The news media have made the number and intensity of wildfires in western states this summer a household topic: as of August 14, there were hundreds of them, and of major ones, 17 were burning in Alaska, 11 in Arizona, 10 each in Oregon and Colorado, and 9 in California. The media and many environmentalists blame them on global warming.
The numbers sound bad to people not studied in the field, but in actuality they’re not unusual. In fact, the number of fires has been decreasing since the 1970s. But the total acreage burned has been increasing over that period. But an even longer view shows an entirely different picture, according to data kept by the National Interagency Fire Center and shown in this graph:
Clearly, both the number of fires and the number of acres burned were far higher from the late 1920s through the 1940s than since 2000.
Nonetheless, global warming alarmists and their media lapdogs get it wrong.
“The effects of global warming on temperature, precipitation levels, and soil moisture are turning many of our forests into kindling during wildfire season,” says the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The Associated Press claims “Science Says: Hotter weather turbocharges US West wildfires.”
The Chicago Sun Times handles it this way:
As human-caused climate change has warmed the world over the past 35 years, the land consumed by flames has more than doubled.
Experts say the way global warming worsens wildfires comes down to the basic dynamics of fire. Fires need ignition, oxygen and fuel. And what’s really changed is fuel — the trees, brush and other plants that go up in flames.
“Hotter drier weather means our fuels are drier so it’s easier for fires to start and spread and burn more intensely,” said University of Alberta fire scientist Mike Flannigan.
But University of Washington Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Cliff Mass pointed out in a recent interview with the Daily Caller:
Correlation is not causation. Temperatures are warming, that is true. Wildfire area is increasing in parts of the west, also true. But one does not necessarily cause another. Wildfire area could well be increasing because of previous fire suppression, mismanagement of our forests, and a huge influx of people into the west, lightning fires and providing lots of fuel for them.
Likewise, University of Alabama-Huntsville’s Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science John Christy says human mismanagement is the more important cause of the huge fires:
If you don’t let the low-intensity fires burn, that fuel builds up year after year. Now once a fire gets going and it gets going enough, it has so much fuel that we can’t put it out. In that sense, you could say that fires today are more intense, but it’s because of human management practices, not because mother nature has done something.
Yes, what’s really changed is fuel—not how dry it is because of rising temperature or declining precipitation (neither of which has a trend sufficient to make much difference in combustibility), but how much of it there is.
Driven largely by environmentalists who insisted that human management of nature is somehow bad, the western states, and the federal government, generally adopted policies of suppressing fires and not removing undergrowth from forests. Yet fires are a natural phenomenon essential to long-term forest health. Preventing and suppressing them results in denser undergrowth, which means more fuel. Fires then burn hotter and move faster, accounting for the fact that acres burned have generally increased (though not greatly) since the 1970s, while the number of fires has not.
louis wachsmuth says
One day Cornwall is going to run out of reasons for the extremes. What will be the tipping point? All these research scientists actually out in the field doing the tough work of observations, in all parts of the world–these folks are all wrong or part of a socialist plot? Only a handful of people know the “real truth”?
erstwhile socialist says
So, what part of the National Interagency Fire Center data are you disputing? You are painting with a broad ideological brush instead of dealing with a specific point that the author has made. Is the graph depicted valid or is it a pack of lies fabricated for some nefarious right-wing purpose?
Timothy Herrick says
Louis: What about the graph and those statistics mentioned above? You don’t believe the numbers? Also, the so-called “scientific consensus” is not only overblown, it’s not even scientific. Do you remember “climate gate”? And, you still choose to trust the government? If so, I have a bridge in the East River you might be interested in buying . . .
Mike the skeptic says
Every summer that I’ve lived in the NW (since 2000), I’ve read articles in the local and national press about the amount and intensity of forest fires and resulting smoke, and interpretations made regarding whether things are worse, better or the same. As seems to happen in every other topic of discussion, the interpretations tend to fit the pre-made bias of whomever is writing the article. A common result of an objective, balanced analysis is that these things are multi-factorial, and not clearly delineated as black/white or direct causation cases (like Cliff Mass indicates in his quote).
A couple of personal observations:
1) I have found that is is easier to start a fire with things that are dry, than with things that are wet. At least my personal experience burning things for heat and for cooking gives me ample data to support this notion. Related to this, it is generally easier to control a fire when it is cooler and wetter. This is evident in the current and long-standing NW practice of doing controlled burns in the winter time, when the rain and snow keep the fire at a gentle smolder, rather than a destructive maelstrom. This concept also applies to the way that firefighters battle a blaze and when they are able to turn the corner based on day-to-day or weekly changes in temperature and rainfall.
2) Saying that the media are the lapdogs of environmentalists is a very clear way to indicate an author’s own bias on the topic. I immediately moderate my opinion of the author, down from an initial level of standard respect, to a level of skepticism that the person will be able to use objective observation and balanced analysis. In other words, I immediately assume that they are going to have a heavy bias, since they use hyperbole to describe two groups of people and their implied partnership.
3) Providing data in the form of graphs, like this author did, is a very good thing! I am always a fan of data, and informative graphs. That part of the article brought my level of respect back up again for this author, to a more standard level of respect. 🙂
4) I think it is interesting to read that this author (and others who write in opposition to the idea of global warming being contributory to forest fire intensity) say that fire is a natural forest phenomenon, essential for long-term forest health. I agree to the level of saying that it is a natural phenomenon, but I think it is overstated to say that we know it is essential to long-term forest health. How many of the forests in the western states are in their natural state? If my read of NW history is correct, and if the people that I know who work in forestry are correct, then there are very few existing stands of natural forest in this area. Most of the natural forest was cut down a century ago, and replanted with trees that humans have since managed in a variety of ways. Some have been managed for logging/timber industry. Some have been managed for recreation. To say that something is essential to long-term forest health and then to say that humans know how to manage long-term forest health is a bit ironic, since we haven’t taken the time to observe natural forest health.
5) I am a fan of stewardship on this Earth, but I’m not a fan of overstating the supposed beneficial impact by humans to influence the health of any one of the systems on the planet. In my opinion, over the many centuries we have done a great job of finding out clever ways to improve our human comforts by using discovered natural resources, and then we’ve done an even better job of exploiting those resources to the point of resource scarcity, or harm to our own health or the health of other systems on the planet by massive production of the by-products which have come from our utilization of those natural resources.
I don’t disagree with the author’s point regarding the number of fires and the number of acres burnt over the last 100 years. I do take issue however with the author’s obvious bias and with their lack of objective, balanced analysis, when they are trying to call out the lack of objective analysis by environmentalists and their so-called media lapdogs. If I was this author’s editor, I would ask them to reduce or remove the biased rhetoric and keep the writing more focused on the data and a balance analysis. Perhaps there is no editor on this site.
E. Calvin Beisner says
Thanks for your very thoughtful and well reasoned comments, Mike. Here are a few thoughts in reply:
1. Media lapdogs–well, yes, I guess that’s a little over the top, and since I’m a former journalist and son of a lifelong journalist, I suppose I should take umbrage at such language. Yet perhaps precisely because I have that background that I’m particularly sensitive to the degree to which, on certain issues, journalists do indeed tend to play the role of lapdog. Partly that sensitivity is out of jealousy for the integrity of the profession–an integrity much harmed by lapdog behavior. Partly, too, it’s because I can usually tell when a journalist has done his or her job of seeking understand and accurately represent opposing sides on controversial issues and when they haven’t–and almost invariably, on climate change, they don’t. So, I do think that on this issue it’s probably a pretty accurate generalization. Nonetheless, for the very reasons you state, I’d probably have been smarter not to say it.
2. Fire and long-term forest health: You’re right, and I wrote too broadly there. In reality, “forest health” is a relative term, and what constitutes “forest health” depends to a large extent on the purposes one has in mind for the given forest. A forest healthy as a source of wood for construction differs from one healthy as a wildlife habitat or one healthy as a source of wood to be milled into paper, etc.
3. Shame on me for implying that ANY of our forests are in a natural state–assuming that we mean by “natural” a state unaffected by human action. No forests anywhere are in that state–some may be a little closer than others, and some are far from it, but none is in a perfectly natural “untouched-by-human-hands” state. And it’s not by any means clear why any should (in a moral sense of “should”) be.
David Henry says
I notice these statistics are only for the U.S. states. These may not be totally representative of a broader part of the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. For instance,data for Canada for a similar period listed here shows a more positive correlation between increase in temperature and acres burned by fires.It does not have the high maximum before 1960 shown on the bar graph here.
Doug says
I’m curious about the data from 1926 to 1970. How was it derived? I think methodologies for counting fires and acreage are pretty well understood and have been pretty consistent since the 1970’s, but I’ve never seen data from before that period, until now. How do we know this data is any good? Where did it come from? Were the methodologies consistent with methodologies used since the 1970’s? Thanks.
E. Calvin Beisner says
You’ll see a thorough discussion of that in the article at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/13/caught-inconvenient-u-s-wildfire-data-has-been-disappeared-by-national-interagency-fire-center-nifc_fire/.