Note: This is a reprint of my op-ed “Editor for a Day” in the Chico Enterprise-Record, complete with links and graphs to factual references for the benefit of readers there who were directed to WUWT. The photo of the Park Fire pyrocumulus cloud above was taken by me as I observed the fire’s progress – Anthony
On July 30, The New York Times (NYT) ran an article titled “How Did the Park Fire Get So Big, So Fast?”that claims, “Heat has been breaking records all summer, and … records will probably continue to fall over the next several years as the burning of fossil fuels continues to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”
The article provides no data or citations supporting this claim but relies on opinions from so-called climate experts who have no connection to the fire. Last week, Professor Mark Stemen wrote in an op-ed “…it was climate change that pushed that fire to Tehama County overnight.” How absurd; climate doesn’t act on short time scales or local venues.
This sort of “causality shoehorning” (to coin a phrase) is becoming increasingly common among journalists and climate advocates as they strain to fit any weather event or catastrophe into the climate change narrative.
Like Stemen’s claim, NYT’s claim of “a very clear fingerprint of climate change” on dry vegetation that fueled the Park fire is little more than personal opinion, offering no scientific citation or basis for the claims.
While there was a heat wave prior to the Park fire, that had no bearing on the fire. The area where the fire spread, Butte and Tehama Counties, were not in drought conditions according to the U.S. Drought Monitor for July 23 – the day before the Park fire was ignited by a criminal arsonist.
So, “climate change caused drought” creating abnormally dry conditions didn’t figure into the Park fire at all. The fire wouldn’t exist without the act of arson.
The ignition point was in Bidwell Park. Just north of that point, huge acreages of grassland and scrub brush exist. Combine that ignition with the sustained southerly winds that day of 20-25 mph, and it is no surprise that the fire rapidly spread north. Rick Carhart, the Public Information Officer for CalFire in Butte County, confirmed in a telephone interview that the area “had not naturally burned in several decades, and had no control burns to reduce fuel loads.” He added that these “high fuel loads, combined with the wind that day made a very aggressive fire.”
If the fire happened now during below-normal temperatures (in California), would its slower spread be due to climate change too?
Climate change contributed nothing to ignition or rapid spread of the fire – local weather and a criminal act was at fault. The drying of grasses (which happens every spring) and the heat wave (which happens every summer) are both weather patterns that operate on short-term time scales as opposed to long-term climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds no climate signal, nor increasing trend, behind thunderstorms, or lightning occurrences spark fires. Also, NASA satellites have documented a global long-term decline in wildfires. NASA reports satellites have measured a 25-percent decrease in global lands burned since 2003.
A 2007 paper in the journal Forest Ecology and Management reported that prior to European colonization in the 1800s, more than 4.4 million acres of California forest and shrub-land burned annually. As compared to the 4.4 million California acres that burned each year prior to European colonization, only 90,000 acres to 1.6 million California acres burn in a typical year now.
Clearly, there is no climate change component to California wildfires. If there were, fires in the present would be consuming much more than 4.4 million acres annually – but this isn’t happening. The simple fact is: arsonists and lightning are responsible for most wildfires.
The intensity and coverage of wildfire varies greatly from year to year, as evidenced by the 2022 NYT story: Why California’s 2022 Wildfire Season Was Unexpectedly Quiet. A map of fires from year to year in the article demonstrates this well. Curiously, a data correlation between the Spotted Owl ruling and an increase in acreage burned from lack of forest management since 1990 exists.
The NYT believes that they can divine climate connections to the fire from offices in New York. At least Stemen was local, but still wrong.
It seems that climate activists and journalists care more about furthering their misguided climate agenda than they do about reporting the facts.
Factual references are published here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/newspaper-letter-references/
Anthony Watts is a former meteorologist at KHSL TV/ Action News Now. He does daily forecasts for KPAY Radio and is also a Senior Fellow for Climate and Environment at the Heartland Institute in Chicago. He also operates the most viewed climate related website in the world, wattsupwiththat.com
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Someplace there’s a photo of Yosemite valley from the early 1900s (or earlier?) showing it to be largely un-forested with a recent photo for comparison showing that today the valley is mostly covered with trees.
On edit:
https://hetchhetchy.org/supporting-a-vision-of-natural-splendor/
I think- for a while- it was farmed.
Log it, graze it, or watch it burn.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Existence, as you know it, is over.
— Climate Borg
Resistance is futile. You will be ass-mutilated.
Sorry, couldn’t help it.
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
you should be encouraging the youth. There was a time when you thought fart jokes were funny too.
This graphic from the Legislative Analyst Office’s shows the amount of acres burned each year in California wildfires.
California Legislative Analyst Office
sorry got the words wrong this is wildfire suppression costs
If they allowed land managers to do what they’re trained to do- all that land could be profitable- not costly.
Up voted for recognizing and admitting your error.
Can’t you even read your own chart?
Surely you must take into account the money spent on suppression of fires to see that the number is reducing – more money = less fires?
this is area burned not suppression costs!!
How convenient. Why is the starting point 1987?
And the answer is, because MUCH MORE CALIFORNIA ACREAGE was burning in the 1970s than today.
“The simple fact is: arsonists and lightning are responsible for most wildfires.”
I believe someone has mis-interpreted the data. Most fires are a result of something humans do or have done. Lightning causes some, arsonists cause some. A study in the western USA indicated that about 88% of ignitions come from things like faulty wiring of outbuildings, untimely and unwatched burning of brush, tires blowing out and rims throwing sparks, pulling an auto over dead grass, fireworks, and on and on. See more, including photos, here:
Wildfire Investigation (nifc.gov)
Personal observation, in the 1990’s. Diamond Lake, Oregon. Watched a thunderstorm come up out of the Rogue River valley. After it had passed, eleven (11) smokes from the forest on the west side of Crater Lake National Park. From memory, three helicopters with buckets. After about two hours, no more rising smoke.
Ten days later there was a flare-up. That fire took 200 firefighters four days to knock down. It was large enough that T-shirts were printed, the fire name and dates. We didn’t buy any. (And my daily diary from that period was lost in a hard-drive crash some years later.)
It’s not just the media but the government agency’s are pushing this climate change
narrative. When the most recent pine bark beetle timber kill hit back around 06 in my area
the foresters were saying it was because we weren’t getting the -20 temperatures
that allowed the beetle to expand. Climate change was one told me caused it,
ignoring the fact that that the Big Burn of 1910 was preceded by a beetle kill over several million
acres in the Northern Rockies.
They stood by and watched when this first hit in the Colorado
mountains and moved north over the course of several years. One has to wonder
what effect a few C130’s with some tanks of organo-phophate during the hatch might
have had on the outbreak..
I practiced forestry for 50 years but I’ll not defend the stupid ones- and lots of them- especially in government.
Back when this was ongoing I was advised by 3 different foresters. All were
great and there is no way I’d engage in any harvesting without a forester.
The FS changed when they went from each unit being locally controlled
to this central type of system being run out of DC. They’ve become woke
in many ways.
Nowadays, forestry education is hardly about cutting timber- it’s about biodiversity, aesthetics, carbon sequestration, blah, blah, blah. My forestry school at U. Mass. no longer teaches forestry economics, which is shocking to me- and few others do either. They are very woke. Most days, I fire off email rants to the forestry community plus enviros plus state officials here in Wokeachusetts- telling them what they’re doing wrong. They generally ignore me, of course. 🙂 But they don’t tell me that what I’m saying is wrong, because I’m not wrong.
Arson is caused by climate change.
And people cheating on their spouses. When you get caught, just say “the climate made me do it”.
Cui bono. I wonder, who would be motivated enough to start a high-profile wildfire.
Lots of crazy people out there.
“…prior to European colonization in the 1800s, more than 4.4 million acres of California forest and shrub-land burned annually.” I can’t find the reference, but prior to European colonization the local Indians use to do controlled burns to assist in harvesting acorns. I wonder how many of those 4.4 million burned acres per year were due to those ‘controlled’ burns.
The fire spread rapidly through (1-hour an 10-hour fuels ) grasses and chaparral. That vegetation becomes highl flammable in a few days every year. The natural climate of the Chico Ca region for July where the fire started is 99F maximum and 29% Relative humidity. As all research has demonstrated fuels are highly flammable when fuel moisture is below 8-10%. In Chico during July vegetation is naturally around 5% fuel moisture. As tons of research has shown, when relative humidity is below 30%, temperature is no longer a factor. Only changes in Relative Humidity affect fuel moisture. Climate change and heat waves are totally irrelevant!!!
“It seems that climate activists and journalists care more about furthering their misguided climate agenda than they do about reporting the facts.”
I think some are just dumb.