Well, I warned everybody yesterday. That briefing was put together by Climate Nexus, an advocacy and communications group. An accompanying report on heat waves and climate change was released simultaneously at climatecommunication.org
The usual suspects put that document together. See below.
Expert Reviewers:
- Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
- Jerry Meehl, National Center for Atmospheric Research
- Jeff Masters, Weather Underground
- Richard Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Now with a telephone press conference, Climate Nexus seer Michael Oppenheimer says he knows “what global warming looks like”, and it apparently is a hazy yellow-orange.
“It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster… this provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future.”
In Colorado, wildfires that have raged for weeks have killed four people, displaced thousands and destroyed hundreds of homes.
Because winter snowpack was lighter than usual and melted sooner, fire season started earlier in the US, with wildfires out of control in Colorado, Montana and Utah.
The high temperatures that are helping drive these fires are consistent with projections by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said this kind of extreme heat, with little cooling overnight, is one kind of damaging impact of global warming.
Others include more severe storms, floods and droughts, Oppenheimer said.
The stage was set for these fires when winter snowpack was lighter than usual, said Steven Running, a forest ecologist at the University of Montana.
Full article here h/t to reader Alwyn Poole.
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I wonder, did global warming look like this same yellow-orange hazy hellfire back in 1988 before Jim Hansen turned it into a cause?
Above – The Fires at Yellowstone National Park, 1988 when CO2 was at the “safe level” of approximately 350 parts per million according to Dr. James Hansen in this non peer reviewed declaration. Image from yellowstonecountry.org
The NPS talks about fire history of the region in the context on 1988:
Such wildfires occurred across much of the ecosystem in the 1700s. But that, of course, was prior to the arrival of European explorers, to the designation of the park, and the pattern established by its early caretakers to battle all blazes in the belief that fire suppression was good stewardship. Throughout much of the 20th century, park managers and visitors alike have continued to view fire as a destructive force, one to be mastered, or at least tempered to a tamer, more controlled entity. By the 1940s, ecologists recognized that fire was a primary agent of change in many ecosystems, including the arid mountainous western United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, national parks and forests began to experiment with controlled burns, and by the 1970s Yellowstone and other parks had instituted a natural fire management plan to allow the process of lightning-caused fire to continue influencing wildland succession.
We are living in the age of crazy.
UPDATE: Here is some important data to counter these crazy claims. From SOS Forests who writes:
The founder and purveyor of Watts Up With That, the premier climate realist website and blog (twice the winner of the Best Science Blog), the estimable Anthony Watts, has posted some of our fire graphs [here].
But they are outdated (my fault). Here are the latest:
Data are from the National Interagency Fire Center.
There are some evident trends.
1. Total acres burned has increased from the 1960’s to this Century, from an average of 4.6 million acres per year to 6.8 million acres per year.
2. Average acres per fire has also increased, from a low in the 1970’s of 21 acres per fire to 83 acres per fire in this Century.
3. Number of fires per year has decreased from a high (1975-1984) of nearly 190,000 fires per year to 83,000 fires per year this Century.
Fewer but larger fires this Century, and more acres burned in total.
To me this suggests a legacy of poor fuel management rather than “global warming”.
Oppenheimer is the guy that said AGW was going to cause massive Mexican migration to the USA. Would not the prospect of death by forest fire mitigate against that?
One of the ways to keep updated on the fires going on around the nation is to go to http://www.inciweb.org
I like the Photo Shop sign in the middle of the second picture. I shouldn’t laugh at this but I can’t help myself. The historical coincidence is very funny as Adobe Photoshop seems to have been started in the summer of 1988.
Yes and no. If you look at historical photos of the American west from the periods of the gold rush and shortly after you will see that this part of the country was largely stripped of accessible trees by the early settlers. The natural burn cycles in this area is for the forest in a given area to burn about every 75-80 years or so according to a local forest ranger I talked to several years ago.
http://www.firescience.gov/projects/03-1-1-06/project/03-1-1-06_03-1-1-06_mike_ryan_lodgepole_pine_ecology_lp_meeting_granby_sept_2007.pdf
Yesterday afternoon we had a thunderstorm sweep through the Boulder Colorado area. Its lightning strikes set 3 or 4 fires. By 4:00 pm there was only one small burn still active due to the rapid availability of helicopter water drops and fire crews from the already active fire fighting efforts for the Flagstaff fire. The same thing happened the day the Flagstaff fire started the lighting not only set the Flagstaff fire but also started a grass fire less than a mile from where I work.
Under the current fire conditions, a single thunder storm can easily start several fires in a matter of minutes.
Larry
Agree, that histogram is all screwed up — that image has had the red chanel enhanced and the blue chanel reduced “for effect”, if you put them back in balance you get good old neutral gray smoke haze, which is what the entire Colorado front range looked like when the smoke pooled in cities near the fires.
Larry
This must be the funniest website on the net! Some of the comments are comedy gold.
Is not just Colorado fires, Spain (and most of the Mediterranean) has broken historic heat records for 5 days this week. Some of these broken records broke last years already record breakers for June.
Stop thinking locally. You either get the whole picture (global) or you’ll never get GW at all.
Marian says:
June 28, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Don’t you just get sick of these Alarmist Opportunists. Turning any event into a GW PR Propaganda Spin.
Had that down here in NZ/OZ during those large bushfires in VIC a few years back.
Bushfires to be more extreme because of GW.
Of course those bushfires were mainly a result of Arson, carelessness and stupid ECO-green laws making it worse. Due to not allowing proper fire breaks around properties, etc. SO GW wasn’t the real cause.
======================YUP!!
our towns surrounded by prickly acacia that burns like a bomb even in winter. and masses of bracken fern.
councils not able to cut the acacia due to it being labelled protected..the fern is removable but you cant get one out, without the other…and then they approved masses of Pine and bluegum plantations right up to withing half mile or less of the towns borders and homes.
power line dropped in high winds a few months back..only the wind changing saved the town.
funny how while leaning up some miles of roadside burnt trees, they managed to remove the acacias there:-)
lesson being learnt the hard way!
banning grazing in high country, while removing funding for roadside vegetation and feral animal controls. now thats the smart green mode.
until we get the Liar and greens OUT! we’re in for more of this idiocy in spades.
Doen’t anyone (I am telling my age) remember all the advertisements on Smokey Bear Prevent Forest Fires? It was very very big in the 50’s & 60’s. Thus we use to put out forest fires, in fire environments, instead of letting the small fires burn off the debris that compete for growth with the native fire environment plants. In fire environments, the native plants need the low temp fires to open the seed coats to grow and to burn off the competing non-native plants.
So man has had a strong influence, just not the “CO2 climate change” one.
this is so true. simple and straight to the point. I would like to underline your question, HOW DID HUMANS GET SO DUMB SO QUICK.
Steve Keohane says:
June 29, 2012 at 5:42 am
Paul Coppin says: June 29, 2012 at 3:58 am
It is important, very important, to understand that the Colorado fires are arson, not “climate change”.- up to two new fires a day for the past week.
I don’t think so. The High Park Fire was lightening caused. There are a total of ten active fires in Colorado. You can check out all the fires here:
http://inciweb.org/state/6/
Lightning – that will be why the FBI has started investigating then – http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/28/displaced-colo-residents-wait-as-fire-rages/
” johanna says: June 28, 2012 at 11:37 pm
pretending that ‘Mother Nature’ never dished out huge, devastating fires before humans began to modify the land is simply untrue.”
I doubt that that was his point. Humans make it worse by not allowing regular burn offs. Yes there have always been lightning strikes causing huge fires but when you have areas that have not been cleaned up or allowed to burn you get a huge amount of fuel that would not have occurred.
the fire in Kelowna BC are a prime example. You couldn’t walk through that area without seeing 6+ inches of “fuel” lying around everywhere. They won’t have to worry about that for a while now. Hopefully we learn and either clean out the fuel or let nature do it more often.
Well, yes, but since the design concentration for deep-seated Class “A” fires is 65-75% CO2, you don’t want to be in the area without a SCBA.
johanna says:
June 28, 2012 at 11:37 pm Jack, you lost me with the ‘Mother Nature’ bit. What do you think happened before there were any people there, or just a few people?
Johanna,
I used the Mother nature bit as a joke. I was completely serious in the structure of the forests today. Historically, forests had extremely large trees spaced apart. There was multi generation of trees of different sizes below the massive trees. A fire burned the duff (tree dandruff for firefighter slang knowledge) and smallest trees below the massive ones.
This process revitalized the forest, allowing sunlight to reach the ground, and start a new geration of trees. You do realize that some trees only reproduce after a fire?
“…The most common form of serotiny is pyriscence, in which a resin binds the cones cones shut until melted by a forest fire…” Wiki – Pine
The forests of North America, specifically the western US, was made up of large numbers of different types of trees. The world has never naturally built a forest of dense pack plantation trees of all the same age. The fire can easily and quickly get up into the Crown. From there the fire, pushed by winds, races through these forests killing all plant life.
The fires of today, are catastrophic to the forest, compared to the old fires that ran hundreds of miles, but only burned the last few years worth of seedlings. So, Yes, I stand by my statement. Fires of today are much worse then before, because of Man Kinds actions. Those actions were driven by people like yourself who didnt understand the ecology they were adjusting.
Jack Barnes
“The high temperatures … are consistent with projections by the UN IPCC … ”
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However, the low humidity responsible for the fires DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS the IPCC notion of positive H2O feedback. And without positive H2O feedback, there can be no CAGW.
What we have here is “scientists” continuing to cherry pick data to try and frighten the public into increasing government funding for climate scientists. If engineers or accountants did the same, they would quickly end up in court.
Academics however hide in their ivory towers, refuse to make data available to the public, even though the public paid for it, and cry “academic freedom” whenever anyone tries to look at their “cook” books.
This is scientific corruption. Must be nice being a scientist. Never having to worry that by spreading false science you are driving thousands of companies out of business, leaving millions unemployed in their wake.
Is it simply a coincidence that the largest financial collapse since the great depression occurred at the same time that climate science and the IPCC was trying to ram carbon trading down the throats of the peoples of the world?
If you believe it was coincidence, then Al has a bridge he wants to sell you.
No they will be investigating because some local official asked them to. Just because there is an investigation does not mean they will find anything. At this point you are just spreading rumors if you assert with no qualification that the fires were arson caused. We have lots of examples of multiple fires caused by lightning strikes, that is well documented. So at the present the most likely answer is natural causes, or accidental (ie the Last Chance wild fire was started by sparks from the wheel or a car that had a blow out).
Could one or more fires be suspicious? Yes.
Is it responsible to flatly declare a conclusion before he investigation has even been done? NO.
Lets not get the cart before the horse.
Larry
If anyone wants to know how deeply involved in the IPCC conspiracy Oppenheimer has been from the very beginning, you can read this
It’s about how global warming activists flummoxed the Reagan Administration into allowing the creation of the IPCC. What you realize is from reading it is that they had the narrative before any real science had been done. They had the templet and once they had that, the scientists knew how to channel their research to help fill in the narrative.
Oppenheimer wrote this before Climategate and given the arrogance of it, I’m surprised it’s still available on the internet.
Oppenheimer has been neck deep in IPCC ideological corruption of science since the 1980s. He’s one of the ones who helped flummox the Reagan Administration into allowing the IPCC to be created. The following was written by Oppenheimer before Climategate and the arrogance in it is typical of him:
http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2007/11/01/ipcc_beginnings/
“fire season started earlier in the US, with wildfires out of control in Colorado, Montana and Utah”
Herein lies the obvious fact that the enviros choose to overlook. Fire is a NATURAL and REGULAR part of the ecology of the western US. It stretches from spring thaw to first frost. Some years are worse than others (natural variation). There are over 245 million acres of land that can burn. At an average of 4-6 million acres per year that means the mean time between burns for any given acre is 40 to 60 years. Many plants have evolved to actually *depend* on the periodic wildfire for their life cycle. Redwoods and Sequoias have evolved the ability to survive multiple forest fires over their lifetimes. Lodgepole pines NEED fire to release seeds from their pine cones.
I like the picture of the “Photo Shop” with the fire in the background. Sorta’ describes how Mann and Hansen and “The Team” have “photoshopped” climate science to say, “Whatever happens is Man’s fault.”
From Larry Ledwick (hotrod) on June 29, 2012 at 6:40 am:
Which is quite amazing as I wasn’t aware of the ability of loud noises to start fires. I thought that happened from lightning that isn’t going cloud to cloud but cloud to ground (or is that technically ground to cloud?).
Sometimes fires will put themselves out by generating Pyrocumulus clouds, leading to precipitation. But larger fires can lead to pyrocumulonimbus clouds with lightning that can cause and spread fires.
On topic, Dry lightning and dry thunderstorms cause the majority of wildfires in the Western US. This is scientifically confirmed by the linked piece, which is undated but apparently circa June 2008, original source unknown but it is noted as edited, found on a Green site, that importantly notes “Global Warming Fuels U.S. Forest Fires” while bemoaning how the US’ western forests are becoming carbon sources instead of carbon sinks due to the longer wildfire seasons and increased potency. It apparently is a press release for a Scripps Institution of Oceanography paper, at least partially, although missing info about where the paper was or was to be published.
I found it as a reference for the Wikipedia Dry thunderstorm entry, which of course is just fine and dandy since it fully qualifies as scientific evidence for an IPCC report.
(BTW Wikipedia is asking for money again.)
Why don’t “foresters” tell us that the rise and fall of fire frequency is cyclic and results from accummulation of deadwood. There will be silence for decades after a few heavy fire seasons because during the renewal that takes place after the fires, there is no dry tinder to light.
Doesn’t this Openheimer fellow get paid to say things like this?
Eli Rabbet should know better that Haboob occur at the front edge of mobile anticyclones and that the Dust Bowl was a period of rapid mode of circulation, powerful high pressure anticyclones, not at all a global warming one…
From PezdePlata on June 29, 2012 at 7:27 am:
Given the current global stall in further warming of between 10 and 15 years already elapsed (depending on which dataset you look at), the contamination and mangling of the surface-based datasets (such as UHI in Texas and the GHCN being “not fit for purpose”), how Warming in the USHCN is mainly an artifact of adjustments, and the many times on WUWT where individual station records were examined and showed flat or even cooling trends which were “adjusted” to warming trends, normally to match thermometers that were badly sited and/or at airports…
From around the start of the twentieth century to now, I’m getting skeptical that we’ve gotten any net GW at all.
Now that would be an interesting conversation.
“Honey? What the hell is all that noise?”
“Come here, dear. You need to see this. I think we’re gonna have to refill the pool!”