Guest post by Jim Steele
Scientific evidence reveals there has been no climate effect regards California’s wildfires! None! The data below proves it beyond all doubt. There is no denying that warmer temperatures can cause drier fuels and promote larger fires. But that fact is being misapplied to all wildfires. About 70% of California’s 2020 burnt areas have been in grasslands and dead grass is so dry by the end of California’s annual summer drought that dead grasses are totally insensitive to any added warmth from climate change. Dead grasses only require a few hours of warm dry conditions to become highly flammable. It’s fire weather not climate change that is critical. Furthermore, the century trends in local temperatures where California’s biggest fires have occurred reveal no connection to climate change. In most cases the local maximum temperatures have been cooler now than during the 1930s. Those cooler temperatures should reduce the fire danger. Newsom is either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, is totally stupid, or is a dishonest demagogue.
Maximum temperatures are typically used by fire indexes to issue red flag warnings because it is the heat of midday that has the greatest drying effect. Minimum temperatures are often low enough to drop below the dewpoint at which time fuel moisture increases. So averaging minimum and maximum temperatures is inappropriate. In addition, referencing a higher global average temperature is meaningless. Only local maximum temperatures determine the dryness of surface fuels during every fire. As in Park and Abatzoglou 2019, the months of March through October are averaged to determine maximum temperatures during California’s dry season.
Here are some relevant facts (from the Western Regional Climate Center). Trust the scientific evidence
1) The August 2013 Rim Fire centered around Yosemite National Park, was California’s 5th largest fire.
2) The November 2018 Camp Fire was California’s deadliest fire destroying the town of Paradise. It was also its 16th largest fire.
3) The 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire was California’s largest fire (since 1932 excluding 2020) .
4) In the October 2017 wine country fires, the Tubbs Fire was the 4th deadliest. It only burned 37,000 acres but high winds drove embers into the dwellings of the heavily populated outskirts of Santa Rosa.
Governor Newsom ignores the data to disgustingly hijacking the tragedy of California’s fires to push is climate change agenda. But he is not alone. There are climate scientists pushing catastrophes by ignoring the local maximum temperature trends. Bad analyses promote bad policies and obscure what needs to be done regards fuel management and creating defensible spaces in fire prone California. Newsom must focus on fuel management and fire suppression. As fire ecologist Thomas Swetnam echoed the experts’ growing consensus against fire suppression wrote, “The paradox of fire management in conifer forests is that, if in the short term we are effective at reducing fire occurrence below a certain level, then sooner or later catastrophically destructive wildfires will occur. Even the most efficient and technologically advanced firefighting efforts can only forestall this inevitable result.”
Further information about California’s wildfires are
Minimizing California Wildfires
Wildfires: Separating Demagoguery from the Science
How Bad Science & Horrific Journalism Misrepresent Wildfires and Climate
Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
One hundred years ago, you might get 1 or 2 extremely bright students from a school that would go on to a career in science. It was recognized that the other 999 student in the school were thick as clotted milk. They could memorize the answers, but didn’t understand the questions.
Now today we try and send 2 or 3 hundred from each school into science. And most of them can’t do science so they end up doing office politics. Shouting down the 1 or 2 that actually understand the question and don’t rely on memorized answers.
Would Newton have seen nearly so far if he was standing on the shoulders of pygmies?
ferdberple
You have put your finger on the problem with science in general, and climate science in particular. We now have lots of people with degrees in science that don’t have the intelligence or inquisitive mindset to do good science. And, we have people calling themselves climate scientists who have science degrees in other fields, who couldn’t make it in those areas, so they changed what they did. It appears that the competition in climate science is less challenging. Even English majors can find jobs in climate science. What does that say about the level of qualifications?
The only qualification needed to become a “climate scientist” is to agree with whatever those who already call themselves “climate scientists” are saying.
Hi Jim,
In your question about Newsom “Newsom is either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, is totally stupid, or is a dishonest demagogue.” I’m gonna go with “Dishonest Demagogue.” My reasoning is this report by the Governor’s “Little Hoover Commission” which reports directly to Governor Newsom. In this report dated February 2018, ‘Fire on the Mountain: Rethinking Forest, Management in the Sierra Nevada, Report #242, February 2018.’ This is the opening sentence: “A century of mismanaging Sierra Nevada forests has brought an unprecedented environmental catastrophe that impacts all Californians — and with it, a rare opportunity for transformational culture change in forest management practices.”
Sometime around 2018, the Office of the California Legislative Analyst sent a report to the Legislature that stated environmentalist politics was suppressing proper forest management, that private forest managers were being denied burn permits, permits were slow-walked, or completely denied. However, I’m unable to find that report again. It was only that Governor Newsom declared a fire emergency that any burning can take place at all. If someone is able to find that report, please send me a link, it was a very important document.
As I live in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, fire is a regular topic. I tell my friends and neighbors, fire comes down to three things: Fuel, Oxygen, Ignition. We can’t remove oxygen, we try to remove ignition … thus fire always comes back to fuel. We either burn that fuel in the winter, when the fuel is a little less volatile, or we can stock-pile it in hopes we don’t have yet another summer-time disaster.
“We either burn that fuel in the winter…”
Or, as part of a stepped up forest mgt.- develop a woody biomass power industry and/or build a pellet industry. This new industry will be useful and make possible the thinning of dense stands- leaving the healthiest, strongest species best suited to the site.
So, controlled burns in areas that would not be feasible for harvesting woody biomass and biomass harvesting where feasible- together, removing much of the wood.
https://lhc.ca.gov/sites/lhc.ca.gov/files/Reports/242/Report242.pdf
tbruno,
Interesting that you would fabricate what I “think”.
In other articles I have talked about the winds. The Santa Ana and Diablo winds have been a major contributor to the spread of wildfire. Those winds increase during the cooler months as the high pressure systems over cooling high deserts push winds towards the warmer oceans. Santa Ana winds peak in December. Even the consensus from climate models agree that those deadly winds should decrease i a warming world.
Read my 2017 article
“Deconstructing the Climate Demagoguery of the Wine Country Wildfire Tragedies”
http://landscapesandcycles.net/wine-country-fires-and-climate-demogoguery.html
So you appear to be a misinformed troll tbruno. Perhaps from the same troll factory as Griff?
They haven’t changed. That’s the point that you work so hard to avoid.
Tbruno,
I’ll try to keep it really simple so you might be able to understand!
You have a choice between lots of small fires, many of them intentionally set to reduce fuel loads; and a few really large fires, some of them catastrophic for the people, plants and animals living where they occur! There is NO third option!
Resuming responsible timber harvesting helps by reducing fuel loads and making roads that can act as firebreaks or increased access for fire crews! Trying to pretend that the forest should never, ever burn is not only childish, but it also damages or destroys the very thing the environmentalists say they are trying to preserve! Try to get some science and data before you come back to the adult table!
Typical city dweller; never been through a forest outside of a car or train, and all his information comes from the Fake News propaganda outlets!
Climate Alarm is the new Swiss army knife of political spin. It will also serve a major role in the big push for the ultra-regressive carbon tax to pay for all the policy mistakes about to pile up.
I just saw this excerpt from Tucker Carlson’s Sept. 11th show, and it is simply the best analysis of Leftist/Democrat/Socialist/Progressive/Green politicians and media hacks using Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming as an issue to grab more power for themselves and their party that I have ever seen. California governor Newsom is mentioned somewhat unflatteringly near the end. Gov. Inslee of Washington, L.A. Mayor Garcetti and Nancy Pelosi get mentioned, too. Please take 15 minutes to watch it if you haven’t seen it already. And after you’ve watched it, please resolve to vote for Donald Trump this fall, and against all these Democrats in their home states if you ever get the chance.
‘Climate change’ is the ‘systemic racism’ in the Sky.
You can’t see it but it’s there, it’s deadly, and it’s your fault.
Mr. Steele: Always a pleasure to read your fact-based, logical and highly persuasive posts.
This time you (quite justifiably!) used slightly intemperate language, calling Gov. Newsom “either (1) ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, (2) is totally stupid, or (3) is a dishonest demagogue” (I added the numbers).
(1) is of course standard practice in climate science (“where conclusions come first”) and its political fellow travellers.
(3) isn’t “dishonest demagogue” synonymous with “politician”? No lie is too brazen, no promise too implausible, if they attract votes.
but (2) is debatable. I don’t think most successful politicians (i.e. those that get elected) are genuinely stupid. They just appear that way because they don’t use their intelligence to understand any substantive issues in depth; they just pick out slogans or “talking points” that they think will help get them to get elected next time around. They are cunning, devious manipulators who stab their opponents in the back (and their allies too, if they are any kind of threat).
All this requires intelligence and some sort of analytical ability, but these are only used in the service of gaining and holding on to power. In any case, in the world of 5-second sound bites, the ability to profoundly understand complex issues and convey nuanced messages is going to be more of a liability than an asset, so that ability (if it once existed) has atrophied through neglect.
The real battle is that of Political Science vs. Empirical Science. Lots and lots of money and control continues to pollute the former.
Unfortunately Newsom is getting the CBC biased attention and being quoted as “correct” compared to Trump simply because the ignorant Newsom used “climate change”
The CBC correspondent in ashington is Lyndsay Duncombe.
She’s just another tool
Excellent piece backed up by easy to understand facts..Unfortunately, the people hustling these claims are deaf to anything contrary that doesn’t fit their narrative. On top of that it’s very simple for the m(asses) to attribute high temps with an increased frequency of fires..The logical nature of the actual truth is completely lost on most..
Jim, thanks for pointing out that its maximum temperatures that have the most affect. I had been looking at CA average temps which have changed just slightly since 1930. Also from the NCEI web site I see that there has been essentially no change in CA’s average precipitation since 1930. I hope you put an article in the Tribune pointing out the facts, as my lady friend won’t listen to me! 🙂
Hi eck,
Are you from Pacifica?
The Tribune published my “Minimizing California Wildfires” two Wednesdays ago and my new article “Escalator to Extinction Myth” appears this Wednesday which I will cross post here.
So today’s article wont make it to the Tribune. But I did post it in the local website NextDoor for everyone who does not read the Tribune. I created a special Climate Change group in order to discuss such controversial non-local topics. https://nextdoor.com/g/kt5o8q5ua/?is=nav_bar
My lady friend is. I’m occasionally there, less so the last 6 months (sigh!)
Seems I can’t sign up here in Canada
“Biden slams Trump as ‘climate arsonist’ as fires ravage West ”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-slams-trump-as-climate-arsonist-as-fires-ravage-west/ar-BB191ZSq?ocid=Peregrine
Wow, a new term, “climate arsonist”!
Look there’s this big box with $1 trillion in stimulus money for California’s share just waiting for you guys to go dig it up. It’s buried under this big ‘W’ at Santa Rosita Park. And there’s enough for you, and you, and me, and ………
As with most posts on WUWT, and other sympathetic sites, there are comments made by what folks call trolls; sometimes it is implied these are paid to introduce misinformation and distraction. Maybe so.
However, I am more inclined to view them as adherents of a modern era (digital) doomsday cult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_cult
Even if there is a leader, and that leader is proved wrong {end of world doesn’t happen} the followers remain committed to the beliefs of the cult. Read more at the link given.
Global warming via CO2 being an existential threat to Planet Earth, or to humans, has become the current Doomsday Cult. Trying to explain to the adherents why they are wrong is a waste of time.
This phenomenon explains the 7th Day Adventist church, which was founded from one of the several remnant factions that formed from among the followers and believers of Baptist preacher William Miller, who had gathered his followers in, I believe, upstate New York in 1844 to greet the end times together after dispossessing themselves of their worldly goods. When the end of the world failed to materialize, they called this momentous bit of good fortune for almost the entire world, “The Great Disappointment.” To be sure, those followers gave Miller several chances to be correct, following his first failed prediction, and patiently awaited his adjusted calculations for at least one more attempt at Armageddon, if not more.
“The way we think we understand something, is by making successful predictions about it” – Dr. John Christie, UAH, to a US House of Representatives subcommittee hearing on climate change.
Let’s see now. You burn down you refugee center in Greece and you get a free trip to other parts of Europe. Yep, it must be caused by climate change.
Jim,
Noticed that while all the graphs have the same X axis scale (1900-2020), the Y axis (years) are slightly different.
Just stupidly nit picking on an informative article
We have had tremendous wild fires in California every year for the last three years while Newsom has been governor. By simple correlation theory, the fires must have been caused by Newsom!
Or it is Mother Nature taking her revenge against the Wicked Witch of the West, Speaker Pelosi? Or both Newsom and Nancy. Ditto for Oregon and Washington State with such bad governance. In fact, criminal negligence in their governance of the sad state of the Left Coast that extends right up to British Columbia where there are similar socialist/marxists in power. Very depressing that it has all come to this. #GoTrump.
ABC News with David Muir insinuated President Trump was a “Climate Arsonist” on their opening tease.
The president has not been looting, burning homes and businesses but David Muir et. al. are cheering the real perps on.
This will not end well. Joe Biden and the DNC plays with matches. Maybe they’ll pee in bed tonight.
Average CA annual precipitation hasn’t changed since 1930. See ths NOAA NCEI website
Jim, what role do invasive grasses play in the fires in CA, OR, and WA? Cheat grass is a big problem in sagegrass country I have read for example. Does this type of vegetation add to the tinder problem there?
Also a friend of mine had two buildings burn down on land in the Santa Cruz mountains. Because the homes were off the grid and spring fed water was available FEMA is not helping them. Is this normal in this situation?
They plan to rebuild : is there a building method that is more fire resistant?
Thanks
Regards invasive grasses, they are typically annuals that germinate early and die early, so they become bone dry and inflammable by July. Invasive annuals outcompeted the native perennial grasses that remained green through August and into September. They became flammable just before the rains return which shortened the fire season.
Regards FEMA I dont enough to comment.
Regards fire resistant homes, concrete is good. Our old National Forest field station buildings were sadly wooden but with metal roofs which deter fire. Putting mesh on vents, and under eaves to prevent embers from getting trapped is wise. Finally location where a defensible space can be created. I saw nice green lawns prevent fire from getting too near buildings.
R Moore
Take a drive through the Mother Lode (Highway 49) and observe the old architecture. Take a stroll through Columbia State Park, just north of Sonora. They built using brick, or native stone, and put on slate or corrugated iron roofs. They had iron shutters for the windows and doors. Basically, the 49ers built out of things that don’t burn and they prevented embers and radiant heat from entering the buildings.
Part of the problem is that people retire from the Bay Area and either live in a mobile home, or if they have a little more money, they build a home similar to what they had in the Bay Area. Most of the commercial buildings in ‘downtown’ Paradise had flat roofs, sealed with asphalt, and false walls around the roof to hide the A/C units. When the embers were flying, they would encounter a dead zone with no wind, and fall onto the flammable roofs.
When I was married, my wife and I bought 5 acres in Paradise. It had a two-room building with roof and siding of corrugated iron. When we got divorced, she built a two-bedroom, conventional home 100 feet from the original building. When the fire went through, it completely destroyed the new home, and spared the iron building.
What percentage of this graph is California? I couldn’t find the same data for CA.:
– JPP
Thanks for that link! It’s from this article, right?
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/12/12/california-wildfires-and-climate-change/
It appears to be an updated version of this graph, except that this one both starts and ends about one decade earlier:
(downloaded from https://web.archive.org/web/20170910052844/https://www.fs.fed.us/research/sustain/criteria-indicators/indicators/indicator-316.php )
Everything written here about wildfires in West Coast USA States conifer forests and grasslands applies equally well to Australian East Coast eucalyptus forest and grassland wildfires. The Climate Alarmists like to ignore the data and the experience of indigenous forest management of the past years. In both USA and Australian cases fuel management and defensible fire-breaks in fire prone areas is the solution, not wild alarm over CO2. Short term reduction of fire occurrence alone eventually leads to catastrophic destruction by huge fires.
Jim,
Judging from experience dodging local wildfires, Wind and humidity have a larger part in it. One of our worst local fires was in March. Lower North Fork Fire. Colorado. Pushed by wind from frontal passage of a cold front.
The focus on temperature allows the whole topic to go down the climate politics rabbit hole. First principles. No big fuels = no big fires … ever. Little fuel = smaller manageable fires. Mitigate first, then argue about how much suppression capability to buy. As far as contributory agents go, high temperature is correlated in that it is associated with low humidity, higher winds, and high fuel ERC’s [energy release component] but not necessarily causative.
Someone from CA please tell the governor that solar panels, wind generators, and electric cars have nothing to do with controlling wildfires.
La Nina usually causes increased wildfires in California, and la Nina also usually causes global temperature to fall by half a degree or thereabouts.
So Newsom is effectively saying global warming causes global cooling!
1°C of warming is equivalent to only 18% of a growing zone (as they’re typically defined in the USA, 10°F per zone), corresponding to an isotherm shift of only about 60-90 miles. Since the Little Ice age we’ve had a total of about 1°C of warming (somewhere between 0.5°C and 1.5°C).
That slight warming is equivalent to an isotherm shift of only about 30-140 miles, as you can see in this growing zone map:
If that very slight warming caused significantly worsening fires, then you should expect that the enormously greater warming associated with moving south in the United States would cause the incidence and/or severity of wildfires to be much lower in the North than in the South.
So, let’s check that. Here’s a list of the worst wildfire disasters in U.S. history (through 2018):
Deadliest U.S. wildfires:
1,200+ deaths, 1871 (Peshtigo Fire, Wisconsin)
453+ deaths, 1918 (Cloquet Fire, Minnesota)
418+ deaths, 1894 (Hinkley Fire, Minnesota)
282 deaths, 1882 (Thumb Fire, Michigan)
87 deaths, 1910 (Great Fire of 1910, Idaho and Montana)
84 deaths, 2018 (Camp Fire, Paradise, California)
65 deaths, 1902 (Yacolt Burn, Oregon and Washington)
29 deaths, 1933 (Griffith Park Fire, Los Angeles, California)
25 deaths, 1991 (Tunnel Fire, Oakland Hills, California)
22 deaths, 2017 (Tubbs Fire, California)
19 deaths, 2013 (Yarnell Fire, Arizona)
16 deaths, 1947 (The Great Fires of 1947, Maine)
15 deaths, 2003 (Cedar Fire, San Diego County, California)
15 deaths, 1953 (Rattlesnake Fire, California)
15 deaths, 1937 (Blackwater Creek Fire, Wyoming)
14 deaths, 2017 (Gatlinburg, Tennessee)
13 deaths, 1994 (South Canyon Fire, Colorado)
Source:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/22/5714558/
Do you see it? The four worst fires, and six of the seven worst fires, were all in northern states.
If warmer temperatures really caused worsening wildfires, then most of the worst fires should have been in southern states.
The worst fire in US history was in chilly Wisconsin in October, 1871, when CO2 (estimated from ice cores) was only ≈288 ppmv. It is believed to have killed at least 1200 Americans. Here’s an article about it:
https://library.massasoit.edu/americanfires/peshtigo
Here’s another:
https://www.weather.gov/grb/peshtigofire
Or ask Google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=peshtigo+fire&tbm=isch
It consumed about 1.2 million acres. Here’s a map:
Here are some paintings, depicting the event:
U.S. fires have seen an uptick in recent years, but here’s a graph that puts it into perspective:
Droughts do increase fire risk, but droughts are not worsening. Here’s a paper, and graph:
https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata20141
Here’s a NOAA chart:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/uspa/wet-dry/0
The main factor driving fire prevalence and severity is land management and forestry practices. If you let dead wood and forest litter accumulate, you’re asking for trouble. If you plant eucalyptus trees around houses, you’re asking for trouble. If you constrict exit routes in fire-prone areas, like Paradise California did, you’re asking for trouble.
Australia has a lot of problems with wildfires. Here is some good information about them, from two Australian experts:
1. Mr. Brian Williams, captain of the Kurrajong Heights brigade:
https://saltbushclub.com/2020/01/06/wild-fires-were-preventable/
2. Mr. David Packham, a now-retired researcher from Monash University:
https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/scientist-david-packham-on-whats-really-causing-the-bushfires
In the United States, nothing could be clearer than the fact that federal government is terrible at land management. (The same is apparently true in Australia.) If we want land to be managed well, it needs to be managed by people who are have a personal interest in it. That is, it needs to be under local control, rather than the control of distant national governments. Here’s a very instructive lecture, by Montana State Senator Jennifer Fielder, who is also CEO of the American Lands Council (speaking at ICCC13):