It’s been an open secret, ever since Dr. Michael Mann used “Mike’s Nature Trick” to “hide the decline” by covering up some inconvenient tree ring data in the hockey stick climate graph, that climate alarmists will go to almost any length to only show the public the “crisis side” of climate data.
The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) has been the keeper of U.S. wildfire data for decades, tracking both the number of wildfires and acreage burned all the way back to 1926. However, after making that entire dataset public for decades, now, in a blatant act of cherry picking, NIFC “disappeared” a portion of it, and only show data from 1983. You can see it here.
Fortunately, the Internet never forgets, and the entire dataset is preserved on the Internet Wayback machine and other places, despite NIFC’s ham-handed attempt to disappear the data.
Why would they do this you ask? The answer is simple; data prior to 1983 shows that U.S. wildfires were far worse both in frequency and total acreage burned. By disappearing all data prior to 1983, which just happens to be the lowest point in the dataset, now all of the sudden we get a positive slope of worsening wildfire aligning with increased global temperature, which is perfect for claiming “climate change is making wildfire worse”. See figure 1 below for a before and after comparison of what the data looks like when you plot it.
Clearly, wildfires were far worse in the past, and clearly, now the data tells an entirely different story when showing only data post-1983. The new story told by the sanitized data is in alignment with the irrational screeching of climate alarmists that “wildfires are driven by climate change”.
This wholesale erasure of important public data stinks, but in today’s narrative control culture that wants to rid us of anything that might be inconvenient or doesn’t fit the “woke” narrative, it isn’t surprising.
Interestingly, the history on the Internet Wayback Machine shows how NIFC rationalized this erasure of important public data.
Back in June 2011 when this data was first presented by NIFC publicly, it was simply presented “as-is”. They say only this:
Figures prior to 1983 may be revised as NICC verifies historical data.
In 2018, they added a new caveat, saying this:
The National Interagency Coordination Center at NIFC compiles annual wildland fire statistics for federal and state agencies. This information is provided through Situation Reports, which have been in use for several decades. Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data.
According to the Internet Wayback Machine, that caveat first appeared on the NIFC data page somewhere between January 14 and March 7 of 2018.
Curiously, that caveat appeared just a few weeks after I first drew wide attention to the issue in December 2017, with an article citing NIFC fire data titled Is climate change REALLY the culprit causing California’s wildfires?
It seems they received some blowback from the idea that their data, when plotted, clearly showed wildfires to be far worse in the past, completely blowing the global-warming-climate-change-wildfire connection out of the water.
Here is what NIFC says now:
Prior to 1983, the federal wildland fire agencies did not track official wildfire data using current reporting processes. As a result, there is no official data prior to 1983 posted on this site.
Not only is that a lie of omission, it is ridiculous. Their agenda seems very clear. When the data was first published, they only advised the public that some data prior to 1983 might be “…revised as NICC verifies historical data”.
There was no published concern that the data might be invalid, or that we shouldn’t use it. Besides, the data is very simple; a count of the number of fires and the number of acres burned. How hard is that to compile and verify as accurate?
What’s worse is that this data has been trusted for decades in almost every news story about any wildfire that ever occurred in the U.S. In virtually every news story about a wildfire, the number of acres burned it THE NUMBER the press uses in the story, without it, there is no scale of the severity of the fire. Similarly, for every story about “what a bad wildfire season we’ve had”, the press cites the number of fires as well as the acreage burned.
And now, after decades of that data being provided to the press and the public, and nearly a decade of NIFC making it publicly available on their website, they want us to believe that it is now unreliable data?
Seriously, just how hard is it to count the number of fires that have happened and the number of acres burned?
What NIFC is doing is essentially labeling every firefighter, every fire captain, every forester, and every smoke jumper who has fought wildfires for decades as being untrustworthy in their assessment and measurement of this critical, yet very simple fire data. I’ll take data from people on the fire scene over government bureaucratic doublespeak every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
This whole affair is outrageous. But what is even more outrageous is that NIFC isn’t at all transparent as to the reason for the change. They essentially say “The data prior to 1983 is no good, trust us”. There is no citation of a study, no methodology given, no rationale for the removal. That’s not science, that’s not statistics, that’s not even sensible, but that is what is happening.
Plotting the entire NIFC dataset (before it was partially disappeared) gives us some hints as to why this has been done, and how wildfire and weather patterns have been inextricably linked for decades. Note figure 2 below, combining the number of fires and number of acres burned. See the annotations that I have added.
Clearly, what NIFC has done by saying data prior to 1983 is “unreliable” and disappearing it is not just hiding important fire history, but cherry picking a data starting point that is the lowest in the entire record to ensure that an upwards trend exists from that point.
The definition of cherry picking is:
Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position.
And by choosing the lowest point in the record for total fires, 1983, and making all data prior to that unavailable, NIFC ensures that any comparison between fires and climate change over the last 38 years always shows an upward trend and correlation with rising temperature.
It seems to me that NIFC very likely caved to pressure from climate activists to disappear this inconvenient data. By erasing the past data, NIFC has become untrustworthy. This erasure is not just unscientific, it’s dishonest and possibly fraudulent.
For posterity, the entire dataset from NIFC (including pre-1983) is available here in an Excel (.xlsx) file:
UPDATE: Here is an analysis paper from 2015 using the same data that is on the U.S. Forest Service website:
https://www.fs.fed.us/research/sustain/docs/national-reports/2003/data/documents/Indicator%2015/Indicator%2015.pdf
Sort of like climate scientists who start recording temperatures during the Little Ice Age.
There is much evidence showing fires were worse 100 years ago.
Climate alarmists have been dishonestly trying to make a connection between climate change and fires for decades, simply to induce unwarranted fear and gain political power, by cherrypicking the start dates for their trends, ignoring the role of increased human ignitions, ignoring the spread of highly flammable invasive grasses, not addressing fuel build up from fire suppression, or the fact that maximum temperatures were higher in the 1930s where most western USA wildfires have started . Read http://landscapesandcycles.net/minimizing-california-s-wildfires.html
From Swetnam 1996
from 63 sites and a 300 year period, obviously cherry picked pseudo science by deniers….according to the Climate Liars Club of the Americas, the CLCA. /sarc
Trying to compare annual fire seasons by acreage burned is like trying to measure the strength of hurricanes by the number of people displaced. It all depends on where it happens, and how it is managed. In California it seems clear that the philosophy of fire fighting is no longer aimed at putting the fire out as quickly as possible. The new philosophy is to manage the fire away from structures as much as possible, and let it burn itself through the deadwood covered forests as it would naturally do. I believe this is why fires last for several weeks now instead of several days. It has nothing to do with any change in climate. And a burgeoning homeless population doesn’t help.
From today’s Los Angeles Times:
On Wednesday a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that, among other things, fires related to homeless encampments have nearly tripled. According to the paper, in the first four months of this year there were 24 such blazes a day. Those calls accounted for 54% of all fires responded to by LAFD.
Any data collected before the internet, was recorded by human beings in old-fashioned logbooks, and probably cannot be trusted. It must be entered in a database, vetted for possible human or instrumentation bias and adjusted accordingly, preferably annually, and new graphs of the ‘historical readings’ need to be published, and the database updated.
Anybody knows their grandfather wasn’t reliable with numbers.
/s
Just like Canada doesn’t use temps records prior to 1950, and Australia quit pre-1910 records.
Because if you look at their entire records since they started taking them, there’s no real “heating” to talk about.
After a fire there is often an on-the-ground study of the extent and severity of damage to soil, plants, and animals. Such reports follow about a year after the incident is over.
You have to search for these because the news will have gone through ~364 new crises in the interval.
If possible, find a report for an area you know.
“Why would they do this you ask?”
Because, as they have been saying for some time, they don’t believe it is true, and aren’t prepared to put their name to it? Why do we believe the contrary? Where did this data in fact come from? Who does put their name to it?
The early figures are just nonsensical. In the years around 1930, it has 50 million acres a year being burnt. That is the area of Nebraska. A fortieth of the area of ConUS (and the early figures apply only to ConUS) burnt in just one year. And the same the next, and the year after and so on. There is no actual history of these massive conflagrations. You could not burn a Nebraska every year without massive loss of life.
So again, where did these numbers actually come from? Why should we believe them if the NIFC does not?
According to some digging done by ATTP,
““Between 1930 and 1950, in excess of 10 million acres were burned by wildfires annually. Most of the area burned during this period was in the Southeastern United States (South RPA Region) and were primarily incendiary fires. Since 1960, between 2 and 5 million acres were burned annually by wildfires. […]
So it appears that much of the pre-1960 data were related to incendiary forest fires (per http://www.interfire.org/features/wildfires.asp, an incendiary fire is one that is set intentionally) and not to true wildfires. The post-1960 dataset that I analyzed only contained data for wildfires; the National Interagency Fire Center explicitly separates the wildfire data from the prescribed fire data.”
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/the-mysterious-wildfire-chart/
So, it is apples and onions. Apparently pre-1960 they counted deliberately-set fires, after that just spontaneous ones.
incendiary fires refers to arson, not controlled burns.
Modern statistics includes arson fires.
The early data is measuring the same thing as the newer data.
Um, no. The early data is all fires, whether deliberately set (prescribed) or not More recently the National Interagency Fire Center explicitly separates the wildfire data from the prescribed fire data.
The wildfires are linked in the head post, prescribed fires are detailed here: https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/prescribed-fire
A common complaint around here is climatologists splicing mismatched datasets to obscure inconvenient trends. Here we have a splice of two incompatible datasets ……
Mr. Phillips: First you quote ATTP, i could have stopped there but didn’t. He simply repeats the same quote including two weasel words- “most of the area” and “primarily”, to effectively remove math from the discussion. ATTP did no digging at all, he simply repeated the quote that is patently NOT a reason to delete data (and he’s the physics guy?). The data is not apples and oranges, not incompatble, because both sets include wild fires. A little “digging” (not the ATTP version, actual digging) could yield apples to apples, but no, jsut hide it from the public that pays you.
Please try to do better if you are gonna gaslight.
Incendiary Fire. Wildland fires set intentionally often begin in accessible areas because they are easily reached, but often lightly traveled–and therefore the firesetter is less likely to be discovered.
The above is from your reference article…it is arson.
You are misleading (lying) when you try to conflate arson with prescribed burns. Either that, or you are an idiot.
You’ve swerved the central point in favour of abuse.
Early data=all fires
Later data = all fires minus prescribed fires.
Apples/Oranges. I cannot make it simpler than that.
Mr. Phillips: And if we try to extract the prescribed fires from the early data and it shows a trend that contradicts AGW scripture, better scrub it all. I can make that simpler- don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Tell that to Ken.
“… whether deliberately set (prescribed) or not …”
My central point is that you are intentionally (or through an inability to understand) conflating ‘prescribed’ with ‘arson’.
Is it a mistake, or you are you incompetent.
Now, since you can’t (or won’t) acknowledge the mistake … should throw out everything you have said, except for the parts that make you look bad? Or should we do something else?
Nick, how naive are you?
The NIFC has an organizational incentive to cook the records in their jurisdiction..
This aligns their narrative with the whole-of-government AGW narrative.
They wouldn’t want to be out of step with their bosses.
The NIFC reported data from USFS annual summary reports that counted intentionally set fires for controlling vegetation as wildfires. The large number of reported acres burned in the first half of the 20th century comes from these reports on unprotected lands.
Short Karen C. (2015) Sources and implications of bias and uncertainty in a century of US wildfire activity data. International Journal of Wildland Fire 24, 883-891.
https://doi.org/10.1071/WF14190
You’re right of course. Lets go with your theory that a rise of 0.5ºC of the global average temperature starts fires. Much more plausible.
Since they are only looking at data since 1985, the rise in temperature is actually more like 0.2C.
Sorry Mark, I was looking at the adjusted data. 😉
Mr. Stokes: “There is no actual history of these massive conflagrations.” Have you looked? Bet not. Mr. Heller is great for pulling up old news articles from that time, backing up his charts. I know you don’t go to his site or you would not expose yourself to such a debunking. Then again, you were the guy who said the ice age scare of the 70s was purely news articles, no scientists. You got debunked pretty hard there. Please take this opportunity to research the “actual history” of which you are ignorant, before somebdy less nice calls you on it.
OK, let’s have some history. Where were these huge Nebraska-sized fires in the ’30s?
Did you miss the part about Mr. Heller’s site?
Can you answer the question?
Mr. Heller likes to show charts AND news articles supporting the charts. Did answer. Obtuse is a look you prefer.
Here’s one from 1910 which dwarfs any recent fire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910
That fire totaled ~3 million acres, and you’re right. That was a huge fire. According to the USFS, two years in the early 1930s exceeded 50 million acres each year. So there must have been the equivalent of 16 of those Big Burn fires during those years. Let’s see you find historical evidence of these.
Maybe “they” don’t believe it’s true because “they” overlook “actual history” just like you?
Sorry, couldn’t stay nice for too long.
Fascinating how Nick feels that any data that doesn’t pass his plausibility test needs to be tossed.
On the other hand, data that supports the position Nick is paid to support, no matter how implausible it sounds to others, has to be kept.
The NIFC feels that any numbers that they can’t accept as reliable shouldn’t be on a website that they are responsible for.
Who said it is “data”? Who measured it? How?
Apparently the NIFC said it was data until a couple of days ago, when they said it wasn’t data anymore.
And don’t you think a more intellectually honest way to handle this would be to keep the data, and then add shading, or a comment that says something like “we suspect the data pre-1983 isn’t reliable due to X, Y, and Z factors.” Perhaps even give rationale like you’re suggesting.
But simply eliminating the data, especially at a low point, screams manipulation for narrative’s sake.
Finally to your point about “Nebraska Sized Fires”. First, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s not one contiguous fire. Second, perhaps 50MM acres is erring on the high side. But is 40MM acres plausible? 30MM? If the NIFC had provided more rationale for eliminating it, we could make a judgement.
I think the point of the article is that eliminating data with essentially no fact or science-based rationale is pure manipulation. Have to believe you would agree with at least that much.
“Apparently the NIFC said it was data until a couple of days ago”
The article doesn’t say when it finally disappeared. But it does note the caveat that they had been showing for years:
“…Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data.”
A very natural question is, if you can’t back the figures and don’t think they are comparable, why are you showing them as data? So they decided not to.
My response would be, where did the data come from in the first place? Was it just wild-ass guesses? Invented data?
Probably not. It clearly came from somewhere. And so saying “sources of the figures are not known” is highly suspect.
In other words, it sure seems like the NIFC is saying “we showed up one day and the data was here already. But after a while, we decided that maybe we shouldn’t use data that we don’t know the origin of.”
“if you can’t back the figures and don’t think they are comparable, why are you showing them as data?”
If you can’t back figures, and then decide to remove them, I would think more explanation than “sources are not known” would be more than in order.
“My response would be, where did the data come from in the first place?”
I explained that below. It comes from data published by the census bureau. And the vast majority of the fires of that period are shown as in unprotected areas. And of that, the source has a note saying:
“No field organizations are available to report fires on unprotected areas and the statistics for these areas are generally the best estimates available.”
So yes, they showed the best estimate available. That is your data.
Breathtaking dishonesty; on this principles you can erase any history, just because you “feel” it doesn’t fit your narrative. As for responsibility, it’s irresponsible to alter data and records, but you wouldn’t know that.
No-one is altering data and records. The original records were in Government publications, summarised in the published Census Bureau data. The NIFC used them as the basis for a graph, with caveats, but then decided they could not vouch for its accuracy. It was never their data. The data is still where and as it always was.
Mr W.: It has a familiar ring to it…… old data incomplete, “not up to today’s standards”; after applying scientific adjustments, OMG it’s worse than we thought, exactly as we predicted. Did they have to delete it, couldn’t they apply adjustments to make the old forest fires shrink? Mr. Stokes would be ok with it.
I believe that discrediting fire data before 1983 is an insult to the dedicated men and women of the USFS. I fought fire in the early ’50s both as a ground crew on large fires and as a smokejumper on small fires. We were trained to carefully measure the size of the fires and included this in the report we signed. We were warned to be accurate because someone from the district would later check out the site using our report. These reports get rolled up into district then forest then national reports. These are real reports, all signed and I am sure the NIPC had access to them. They did not include data before 1983 because they did not support their narrative-period.
In those days District Rangers and even Forest Rangers wore logging boots and prided themselves spending more time in the forest than the office. They had fire data prominently displayed on their bulletin boards. They faithfully kept all records with a pencil, but to say it wasn’t reliable is an insult. From these old timers I heard a lot stories of horrific fires of the 1930s in both NW and Midwest. If you really doubt the amount of acres burned read about the fires in 1910. Several are available but my favorite is: “The Bib Burn- Fires of 1910”. Or you could put on a pair of boots and walk into any forest in the West, SE, or Midwest and look at the burned out stumps for yourself. Part of our fire training included study of the 1910 and the 1930 fires. I believe these old records are accurate, though you could quibble about definitions but that won’t significantly change the area burned.
“I believe that discrediting fire data before 1983 is an insult to the dedicated men and women of the USFS.”
In fact it isn’t the land that the USFS covers that is in doubt. The original numbers came from this US statistical compilation. The relevant table p537 is here:
The numbers in protected areas are small, comparable to modern. The huge inflation is in unprotected areas, and of those the source notes:
“The source publication also presents information by regions and States on areas needing protection, areas protected and unprotected, and areas burned on both protected and unprotected forest land by type of ownership, and size of fires on protected areas. No field organizations are available to report fires on unprotected areas and the statistics for these areas are generally the best estimates available.” (emphasis mine)
The data was discredited at its source.
” If you really doubt the amount of acres burned read about the fires in 1910. Several are available but my favorite is: “The Bib Burn- Fires of 1910”.”
I did look up the Big Burn Fires. Here is what the University of Idaho had to say:
“During the August of 1910, a massive wildfire destroyed three million acres of land in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. The Great Fire of 1910 is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, forest fire in U.S. history. Smoke from the fair was said to be seen as far east as New York and as far south as Denver, Colorado.
Seven small towns in Idaho and Montana were completely destroyed by the fire, and one third of Wallace, Idaho burned to the ground.”
Largest forest fire in US history. Towns destroyed. And the acreage burned? 3 million acres.
Yet this “data” says 50 million acres a year were burned during the early 1930’s. Each year.
Mr. Stokes: So the data from 1910 about the size of fires trumps the data from the 1930’s?
Well said Mr Dollard, I was just reading about “smokejumpers”, brave men.
One might reasonably presume that the onus would be on those undermining historical data to explain why they think it’s not fit for purpose.
What was happening back in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s that makes this data so valueless? and surely logically makes all data from those time periods suspect.
They say it was all “estimates”, like it was some big guessing game from people without a clue, a pathetic excuse.
To dismiss the work of those people without proper explanation is contemptible, but unfortunately that’s totally acceptable these days for the modern arrogant scientist.
Photo 1950.
https://ibb.co/Mf1d3NC
“They say it was all “estimates””
Who said that? Not the NIFC in 2021. It was the original source of the data, Census bureau, about 1970. That is where it all comes from.
I know where it comes from, I was referring to your use of it as some kind of definitive proof of something unworthy and instantly dismissable.
Many things today are still “best estimates”, it is a valid position, it’s used all the time.
You’re very apt at taking the debate off into the weeds Mr Stokes, and you know very well which buttons to press on this site to get the desired effect.
I still haven’t seen an explanation of the Foresters methods for calculating number of burnt acres, and then an explanation of why it is now deemed non-valid.
This would be an honest way of allaying suspicion don’t you think?
“I still haven’t seen an explanation of the Foresters methods for calculating number of burnt acres”
It’s quite possible that the estimate was not done by Foresters. It is likely that no-one, including NIFC knows how it was done, and therefore what it means. NIFC cannot then properly post the numbers along with the recent data. They can’t post on the basis, “well, they are numbers, aren’t they, and we’re not sure they are inconsistent”.
“It’s quite possible that the estimate was not done by Foresters. It is likely that no-one, including NIFC knows how it was done, and therefore what it means.”
That is highly improbable considering the amount of Forest Service archived material in the National Archives Catalog going back to 1870.
As I said before, you are trying to portray those years as something akin to a dark age, but those records prove that not to be the case at all, and in fact show people to be very meticulous with a keen sense for detail in all parts of forest management.
From that quote again
“No field organizations are available to report fires on unprotected areas”
Somebody made an estimate. It could have been the organization compiling the statistics. About 90% of the acres in those 1930’s data were in unprotected areas.
Here’s more inconvenient data.
https://flatheadbeacon.com/2021/05/12/kalispells-temperature-stays-steady-with-drier-summers/
Nice detective work Anthony. Please consider adding a folder containing this and other “disappeared data.
Reminds me of China’s war against the “Four Olds”, led by the brainwashed student Red Guard. This was a destruction of old ideas, old cultures, old habits, and old customs. You have to erase history so that people won’t the truth about the past. Inconvenient facts that make Comrade leaders look bad must be denounced and destroyed. By denouncing it as racist, sexist, or whatever other -ist you can make up, the brainwashed minions will gladly destroy it.
I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve seen statues that were in place for over a hundred years get denounced as racist, and then torn down. One day, quickly and suddenly, these statues were causing “mental anguish” to people, even though a few days early it caused no such problems for the same people.
The past has to be destroyed, otherwise people would think for themselves and find out the truth. Can’t have that.
The parallels between the Cultural Revolution and today’s Cancel Culture are uncanny.
In the case of Confederate statues, the Democrats are just erasing their racism by tearing down statues of other Democrats.
People were clearly much more stupider in olden times. And the didn’t have computers back then, so any numbers they added together would have been just a guess.
Seriously though, how do the people doing this sleep at night?
“We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”.
I posted my take on this a month or so ago. I worked for several years on a national forest with a very active fire program and performed burned area resonse analyses for several very large fires.
http://eschewhob.blogspot.com/2021/01/further-reflections-on-wildfire.html?m=1
Other useful hidden fact:
http://phzoe.com/2021/05/11/warming-near-coal-plants/
Who is going to write the book: The Great Human-caused Climate Change Fraud”?
It looks like we need to gather together all the Lies the alarmists use to perpetrate this fraud on the world in one book.
The entirety of the fraud is made of of distorted data. And the fraud cannot be continued without continuing to use fraudlent data.
Human-Caused Climate Change is the biggest fraud in human history and the wildfire data is just a continuation of the lies.
Somebody ought to go to jail over it.
The following should dispel some of the misinformation in this post. Most of the early data we have about wildfires comes from the USFS annual summary reports, and there is no consistent definition for what counts as a “wildfire” between sources. But it’s important to look first at the what these areas that burned were. The USFS fire data shows that the the peak in area burned in the early 20th century was due to burns that occurred on unprotected lands. If you look at trends on protected lands, area burned remains fairly steady throughout the the early 20th Century.[1]
Now if you look at the data for area burned within unprotected lands, almost all of it comes from the Southeast, Texas and Oklahoma – very little of it comes from the Western United States. And most of the area burned in the Southeast comes from just three states – Florida, Georgia and Mississippi.[1] What’s more, most of the areas burned in these unprotected lands were from woods-burning. They are what we now call “controlled” or “prescribed” burns, and they were intentionally set fires for controlling vegetation growth. These fires are still done today, but they are not reported as “wildfires” unless a prescribed burn goes out of control.
“In addition to the area-reporting bias in the USFS summary reports, analysts should be aware of other inconsistency and uncertainty in the wildfire activity estimates that are included, especially for unprotected areas. Intentional (‘controlled’) burning was used extensively for vegetation management on non federal lands, especially in the south-eastern US during the early 20th century. Although now used to a lesser extent (but on both federal and non-federal lands) in the US, intentional burning is not classified in the current reporting systems as ‘wildfire’ unless the controlled burn escapes and requires a suppression
response. However, the early USFS wildfire activity summaries do include millions of hectares of intentional burning on ‘unprotected’ lands, which, until approximately the mid-20th century was viewed by the USFS as akin to wildfire, as something that should be prevented and ultimately eradicated (Pyne 1982).”[2].
This is likely a significant reason why the NIFC isn’t showing data prior to 1983. There are inconsistencies in what gets reported as a “wildfire,” and accuracy in reporting requires consistent definitions of what gets reported as a wildfire. There’s no intentional hiding of data. This is just a case of bloggers not doing their homework.
[1] Short et al. USDA Forest Service Fire Data
https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_journals/2020/rmrs_2020_short_k001.pdf
[2] Short Karen C. (2015) Sources and implications of bias and uncertainty in a century of US wildfire activity data. International Journal of Wildland Fire 24, 883-891.
https://doi.org/10.1071/WF14190
How convenient.
There’s also the matter of just how believable these numbers are. Think about it. This graph shows between 15 and 20 million hectares burning every year for about 15 years in a row. Let’s call that 250 million hectares for fun. That’s almost 1 million square miles, or more than the states of AL and CA combined. Most of the burned area on unprotected lands comes from FL, GA, and MS – that’s a total of 173 square miles. That’s ludicrous. These summaries are not providing straight up wildfire numbers.
Mr. Simmons: Uh huh. Thanks for the careful review. So NIFC deletion has nothing to do with the AGW meme that CO2 is causing more wildfires, claiming an upward trend; being rebutted by the original chart showing the opposite trend; and cropping the chart at 1983 shows the trend that fits the meme. Wonder why the NIFC felt the need to review this, was it because you and Mr. Stokes contacted the NIFC with your concerns about the quality of the old data?
I can only guess why you don’t care about the accuracy of reporting data. The fact remains that “wildfire” means one thing in the early years of this graph and something something else in the later years. It’s possible that the NIFC was unaware of the differing definitions until the USFS published their work that I cited above. I don’t know – you’ll have to ask them why.
The fact remains nothing in this chart rebuts what climate scientists are saying about wildfires. Increased CO2 causes increased temperatures, which in the west is also causing longer fire seasons and increased VPD, both of which contribute to the increase in acreage burned over recent decades. Causation here complex with natural and other anthropogenic factors playing a significant role, but the blog post is misinformed.
Just look at the graph superimposing wildfires in the US with drought conditions in the west. The post doesn’t even keep its geography straight.
Mr. Simmons: I can only guess why you don’t care if NIFC was unaware of it’s mission- oh, wait, I don’t have to guess, you tell us that CO2 has increased temp….(please excuse uncontrolled laughter). CliSci’s tell us that, and you believe them even though the “increase” in temps seems to be almost too small to measure, far too small to affect fires. Anyway, thanks for letting us know that you are of the “appeal to authority” type.
So then you can find actual evidence of portions of the US totaling the size of Alaska and California burning over a 15 year period? You think that’s believable? Do you really think that actually happened? That’s lunacy. Just do a little math. Over a 15 year period, the USFS numbers report ~1 million square miles burned. Most of that was on unprotected lands, and most of the unprotected lands burned was in the southeast, predominantly from three states – Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. Those three states total just 173,000 square miles. Think about that and see if that makes any sense to you at all.
You can ignore the fact that the USFS used a different definition of wildfire to include intentional fires if you like. That necessarily inflates the data in the early 20th century because later records do not include controlled/prescribed burns in their accounting of acreage burned.
“There’s no intentional hiding of data. This is just a case of bloggers not doing their homework.”
Riiigght. so show me exactly where the data is “not” hidden on NIFC.
The data removed from the website used an inconsistent definition of the term “wildfire.” The sources I provided clearly articulate good reasons for taking down the misleading graph..
Mr. Simmons: Again, uh huh. The graph did fine until skeptics used it to show the AGW “wildfire” meme is false. To leave it up and explain it to avoid “misleading” anybody means you, like the AGW crowd, think we’re too dumb to handle the truth. We have seen this movie before.
The graph did fine at misrepresenting the truth. It does not reflect a consistent definition of what a “wildfire” is, and that necessarily inflates the acreage burned in the first half of the 20th century.
It also includes pretty much unbelievable numbers, like ~1 million square miles burned over a 15 year period. Most of that was on unprotected lands, and most of the unprotected lands burned was in the southeast, predominantly from three states – Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. Yet those three states total just 173,000 square miles. Think about that and see if that makes any sense to you at all.
Look carefully at the above graph. It reports an average of ~10 million hectares per year burned over a 10-year period from 1927-1936 in Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi. That’s a total ~100 million hectares or ~386,000 square miles. The total area of those states is 173,000 square miles. So according to this data, the entire area of these states burned at least twice over that ten year period. Can you cite any historical information of this happening? I’ll wait.
Below, a commenter shows a 1938 NYT article about 1937 “forest fires”, it says 21 m. a., which was alot better than ’36. Doesn’t say what happened in three states. Many other such articles about vast forest fires in that big black area on your graph. Because you are an AGW acolyte, I concluyde you are using a graph to mislead us even as you accuse others of misleading.
The article is likely just reporting what was put in the USFS annual summary. If the summary is mistaken, so is the NYT article. Please read the information in the links. I’ve already pointed out the graph in the blogpost reports the acres burned on protected + unprotected lands. That’s what the graph in the blogpost is showing. It shows also over 50 million acres burned in 1931 and 1932. What the sources I’ve linked to show is most that that big spike in wildfires comes from unprotected lands in the southeast (and texas and oklahoma). The data shows that most of that comes from just three states. Because it shows you the total acreage reported as burned in those three states, we can total them up. Over a 10 year period, data reported from those three states exceeds 2x the total amount of land included within those 3 states. So, if we’re to believe this graph, the entirety of all three states burned completely at least 2 times over a ten year period.
I appreciate your desire to go ad hominem in your attempt to deny the evidence I’m giving you, but fallacies don’t change evidence. The evidence is still there for you to reckon with once you’re done with you ad hominem attacks.
So you admit they disappeared the data. They gave no justification, no notice of any kind, not even a simple explanation. They could have corrected the data and provided a reference for the methodology – they chose cloak and dagger instead.
If they were truly professional, and the data has problems, they would discuss those problems in the open with the public. Instead, they disappeared it after it being made public for a decade.
That’s unscientific and wrong.
If by “disappeared the data” you mean they took down a misleading graph, then sure. There appears to be no question about whether they took down the graph. The question is why. You seem to be suggesting that the did so for nefarious purposes to hide the actual trends in wildfires, but evidence for this motive is not forthcoming, and evidence for the unreliability of the data prior to 1950 is clear and convincing. I’ve already noted the different definition of “wildfire” in the early USFS reports – that change necessarily inflates numbers for older fires. But the problem is actually quite a bit larger.
Here’s where the spike in areas burned prior to 1950 comes from. The graph is of the USFS reports of acres burned on unprotected lands. The dark gray portions come from three states. Notice it reports an average of ~10 million hectares per year burned over a 10-year period from 1927-1936 in Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi. That’s a total ~100 million hectares or ~386,000 square miles. The total area of those states is 173,000 square miles. So according to this data, the entire area of these states burned at least twice over that ten year period. Can you cite any historical information of this happening?
Mr. Simmons appears to be able to extract great detail from the unreliable pre-1950 data, kinda makes one wonder why it all needs to be tossed rather than have Mr. Simmons extract the “apples” from other burns. That huge black area, were there no wildfires there?
A closer look shows this tiny black area at the top of Mr. Simmons’ lines, looks like this whole “wildfires in the ’30s” thing was made up. By Denlalists. At the NYT in the 1930’s. There were virtually no acres burned in the entire black area during the ’30s, Mr. Simmons wants us to believe. It was all in three states, plus around the southeast. Don’t know where the fudge comes in, but I suspect this “protected” lands was changing all along.
Anthony, whether or not the NIFC should have provided more explanation about why they removed the graph is an entirely separate issue from whether or not the graph should have ever been up on NIFC to begin with. It seems clear that it never should have been, so this correction, whether adequately documented or not, seems wholly justified, if not late in coming.
Mr. rise: Seems clear? To whom? Seems wholly justified? Thanks for your conclusions, based on “not adequately documented” explanations. Noted.
What is obvious from the available data is that the numbers prior to 1950 are unbelievable. Apparently you want us all to believe that all of Florida, Georgia and Mississippi burned twice over a 10 year period. I did my homework, and I looked up the sources that document where these fires were located and how the term “wildfire” changed over time. I gave you links to the information so that you could look it up for yourself. Here it is again:
[1] Short et al. USDA Forest Service Fire Data
https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_journals/2020/rmrs_2020_short_k001.pdf
[2] Short Karen C. (2015) Sources and implications of bias and uncertainty in a century of US wildfire activity data. International Journal of Wildland Fire 24, 883-891.
https://doi.org/10.1071/WF14190
Now the question of whether NIFC should have kept this data up on their website with a disclaimer saying, this data is unusable, we’re sorry for posting it, or just deleting the misleading data is certainly open for opinion. It’s not not a big deal either way.
But the fact remains that the available information we have about the early wildfire data shows that it’s numbers are absurdly large and use differing definitions the term “wildfire.” The real question to ask is, how did this get put on the website to begin with? That’s an interesting question.
As to the “huge black area,” there were of course fires. The graph shows fires on unprotected lands. The fires in the black area on unprotected lands are shown in black on the graph. That’s part of my point.
Your point is that the chart you show is a crap chart, showing WAY more fire than could have occurred in 3 states. I see it’s a crap chart, too, because it also shows too little fire in the black. WAY too little. If the area in black is all “protected”, that might explain it. In any event, your chart is misleading, (your point, yes) and it includes data that was (? was it?) included in the now-deleted data. Mr. Stokes tells us it’s all estimates anyway. You brush off NYT articles with, OH, they are just reporting usfs numbers.” Really, NYT reported what you see in this string, and nobody noticed at the time that it was utterly false??!! No, my last word here, news accounts lend enough support to the “estimates” to verify the data enough to keep it with error bars as needed (ever heard of ’em?). Tossing “estimates” made at the time of the events is a CliSci special.
I gave you links to my sources so that you could see the information for yourself. I see you haven’t yet done that. You also haven’t read the description on the graph. The graph shows only the wildfires on unprotected lands.
Based on the wealth of evidence presented in this thread. It beggars belief that anyone could look at an image like this one:
And not think, “hmm, something seems weird about this.” Since entering this thread, I’ve been doing more reading on the history of burning practices in the US than I ever thought I’d need to, and one thing that has jumped out to me is the rich cultural practice of woods burning in the Southern coastal states, and the fact that prescribed burns were banned by the US Forest Service in the 1930s. Given the hardline policy against burning by the Forest Service, and the gusto with which people in these states enjoyed setting the landscape ablaze, it seems quite sensible to suppose that the Forest Service did indeed classify such illegal controlled burning as incendiary wildfires, as I’ve provided documentary evidence for elsewhere in this thread.
This, combined with the fact that these estimates for these burns are “best guess” estimates, there is little doubt whatsoever that the early and recent burn data are showing completely different things, and can’t be directly compared.
And any attempt to refine and render comparable must be stopped!
It’d be swell if someone found a way to refine and render the data comparable, but in the absence of that being done/possible it is much better to not compare the incompatible data than to potentially mislead people. NIFC made the right choice in taking down the original graph.
“Figures prior to 1983 may be revised as NICC verifies historical data.”
Well, it took years of planning to erase the prior data. You can be sure that the data WILL be revised now.
I believe that a surfacestations-type crowd sourcing of all data sets should be attempted. The data is too valuable to leave in the hands of activist scientists and organizations. The surfacestations provided a disciplinary function that announced that we were looking over the climate wroughters’ shoulders. I dare say that there would not have been a two-decade ‘Pause’ if we had not been vigilant.
We need a crowd sourced fund for counting polar bears, caribou and penguins. All three had huge populations ‘disappeared’ by the ‘experts’ in the past only to be found elsewhere – these animals move 100s, even more than a1000km
– a female bear (radio-tagged) swam 687km in 9 days!
https://polarbearfacts.net/how-far-can-a-polar-bear-swim/
It’s like plotting the North American temperature from February through May, and then make a “projection” that we’re all going to die from Global Warming if the trend continues.
Yes, I’ve seen that one claimed.
Trump will have a full plate come 2024…
You mean TraitorTrump? That Trump?
I think he means the “@realDonaldTrump”
You have really shown your colours now.
Bruce doesn’t like Trump, but I think he liked most of Trump’s policies. What’s not to like? 🙂
Still resides rent free in your head eh? Cobb
Lmao
The ‘rise’ after 1983 would also have been assisted by arson. The vast majority believed Anthropo Global Warming was real in the 1980s. As it came to be more and more effectively disputed by the late 1990s and into the new millennium, arsonists began to give the stats a helping hand. It is rife in Australia and California.
“Nearly 85 percent* of wildland fires in the United States are caused by humans. Human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, equipment use and malfunctions, negligently discarded cigarettes, and intentional acts of arson.”
https://www.nps.gov/articles/wildfire-causes-and-evaluation.htm
First, I agree with the post, this is motivated cherry picking in the first degree and as bright a light as possible should be shone on it.
Regarding your statement:
“Besides, the data is very simple; a count of the number of fires and the number of acres burned. How hard is that to compile and verify as accurate?”
I’ve worked in fire mapping and building historic fire datasets for parts of Canada. Comparing the acres burned does require consideration of mapping and reporting standards, which varied significantly in the past, so not always simple to compile and verify.
Fire boundaries are often irregular, with islands, peninsulas, insulas, etc. Unburned area within the fire boundary can be as high as 50% in some cases.
In the past it might have been mapped by a guy hanging out the window of a relatively fast moving plane at a couple thousand feet or more, with the goal of drawing a general boundary of the area affected without the detail.
In the areas I have worked some of the historic fires are merely a circle or ellipse of the size reported in an old ledger and roughly centered where the fire was thought to have happened.
So there is some legitimacy to being cautious. Comparing older fire acres with recent acres should be done in context. But absolutely not a reason to remove it.
For a moment there I thought you were describing how the James Cook University professors map the areas of bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef.
Aerial photography for reconnaissance was used during the Great War and in the ’30s aerial surveys were done from 23,000 feet (Wiki).
By this logic then all pre-satellite polar ice data is bad as well! You know because they were measuring it differently
Well done, Anthony!
Edit suggestion:
Replace
“… show the public the ‘crisis side’ of climate data.”
With
“mislead the public by skewing the data to manufacture a ‘crisis.'”
The verb “show” erroneously implies that the data fiddlers are merely reporting data (versus creating a false impression).
thanks, good suggestion
Cool! Glad you thought so. Thanks for saying so 😀
“Good,” but, apparently, not good enough. 🙁
Clearly fraudulent.
Many of us have been posting the historical data to counter the wildfires getting worse lie in comment sections so they had to disappear it.
“Sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process”
I’m torn; should all data from uncertain/unverified sources be deleted, or should all data, however produced, be published along with uncertainty analysis and detail methods of production? Can’t help thinking that fully in either extreme would be good, but halfway has got to be deliberately wrong.