Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach [See update at end] [Note correction under Figure 1.]
Our charmingly incompetent California Governor, Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, has announced that all climate-change deniers are “definitely contributing” to the wildfires in the northern and southern parts of the state over the past few days, as well as blazes “in the coming years.” So look out, you dang “deniers”, it’s all your fault!
He continued:
“This is not the ‘new normal.’ This is the ‘new abnormal.’ And this new abnormal will continue, certainly in the next 10 to 15 to 20 years … And unfortunately the best science is telling us that dryness, warmth, drought, all those things, they’re going to intensify. Predictions by some scientists are we’ve already gone up one degree; I think we can expect a half a degree, which is catastrophic, over the next 10-12 years. So we have a real challenge here threatening our whole way of life.”
And what is his brilliant solution? Why … to my shock and surprise, Governor Moonbeam proposes throwing more and even more taxpayer money at it:
“And we’re going to have to invest more and more in adaptation. When we talk about things like the climate, and the warming climate, and we talk about words like ‘adaptation,’ that’s what we’re talking about. And it’s not millions, it’s billions, and tens, and probably hundreds of billions even in the span of a few years.”
So … did scientists actually “predict” that past temperatures have gone up by one degree? Can scientists actually predict the past? And can we really expect half a degree of warming in the next decade? To get some perspective on these questions, I thought I’d take a look at the records. I found an interesting site, the Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC), which has a variety of weather-related data state by state. So with no further ado, here is the average temperature in California from January of 1895 to the present, October 2018.
Figure 1. Average monthly California temperatures from the WRCC. The seasonal variations have been removed.
Now, has the temperature gone up by one degree as the Governor said? Well, yes, but only since 1895. Since 1895, it has been going up at a rate of about 0.12°C, twelve-hundredths of a degree Celsius, per decade. [NOTE: An earlier version of this post mistakenly stated that the trend was two-hundredths of a degree per decade, rather than the correct value of twelve-hundredths of a degree per decade. The text has been changed to reflect the correct values. My thanks to Grietver, the commenter who pointed out my error.]
How much is twelve-hundredths of a degree Celsius? Well, as is widely known, temperature decreases with altitude. You can feel this when you go from sea level up the side of a mountain, for example. The rate at which the temperature drops is about 1°C for every hundred metres of additional altitude.
And this means that 0.12°C is about the altitude-caused temperature drop between … wait for it … the ground floor and the fourth floor of a building. In other words, it’s equivalent to moving 12 metres (40 feet) vertically up the side of a mountain …
So obviously, the Governor is telling porkies when he says that anthropogenic temperature rise is the cause of the recent decade’s fires. The temperature rise in California is small, twelve-hundredths of a degree Celsius in a decade. That is not enough to make a big difference like the increase in fires that we’ve seen in the last decade.
Well, if it’s not the temperature, how about the rainfall? Is climate change making the state dryer? Fortunately, the WRCC has the data for that as well. Here’s the monthly rainfall in California.
Figure 2. Annualized monthly rainfall in California per the WRCC. Since rainfall data is usually given in inches per year, not per month, I have multiplied all of the values by 12 to “annualize” them, in order to make the trend a yearly trend.
Is the precipitation decreasing? Yes … by a totally meaningless five-hundredths of an inch (1.1 mm) per decade. So that is clearly not the reason for the increase in fires.
So what is the reason for the increase in fires? Actually, there are a few reasons.
First, our forests have not been harvested properly for some years. This is the result of a variety of lawsuits, one of which banned logging in many areas in 1994. This was in a vain attempt to protect the Spotted Owl. Unfortunately, this was just a green fantasy—stopping the logging has had no effect on the decline of the Spotted Owl. It appears that instead, it is being displaced by another owl, the Barred Owl. Oops … and there have been a host of other lawsuits that have stopped or restricted logging.
Next, California regulations highly restrict both the logging and the thinning of forests. After the fires in Redding, Governor Brown said he’d work to change the laws … but so far, crickets.
Naturally, when you don’t log and you don’t thin the forest, you get a buildup of what is called the “fuel load”. This is the amount of burnable stuff per acre. And when that happens, what would otherwise be a small fire turns into a large fire very quickly
Finally, a couple of years back we had a big El Nino/La Nina event. This led to the recent couple of warmer, drier years. There’s a name for this, and it is not “climate change”—it’s called “weather”.
Now, there’s been a meme circulating on the internet saying that President Trump is bad and wrong to blame the State, because according to the meme, 98% of the forest in California is National Forest, and 2% is State Forest. Nothing could be further from the truth.
But in fact, about 43% of the forest is privately held, and of the remainder 98% is Federal and 2% is State forest. So overall, about 44% of the forests in California are ruled by California laws and regulation.
But wait, as they say on TV, there’s more … both of the recent fires, the Camp Fire in Paradise and the Woolsey Fire in Thousand Oaks, occurred on privately owned forest. Which means the Federal Government had nothing to do with the regulations leading up to these fires.
Should President Trump have been so aggro? Of course not, that was a mistake … but I can understand his anger, given that Governor Brown is claiming that the fires have nothing to do with California regulations.
But not to worry. The Governor said that steps to combat global warming can still, eventually, “shift the weather back to where it historically was.”
Ah, yes, back to where it historically was, to the mythical Climate Eden, where the weather is the same year after year after year …
Where once it never rained till after sundown
By 8 a.m the morning fog had flown
Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment
That was known as Camelot
[UPDATE] A commenter asked:
Could you please give us a ‘public relations’ plot of the “Average monthly California temperatures from the WRCC” on a hardware store thermometer
We’re nothing if not a full-service website:
Here, my gorgeous ex-fiancee and I staying in the Youth Hostel in Santa Cruz on our way back home. The smoke from the forest fires was bad in the Central Valley on the way up from LA, but it’s relatively clear in Santa Cruz. The word from where we live, though, is that it is still quite bad there … we’ll find out tomorrow.
Best regards to all,
w.
PS: When you comment, please quote the exact words that you are discussing, so we can understand just what you are talking about.
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I keep seeing in these comments the false claim that our choice is between “bad” man-caused fires and “good” nature-caused fires.
That ignores the fact that lightning also causes fires when we least want them (because they are most intense and damaging) and that humans have been a natural part of the ecosystem since before recorded history.
As yourself how our ancestors dealt with living in a fire- prone environment without tankers, bulldozers and the ability to get the family (and the family’s supplies) out of danger in something faster than an ox-cart or travois.
The obvious answer, is to burn the fuel as soon as it dries out enough to carry a mild, SAFE, CONTROLLABLE fire. Thus you do away with the risk of extreme fires while creating frequent firebreaks and refuge areas for both humans and animals.
Rocket-science is not required.
A little common-sense is….
Peter,
There is your problem.
“Rocket-science is not required.
A little common-sense is….”
There is strong evidence that CAGW fanaticism drives out all sense, common or otherwise.
Auto
Willis, that wrcc.dri.edu link and my Excel trendline tell me that statewide California warmed about 1.5°C between 1895 and 2017. That is 1.2°C per century, not 0.2°C. I think the key is in the caption: “The seasonal variations have been removed”. How did you do this and how did you arrive at 0.2°C per century?
I just witnessed the weather man on CBS TV New York (5PM DST) assert that temperatures in California have risen 2 to 3C since 1900 . That the drought 2010-2016 has killed millions of trees which is what is fueling the fires
Mr Brown is listed as saying the following:
“This is not the ‘new normal.’ This is the ‘new abnormal.’ And this new abnormal will continue…”
Abnormal. You keep using that word…
Honestly, do people just select words in conversation these days because they look pretty?
Message to Governor Brown and California politicians:
Climate change cannot spontaneously ignite a forest fire; careless, stupid citizens do.
California’s Devastating Fires Are Man-Caused — But Not In The Way They Tell Us
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/07/30/californias-devastating-fires-are-man-caused-but-not-in-the-way-they-tell-us/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Your Governer is a jerk. I have no responsibility for causing that fire, and my carbon footprint is a tiny fraction of his. You all need to give him the boot.
Willis
O/T but another look behind the ysm
https://bongino.com/the-truth-about-australian-gun-control/
So how do we reconcile the chart that Mosher referenced with the data Will shows?
Averages may be hiding temporal or spacial differences. While the average rainfall and temps haven’t changes that much, are there differences about where or when they have? If rainfall has decreased during or before fire season then that might actually make things worse because the wetter part of the year would create more fuel that would then be combustable during fire season.
Well,
You have to start with the data
Joe Bastardi explained in May the above average spring precipitation would likely lead to an above average fire season in the late summer and fall.
Then of course there are the arsonists….that no one seems to want to talk about. https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/crime_courts/2018/11/09/cranston-fire-arsonist-brandon-mcglover-evidence-presented-hearing/1939124002/
Has PG&E’s culpability cropped up in either Moonbeam or the DA’s head? From what I’ve read of this and the last three big fires, there’s a case to be answered. Sounds like misfeasance at a minimum, if I’ve read Cali/US law correctly, and possibly worse.
I used to pass a lot of high-voltage lines every day on my drive through the forests of southern England to and from the office, and there was always about 30ft clearance each side, off into the distance. Granted, this was because of the risk from wind damage rather than that of starting fires (though there was a pretty bad wildfire one year from an unrelated cause), but it stuns me that PG&E and the CPUC are not absolutely rock-solid in maintaining the clearances determined by law, and more if necessary and where able.
Keith,
If you check, it is property owners who are legally responsible for maintaining clearance around power lines. As this is not actually possible for most property owners, public utility commissions assign the task to associated utilities. With investor owned utilities such as PG&E and SOCAL Edison, the CPUC sets funding for foliage maintenance. That allowed funding is generally much lower than requested by the those utilities. In spite of what most people think, the investor owned utility and CPUC relationship is adversarial.
However, the issue in the Camp Fire was not one of foliage clearance. A freak wind caused the high voltage distribution lines to whip around and touch, creating sparks. The wind likely blew the sparks far from where any reasonable foliage clearance would have been done. They certainly would not have fallen straight down.
Now it should be obvious that the seriousness of this fire was not the result of a power line spark. It was the strong dry winds on dry choked foliage. The fire was going to happen regardless of the initiation source. The power line spark simply established the date and time the fire started.
When the Spanish first arrived in California, the soldiers sent back letters describing the a terrain of rolling hills, trees, and green grass like in the park in Barcelona. The indigenous folk knew how to manage the forests.
It is a pair of Gigantic Wildfires!
Fire requires fuel, oxygen, and a spark. ]
Every single time, those three things are present. Fuel, obviously those pine forests have been building up fuel for decades, as natural forest fires have been extremely expensively suppressed. Oxygen, we have lots of that. A Spark, lightning from a thunderstorm can provide this, or SCE and PG&E can do this, which they did.
Simple lesson learned, at great expense from casualties and property damage:
Homes in fire zones are dangerous.
Nice to live out in the woods, until it is not.
Lessons learned, painfully. Those who died, did they even understand the risk they took? Darwin Awards…
Here is the thing: Forest fires happen in some places, and not in other places. The first house I bought was in Michigan, on the St. Joseph River, out in the woods, lovely view, but there had NEVER been a forest fire anywhere near there. Deciduous forest, in an area with lots of clouds and rain.
California, droughts and coniferous forests, they have always had these fires, going back as far as the records.
We could call this a tragedy as the media are inclined to do. We could also call it a LESSON, as it will be recalled. Guarantee, resale value of all homes in a pine forest in CA have dropped and will drop much farther.
Darwin Awards…
Willis botched his temperature trend calculation. NOAA’s “Climate at a glance” shows California’s statewide average increasing about 0.2 F/decade, in line with Grietver’s comment upthread.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/statewide/time-series/4/tavg/12/12/1895-2018?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000&trend=true&trend_base=10&firsttrendyear=1895&lasttrendyear=2018
Tbere is s lot of misinformation on wildfires as propogated by the US sceptic and anti-environmental community, particularly the argument thst increased logging helps prevent the spread of wildfires – in fact it is the very opposite: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181113-five-myths-about-wildfires
Ivan, other than the minor little fact that citing the BBC on environmental issues is like citing Alex Jones, California has a Mediterranian Climate, with plants adapted to regular fires. Ever seen the bark on a Redwood?
The very high pressure in Nevada (1035 hPa) still remains.
My thanks to Grietver who pointed out upthread that my calculations were in error. He said that the trend is 0.12°C per decade rather than 0.02°C per decade as I’d said.
He was right, I was 100% wrong.
I have noted and corrected the error in the head post. However, it doesn’t change the conclusions. The great increase in acres burnt in the last decade compared to the previous decade is far too large to be explained by the trend in the temperature. It is a result of the buildup of fuel load in the forest for all of the reasons listed above.
Does the temperature affect fires? Yes, of course … but it only explains about a third of the variance in the area burnt. And the recent decades have seen the acreage burned decoupled from temperature, with big fires in years with lower temperatures. I’m in the process of writing up this oddity.
w.
Willis How does the average temp in California get to 29C? Surely at midnight it cant get anywhere near that.
I don’t watch the news normally, but my county is on fire so I’ve been streaming the news the last few days. I just watched a CBS News clip and meteorologist Jeff Berardelli made me feel sick and angry. How does this garbage pass for ‘news’ or even ‘infotainment’. Some quotes and then the link below:
“We have to remember this. If you remember just one thing from this, remember this: the Earth is like the human body. If our ah inner air temperature, if our inner temperature goes up by 2-3 degrees we have a fever. Well it’s exactly what’s happening with the Earth. When the Earth’s temperature goes up 2-3 degrees it is running a fever it is sick and that is what is happening and that is how sensitive it is.”
He then went on to say “You don’t want to take away the old trees that have the most wisdom.” “They know how to fend off fires”.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/california-fires-camp-woolsey-containment-evacuations-death-toll-2018-11-13-live-updates/
Apparently, he went to Columbia University’s Earth Institute to learn these talking points.
https://www.adweek.com/tvspy/the-meteorologist-behind-metsunite-campaign-takes-hiatus-from-local-television/206028
WTF Seriously, WTF
“Governor, how has the government adapted forestry management regulations to the new climate conditions?
@Eschenbach
Your conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius is messed up, it underestimates both the actual temperature and its variability. As a consequence your trend is way to low. Please check your calculation, you’ll find that the warming rate is about 0.1°C/decade, corresponding to roughly 1°C warming over the last century.
A simple sanity check:
The data is in tenth of degree Fahrenheit (TDF), hence the conversion to degC is
degC = (TDF *0.1) – 32 * 5/9
The seasonal cylcle is roughly sinusoidal, hence the average of annual max and min is a good estimate of the annual average. As you can easily verify, for 1895 you have 40.5°F and 72.4°F, that averages to about 13.6°C, incompatible with your first temperature plot. I’d be interested to see the formula you used for the conversion, to see where you went wrong.
I’m surprised, nobody noticed this glaring discrepancy. Then again, I’m not.
Arrghh, one should reload the page before posting comments. I missed Grietver’s post as well as the correction that has been added by now.
Yes Willis, but 0.12°C is the *rate*, per decade (equal to 0.001°C per month); so the full warming since 1895 is actually 1.5°C (0.001 * 1486, where 1486 is the number of months since 1895). The full warming in California since 1895 then is the equivalent of climbing 150 metres up the side of a mountain; or from the ground to the ~50th floor of a building, assuming ~3 metres per floor. Hardly inconsequential.
(The rate since 1970 is even faster: 0.36°C per decade, or 1.7°C in total.)