea00053977
26% were caused by lightning strike. (of dubious AGW cause)
25% were deliberately lit
6% unknown cause
43% other human causes including machinery, transmission lines, controlled burns that got away, etc etc.
Is that enough to show that AGW is NOT the driver of bushfires?
I could add more if anyone is unconvinced.
WHY arent we making a case that the Station Fire was ARSON???? The only reason there are megafires is because people are lighting them off in optimal places and times.
Here is an excellent debunking of the claims that the fires in California is caused by global warming by Joe Bastardi at accuweather.com
Must see video.
Debunking of Global warming fire claims
Where have all the crises gone? Arctic sea ice melt has slowed to a crawl and looks to be bottoming out. One hurricane so far to date in the Atlantic with four wimpy tropical storms. Lacking a fresh crisis, looks like ABCNNBCBS et. al. will have to resort to retreads like that 60 Minutes exposé.
Spin for ratings ~ anything but truth.
From what I recall, the fairly recent bush fires in Australia were as a result of enviro-“mentalists” getting a ban on forest clearance to remove all the dead/bone-dry timber that naturally collected throughtout the forests, providing ample combustible material for burning. They also did a similar thing for householders who were banned from clearing trees around their properties for fire protection, making them more vulnerable to fire. I wonder if similar things have occurred in CA?
LloydG (15:11:03) :
Didn’t Dan Rather of CBS fame lose his job over some faked papers involving George Bush and his military career?
I quit watching CBS years ago over their credibility. Same for Time magazine. Same for Scientific American.
Thank goodness for blog sites like this.
We have some really serious forest management issues all through the Rockies here in Colorado and Wyoming. The beetle kill has left thousands of acres of tinder dry wood just waiting for a dry season and a lightening strike.
Summit County, especially around Dillon Lake, is ripe for a major fire.
We were successful in suppressing fires for a long time.
Let’s see how it all works out.
” the fire was caused by arson”
Why do people do this? I’ve asked before, but no-one seems to know.
LloydG (15:11:03)
One 60 Minutes scare story you left out was the one on dental amalgam (Dec 16, 1990). That one along with the Audi and Alar stories was the reason I vowed never to watch 60 Minutes again.
I have commented on the tip thread that the Cogswell Reservoir station is in the path of the Station Fire and may be reporting from a greatly altered environment after the smoke dies down. Are there other stations that have gone through such changes whose output may show the local long-term temperature effects of large fires?
The age of mega-propaganda comes to mind.
Some call it “Hegelian Dialectic,” Lenin said “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” Rather than offend the silly or naive, but still impugning motives, I chose to call this ongoing process “neuro-linguistic programming.”
But, it’s all the same, when push comes to shove.
tallbloke (05:54:21) :
I believe the key to the criminal mind lies in the inability to see the world in anything more than ‘today’. The insanity of crime varies, and ‘today’ also varies with each criminal mind.
The arsonist, like other crimnal minds, always returns to the scene of the crime. If not to revisit thier ‘today’ thrill, then to start another one. They dwell in the pleasure of what they have done, to do otherwise causes them the pain of losing thier ‘today’.
It was a bad night for me. First I began watching this 60min. BS, laughed a little bit, but then was quickly tired of it. Nothing else on TV, so I wandered into the living room to watch “Escape To Witch Mountain” with my wife and daughter. And wouldn’t you know it, even THAT movie made reference to “The Earth’s Changing Climate”. Can they not produce any news story or movie anymore without BS, AGW references? Getting to the point where it’s no longer informational or amusing, it’s just very old and tiring.
And now, unbelievably, my wife and daughter are watching “The Chaos Experiment” with Val Kilmer. Even after I warned them that it is the ultimate snoozer of a direct-to-video movie. One of the worst in a very long time.
REPLY: Try Barney – A
It is amazing that there are people who believe everything that is put in front of them. I guess it is just easier for the masses to swallow garbage like this than to think about it ( perhaps even ask questions or research ) and find out if what you are being told is based on fact. There are species of trees that require fire to release their seeds. There are even species of birds and animals that thrive in areas that have been burned out. They have adapted to this over millennia. Fire is not a new thing that has popped up all of a sudden. Perhaps the majority of people do not mind being duped. Makes me shudder. Go to google earth and fly over Canadian forests at about 1 km above. See if you can find a burned out forests, or even clear cut forest, if you can. If you find any, calculate what percentage of the forest has been burned or clear cut. You will see it is miniscule in the extreme. Great comments all.
The comments debunking the 60 minutes story are way off base.
There are 2 factors affecting forest fires – human land use, and global warming.
The 60 minutes report focussed on the effects of global warming, which contrary to what some posters here proclaim, are real and explain the reasons for fires in certain types of forests.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5789/940
Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity
A. L. Westerling,1,2* H. G. Hidalgo,1 D. R. Cayan,1,3 T. W. Swetnam4
“Western United States forest wildfire activity is widely thought to have increased in recent decades, yet neither the extent of recent changes nor the degree to which climate may be driving regional changes in wildfire has been systematically documented. Much of the public and scientific discussion of changes in western United States wildfire has focused instead on the effects of 19th- and 20th-century land-use history. We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt.”
The error made by the 60 minutes program was that it didn’t mention the land use explanation at all, and explain the different causes in different forests.
It did illustrate what happens in the lodgepole pine forests where the influence of climate is strong, and land use did not affect the incidence and intensity of fire.
REPLY: “There are 2 factors affecting forest fires – human land use, and global warming.”
So before humans and “global warming” there was no change in forest fires?
I think you’ve oversimplified the situation. – A
What bothered me was the sensationalized presentation . The story was about the fire that burned just west and south of Ketchum ID last year . As usual , the forests in Southern ID were tinder dry by late summer – the fire danger is often extreme that time of year . Several comments here have covered the forestry management problems endemic in the West and their resultant fire hazard . You are correct . The Ketchum fire was a disaster that had been waiting to happen for at least two decades . The coverage on “60 Minutes” was pure hype . I forget the exact size of the fire , but about twenty years ago a fire burned over two hundred thousnd acres just west of Hailey , ID , some twenty miles south of Ketchum . During the eighties , a series of wildfires burned hundreds of thousands of range land across Southern ID . I have no idea why the firefighter claimed that fires have grown larger and more frequent over the last decade .
Someone asked if CA is banning cutting of trees near houses for environmental reasons. The lastest building/fire codes now *require* clearing of brush at least 100 feet out from structures: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate?WAISdocID=34430114568+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve
CBS really learned their lesson after Dan Rather was fired over Memogate. Unfortunately, the lesson they learned is that this appearance of objectivity stuff just isn’t worth the effort.
Six of the 20 were human caused (arson and unintentional), two are under investigation, one of which is the Station Fire this year which is believed to be arson. Also, there are some arson ones that didn’t make it into the top 20. Most of the Arson and other “human” seem to have occurred when this would be helpful to the AGW agenda.
The statement:
“More rubbish from 60 Minutes tonight”
is redundant.