I have no idea how the scientific paper should have been structured. Presumably it was exactly as it should be. As communication with the public (from what I understood) I think it should been something like
1. Data xxx about fires in period yyy are often attributed to the effects of of CO2 accumulation
2. Data zzz suggest that Data xxx is explained in large part human factors ppp.
3. It is beyond the scope of this paper to estimate how Data zzz woud have differed given ppp but without CO2 accumulation.
4. Policies to affect ppp, given CO2 accumulation would correspondingly affect zzz-like data going forward
5. [if one of the co-authors had been an economist :)] Annex A estimates the cost of policies to affect ppp and the benefits of the variation in zzz.
It blows my mind that cellulose is so hard to degrade, even after hundreds of millions of years of life forms taking cracks at it, that this much energy will just sit around until it literally goes up in smoke. It's just a polysaccharide, not that different from starch. What makes it so special?
It's like if you had a safe that is so secure, you could put a billion dollars in it and leave it out for all the enterprising people of the world, and after years the best anyone could do is slip out some of the money through a crack in the door, leaving hundreds of millions to crumble to dust
I’m not surprised with the conclusions of this study. Forest management is key to minimizing the impact of fires. Hopefully someone will listen to this and take appropriate action.
Also concerning is the attempt to position this by the reviewer as more supporting climate change. Thanks for pointing this out. I wonder how often this occurs behind the scenes and authors are compelled to modify their papers to accommodate this. A lot I suspect. This paper could have been written with no mention of climate change and the conclusion would have been the same. There are a lot of papers that mention climate change even though it has nothing to do with the research or conclusions. Apparently, this a requirement to publish.
The concern does not seem entirely out of place. There ARE people that do not think the Accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere has important net negative effects on human life and property. A paper that neither supports or undermines the net negative effect _can_ be interpreted as support for the "denialist" view. Heading off a plausible misunderstanding is a good idea
Dr. Pielke, you wrote: "Accelerated decarbonization of the economy makes good sense for many reasons beyond just climate change."
We will have to deal with the lack of easily accessible fossil fuels at some time in the distant future; a few hundred years or even a few thousand, we don't know. At that time they may become so expensive to recover that they will be reserved for essential products and some other source of heat for civilization will be required. Other than that, I can't see any reason for decarbonization at this time. Could you please give us the advantage of your thoughts on this issue?
Come on, Roger. Don't be coy. Changing the trajectory of CO2 accumulation makes good sense becasue the cost of changing it is less than the cost of not changing it.
I am not surprised , even from historical records we could (and have) figured that out. There used to be more larger fires because people lit them and didn't suppress them. But then people did suppress them and fuel loads got heavier, and people were careful about lighting them. Then people became less careful about lighting them, powerlines grew less maintained, and there are now large fuel loads. But people still suppress fires, so ergo, we don't have as many as before people suppressed them.
What I think is interesting is that the authors call this a "deficit" implying that the amount that occurred in , what 1230? 1574? was the right amount and that there is a correct amount of fire. I know they don't really mean that, but think what "changing wildfire patterns over time" would mean compared to the word "deficit."
The reviewers comments buttress my argument for different grant and publication processes. The current gatekeeper systems are not designed to deviate from the accepted norms (insert my previous rants here).
As to the forests, mature forests are often thought of as fonts of nature with rabbits and deer scurrying from tree to tree partaking in leisurely lunchtime munching. This is very far from the truth. Very few mammals actually live in mature forests. There is no cover and no food. These are edge creatures. They survive in the transition between forests and open areas. Large mature forests, preserved by activists that, may, have honorable intentions are mammalian deserts. They need to be burned and, or thinned so brush species and smaller trees can propagate. Native Americans knew this, current day hunters, at least those who spend their time learning the species they hunt understand this or remain unsuccessful.
Dear Mr. Danford, having taken 19 white-tailed deer and my share of rabbits and squirrels out of the blackjack oak thickets of Oklahoma over the last 22 years, I would tend to agree, although with certain caveats. White tails need three things to thrive: food, water and cover. Pine forests are sterile at ground level and do not offer deer the food they need. Down south, they are called "pine barrens". Oak forests do have food, and deer will go deep into the woods after the acorns. Squirrels also like thick woods for the same reason. It is true that the deer like to circle the edges of meadows and use cut-outs such as roads or plowed ground to travel from place to place, since these edges are easier to walk through than thick cover. Herds of deer will bed down in open meadows since this gives them warning against predators. A single buck may bed down or take cover in an astonishingly small copse of trees, no bigger than a tennis court, surprisingly near human habitation. I agree entirely with your point that forest management needs a lot more than a starry-eyed idealism about Bambi and Thumper.
There has been much mention in the media that contemporary fires are hotter and more intense than historical fires, with climate change given as the reason. The buildup of understory fuel due to aggressive fire suppression is probably a better explanation. Another less discussed explanation is that fire prone forests are now filled with toxic fire bombs (eg, houses and cars) that burn ferociously once they get going and are harder to put out that an a brush fire.
Suppression of curiosity probably does as much harm as Smokey Bear to identifying causes.
Australia being particularly fire-prone has done extensive large scale study of causes, finding natural fires account for only six percent of known causes of vegetation fires, over 90 percent the result of people’s actions, more often than not the result of deliberate ignitions; incendiary (maliciously lit fires) and suspicious fires account for one-half of known fire causes and are the largest single cause of vegetation fires, elements I see rarely mentioned in North American fires.
Australia having mostly a different physical climate, proportions here would be different, but the social environment similarities could be expected to have parallels. Particularly interesting is the role of juveniles in of producing the regular peak in fire starts between 3-6pm... on weekdays.
The flagrant bias in peer review has been clear since the iconic Team declaration, "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” despite the hand waving explanation that this is just, "Scientist talk, you wouldn't understand"... which is even worse.
Journal reviewers at least offer justification but the Kafkaesque algorithms policing media comments don't. Attempts to post polite comments referencing Dr. Bryant's paper in a national newspaper were immediately blocked for "Violating community standards". Several attempts to uncover these "standards" seem to show shifting goal posts as something unacceptable on one day was actually passed on another as public discussion also shifted.
This is an ominous indication of an intellectual homogenization which can have no good end.
Dyn-o-mite! Love it. It's worth looking at Charles Mann's book, "1491-New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus". There is a map just inside the front cover showing the extent of land "cleared by fire" by indigenous Native Americans. This area far exceeds any fire damage seen in recent times. In his text, Mann makes the point that the East Coast Woodlands Indians, especially, made a practice of carrying fire-making implements with them wherever they went, to start small "management" fires as needed. This cleared the undergrowth, fertilized the soil, reduced fuel load so that large wildfires caused by lightning did not wipe out their villages. It would seem that it has taken us 500 years to re-learn the wildfire management lessons the Indians used for centuries.
I will look at Charles Mann's book. It's now widely understood among the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi), who's territory included most of the southern half of Alberta, Canada, and the northern half of Montana, that they actively managed the forests in their territory through controlled burns. Further north, the Cree and Dene also actively managed the northern forests through controlled burns:
"Oral history and early ethnographic records (observations of First Nations) indicate that fires were frequently lit and for a variety of reasons. On the prairies, fires were lit in the fall or early winter because it encouraged quicker re-growth of lush grass in the spring, which would in turn attract bison. Historians and archaeologists think that fires were lit around major buffalo jumps months in advance so the lush grass would attract big herds. In spring, groups like the Blackfoot also burned the understory of large groves to protect them from dangerous summer fires. When horses were introduced, First Nations burned grasslands in spring and fall to maintain pastures."
"First Nations in northern Alberta, like the Dene and Cree, burned forest meadows to maintain grazing areas for bison and elk. Smaller patches, or ‘yards’, were burned in spring and would be returned to when berries were ripe, and years later, when willow re-growth attracted moose. When the fur trade swept west, trap lines and trails were regularly burned for ease of access and to encourage grasses that attracted rodents and fur-bearing predators."
That was an interesting link, but I have a question: how did First Nations actually control their burns? What techniques would the use? Is there anything in their oral history that sheds light on the acquisition of that kind of knowledge?
The article I posted above states that controlled burns were often done in the fall and winter. No doubt, this helped to limit the extent of a burn. Moreover, many of the areas that were burnt were routinely burned. This meant that the burns were on grassland, brush and small trees (not large forests). Having spent quite a bit of time in Southern Alberta, one other thing I would note is that the area is bifurcated by many sizeable rivers. So the geography itself would, to some extent, prevent a runaway fire. There's quite a bit of living history from Salish, Dene, Cree, and Blackfoot sources about controlled burning. Some of this can be found at the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta, the University of Lethbridge, the Glenboe Museum, and the University of British Columbia.
a Blackfoot friend of mine, Keith Chiefmoon, reached out to me about his concern that current forest management practices had ignored traditional Blackfoot forest management, and that he felt that was one cause of this particular huge and intense forest fire. Thanks again for posting this research article!
"However, in the absence of contemporary changes in climate, 29% of sites burned in 1748. That means that human changes to forest ecosystems were about an order of magnitude more important than assumed human-caused changes in climate (i.e., 29%-to-3% versus 3%-to-6%)."
I'm too lazy to figure out what I think would be an improved analysis, but it seems clearly wrong to me to do a calculation that involves the 1748 value. The "olden days" distribution is over a far greater number of years than the "contemporary" distribution. So of course that's going to have one year that's many, many log normal standard distributions out on the curve.
It seems to me that the improved analysis would have to involve calculating the log means of the "olden days" set versus the log mean of the "contemporary" set, and pointing how much higher the log-mean is for the "olden days" set. If the log mean from the "olden days" set is much higher than the log mean for the "contemporary" set, *that* would provide evidence that the human efforts to reduce fires have so far vastly dominated the alleged climate change influence to increase fires.
I generally agree, but think this answers a different question than the one posed by the authors, which emphasized whether or not contemporary fires are unprecedented.
It's not just the amount but the type of vegetation that matters. It turns out that even well-intended plant introductions can have side effects. I visited a friend in Tucson AZ who is a volunteer with an organization working to stop the spread of buffelgrass (buffel is Afrikaans for "buffalo"). It was imported in the 1930s as cattle forage and for erosion control because of its deep roots. Seemed like a fine idea, but unfortunately, it also burns at 1400 degrees, 3x hotter than fire in native plants. It's highly flammable, and uses fire to spread. These hot fires can kill off giant saguaro which can take 150 years to grow and would survive fires in native vegetation.
Great essay, sir, thank you. I would add my "wow" to the collection.
A phrase from the paper caught my eye – “fragmentation from land development and other land uses…” In CA, that fragmentation comes in the form of very expensive houses, which are, due to poor construction, as much a fire-trap as a congested undergrowth. But the value of that undergrowth is pennies, compared to the millions of the homes. You have said on many occasions that “If you want to understand trends in extreme weather, look at weather data, not economic data.” The economic losses are what is driving the climate change paranoia.
If the historical record shows no trend in extremes, but economic losses continue to rise, shouldn’t the focus be on measures to curb economic losses instead of climate change? For example, sensible building codes and reasonable decarbonization? Growth must happen, but that growth has to be informed by experience. Better materials, building codes written for regional extremes, and so forth? I think Florida is doing this, but, according to your colleague Ms. Weinkle, California isn’t.
If you look at traditional houses in the mountains of Greece and Southern Italy, the walls are made of stone and the rooves of slate or ceramic tiles. There is little exposed wood.
That's very true, and exactly what I'm talking about when I mentioned "better materials."
Were Greece and Italy forested? I would think that rocks would be far easier to come by than wood/lumber. Southern California, on the other hand, wood is more plentiful.
My husband’s parents are from the mountains of Greece. Yes, they have forests there. In fact, they have a lot of oak, chestnut, beech and pine trees. The internal beams of traditional houses in Greece are wood, but not the rooves or external facing walls. A number of years ago, I had the privilege of speaking extensively to some of the elders in my husband’s family’s village. The decision to build in stone with slate rooves was deliberate. They had oral histories of fire, caused both by lighting and by warfare. It is Greece after all, where the cultural memory is long: Zeus: God of the Sky and Thunder. When building a house, none of these elders would have built a house that would easily light on fire.
My grandfather was chairman of the Forestry and Range Management department at a land-grant university in the Pacific Northwest in the 70s and early 80s. He constantly shook his head in frustration with the younger members of his department, who thought they knew better than the senior members of the department when it came to managing forests.
The younger members were basically parroting Sierra Club talking points as if they were gospel, instead of unscientific nonsense. Logging of any sort — well- or poorly-managed — hurts both the forest’s ecology and its dignity, they insisted. That “sacred Gaia” attitude prevailed in forestry departments across the U.S. by the mid 90s, if not earlier.
Grandpa said they were doing much more damage than they were helping, and now we’re living with the results of this major and shortsighted shift in forest management.
Thank you, Professor Pielke (or should I drop the “professor” now?) for such an interesting piece.
"Wow as well. I find it bizarre that someone with sufficient knowledge to be a peer reviewer would actually talk about 'deniers of climate change'."
The stories I could tell you (from a career spent in environmental research)!
Bottom line: climate change is very much considered to be a moral issue. It doesn't surprise me at all that "someone with sufficient knowledge to be a peer reviewer" would use the phrase "deniers of climate change."
The much vilified Tony Heller has been making this point for years.
Are we about to see a flurry of papers being published that might have otherwise not been due to the changes at the top? ( The Donald et al).
I have no idea how the scientific paper should have been structured. Presumably it was exactly as it should be. As communication with the public (from what I understood) I think it should been something like
1. Data xxx about fires in period yyy are often attributed to the effects of of CO2 accumulation
2. Data zzz suggest that Data xxx is explained in large part human factors ppp.
3. It is beyond the scope of this paper to estimate how Data zzz woud have differed given ppp but without CO2 accumulation.
4. Policies to affect ppp, given CO2 accumulation would correspondingly affect zzz-like data going forward
5. [if one of the co-authors had been an economist :)] Annex A estimates the cost of policies to affect ppp and the benefits of the variation in zzz.
It blows my mind that cellulose is so hard to degrade, even after hundreds of millions of years of life forms taking cracks at it, that this much energy will just sit around until it literally goes up in smoke. It's just a polysaccharide, not that different from starch. What makes it so special?
It's like if you had a safe that is so secure, you could put a billion dollars in it and leave it out for all the enterprising people of the world, and after years the best anyone could do is slip out some of the money through a crack in the door, leaving hundreds of millions to crumble to dust
I’m not surprised with the conclusions of this study. Forest management is key to minimizing the impact of fires. Hopefully someone will listen to this and take appropriate action.
Also concerning is the attempt to position this by the reviewer as more supporting climate change. Thanks for pointing this out. I wonder how often this occurs behind the scenes and authors are compelled to modify their papers to accommodate this. A lot I suspect. This paper could have been written with no mention of climate change and the conclusion would have been the same. There are a lot of papers that mention climate change even though it has nothing to do with the research or conclusions. Apparently, this a requirement to publish.
The concern does not seem entirely out of place. There ARE people that do not think the Accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere has important net negative effects on human life and property. A paper that neither supports or undermines the net negative effect _can_ be interpreted as support for the "denialist" view. Heading off a plausible misunderstanding is a good idea
Dr. Pielke, you wrote: "Accelerated decarbonization of the economy makes good sense for many reasons beyond just climate change."
We will have to deal with the lack of easily accessible fossil fuels at some time in the distant future; a few hundred years or even a few thousand, we don't know. At that time they may become so expensive to recover that they will be reserved for essential products and some other source of heat for civilization will be required. Other than that, I can't see any reason for decarbonization at this time. Could you please give us the advantage of your thoughts on this issue?
Thanks Denis ... you are in luck (or not!).
I wrote a book on this issue, and you have full access to it here:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/thb-pro
Come on, Roger. Don't be coy. Changing the trajectory of CO2 accumulation makes good sense becasue the cost of changing it is less than the cost of not changing it.
I am not surprised , even from historical records we could (and have) figured that out. There used to be more larger fires because people lit them and didn't suppress them. But then people did suppress them and fuel loads got heavier, and people were careful about lighting them. Then people became less careful about lighting them, powerlines grew less maintained, and there are now large fuel loads. But people still suppress fires, so ergo, we don't have as many as before people suppressed them.
What I think is interesting is that the authors call this a "deficit" implying that the amount that occurred in , what 1230? 1574? was the right amount and that there is a correct amount of fire. I know they don't really mean that, but think what "changing wildfire patterns over time" would mean compared to the word "deficit."
The reviewers comments buttress my argument for different grant and publication processes. The current gatekeeper systems are not designed to deviate from the accepted norms (insert my previous rants here).
As to the forests, mature forests are often thought of as fonts of nature with rabbits and deer scurrying from tree to tree partaking in leisurely lunchtime munching. This is very far from the truth. Very few mammals actually live in mature forests. There is no cover and no food. These are edge creatures. They survive in the transition between forests and open areas. Large mature forests, preserved by activists that, may, have honorable intentions are mammalian deserts. They need to be burned and, or thinned so brush species and smaller trees can propagate. Native Americans knew this, current day hunters, at least those who spend their time learning the species they hunt understand this or remain unsuccessful.
Dear Mr. Danford, having taken 19 white-tailed deer and my share of rabbits and squirrels out of the blackjack oak thickets of Oklahoma over the last 22 years, I would tend to agree, although with certain caveats. White tails need three things to thrive: food, water and cover. Pine forests are sterile at ground level and do not offer deer the food they need. Down south, they are called "pine barrens". Oak forests do have food, and deer will go deep into the woods after the acorns. Squirrels also like thick woods for the same reason. It is true that the deer like to circle the edges of meadows and use cut-outs such as roads or plowed ground to travel from place to place, since these edges are easier to walk through than thick cover. Herds of deer will bed down in open meadows since this gives them warning against predators. A single buck may bed down or take cover in an astonishingly small copse of trees, no bigger than a tennis court, surprisingly near human habitation. I agree entirely with your point that forest management needs a lot more than a starry-eyed idealism about Bambi and Thumper.
There has been much mention in the media that contemporary fires are hotter and more intense than historical fires, with climate change given as the reason. The buildup of understory fuel due to aggressive fire suppression is probably a better explanation. Another less discussed explanation is that fire prone forests are now filled with toxic fire bombs (eg, houses and cars) that burn ferociously once they get going and are harder to put out that an a brush fire.
Suppression of curiosity probably does as much harm as Smokey Bear to identifying causes.
Australia being particularly fire-prone has done extensive large scale study of causes, finding natural fires account for only six percent of known causes of vegetation fires, over 90 percent the result of people’s actions, more often than not the result of deliberate ignitions; incendiary (maliciously lit fires) and suspicious fires account for one-half of known fire causes and are the largest single cause of vegetation fires, elements I see rarely mentioned in North American fires.
Bryant C 2008. Deliberately lit vegetation fires in Australia. Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 350. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi350 (Much more at www.aic.gov.au)
Australia having mostly a different physical climate, proportions here would be different, but the social environment similarities could be expected to have parallels. Particularly interesting is the role of juveniles in of producing the regular peak in fire starts between 3-6pm... on weekdays.
The flagrant bias in peer review has been clear since the iconic Team declaration, "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” despite the hand waving explanation that this is just, "Scientist talk, you wouldn't understand"... which is even worse.
Journal reviewers at least offer justification but the Kafkaesque algorithms policing media comments don't. Attempts to post polite comments referencing Dr. Bryant's paper in a national newspaper were immediately blocked for "Violating community standards". Several attempts to uncover these "standards" seem to show shifting goal posts as something unacceptable on one day was actually passed on another as public discussion also shifted.
This is an ominous indication of an intellectual homogenization which can have no good end.
Dyn-o-mite! Love it. It's worth looking at Charles Mann's book, "1491-New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus". There is a map just inside the front cover showing the extent of land "cleared by fire" by indigenous Native Americans. This area far exceeds any fire damage seen in recent times. In his text, Mann makes the point that the East Coast Woodlands Indians, especially, made a practice of carrying fire-making implements with them wherever they went, to start small "management" fires as needed. This cleared the undergrowth, fertilized the soil, reduced fuel load so that large wildfires caused by lightning did not wipe out their villages. It would seem that it has taken us 500 years to re-learn the wildfire management lessons the Indians used for centuries.
I will look at Charles Mann's book. It's now widely understood among the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi), who's territory included most of the southern half of Alberta, Canada, and the northern half of Montana, that they actively managed the forests in their territory through controlled burns. Further north, the Cree and Dene also actively managed the northern forests through controlled burns:
"Oral history and early ethnographic records (observations of First Nations) indicate that fires were frequently lit and for a variety of reasons. On the prairies, fires were lit in the fall or early winter because it encouraged quicker re-growth of lush grass in the spring, which would in turn attract bison. Historians and archaeologists think that fires were lit around major buffalo jumps months in advance so the lush grass would attract big herds. In spring, groups like the Blackfoot also burned the understory of large groves to protect them from dangerous summer fires. When horses were introduced, First Nations burned grasslands in spring and fall to maintain pastures."
"First Nations in northern Alberta, like the Dene and Cree, burned forest meadows to maintain grazing areas for bison and elk. Smaller patches, or ‘yards’, were burned in spring and would be returned to when berries were ripe, and years later, when willow re-growth attracted moose. When the fur trade swept west, trap lines and trails were regularly burned for ease of access and to encourage grasses that attracted rodents and fur-bearing predators."
https://albertashistoricplaces.com/2016/03/02/alberta-on-fire-a-history-of-cultural-burning/
That was an interesting link, but I have a question: how did First Nations actually control their burns? What techniques would the use? Is there anything in their oral history that sheds light on the acquisition of that kind of knowledge?
The article I posted above states that controlled burns were often done in the fall and winter. No doubt, this helped to limit the extent of a burn. Moreover, many of the areas that were burnt were routinely burned. This meant that the burns were on grassland, brush and small trees (not large forests). Having spent quite a bit of time in Southern Alberta, one other thing I would note is that the area is bifurcated by many sizeable rivers. So the geography itself would, to some extent, prevent a runaway fire. There's quite a bit of living history from Salish, Dene, Cree, and Blackfoot sources about controlled burning. Some of this can be found at the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta, the University of Lethbridge, the Glenboe Museum, and the University of British Columbia.
Comments like this make hosting a Substack so much fun. Thanks!
A few years ago, when there was a huge forest fire in Waterton National Park (the Canadian part of Glacier National Park),
Kenoe Wildfire:
https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/ab/waterton/nature/environment/feu-fire/feu-fire-kenow
a Blackfoot friend of mine, Keith Chiefmoon, reached out to me about his concern that current forest management practices had ignored traditional Blackfoot forest management, and that he felt that was one cause of this particular huge and intense forest fire. Thanks again for posting this research article!
"However, in the absence of contemporary changes in climate, 29% of sites burned in 1748. That means that human changes to forest ecosystems were about an order of magnitude more important than assumed human-caused changes in climate (i.e., 29%-to-3% versus 3%-to-6%)."
I'm too lazy to figure out what I think would be an improved analysis, but it seems clearly wrong to me to do a calculation that involves the 1748 value. The "olden days" distribution is over a far greater number of years than the "contemporary" distribution. So of course that's going to have one year that's many, many log normal standard distributions out on the curve.
It seems to me that the improved analysis would have to involve calculating the log means of the "olden days" set versus the log mean of the "contemporary" set, and pointing how much higher the log-mean is for the "olden days" set. If the log mean from the "olden days" set is much higher than the log mean for the "contemporary" set, *that* would provide evidence that the human efforts to reduce fires have so far vastly dominated the alleged climate change influence to increase fires.
I generally agree, but think this answers a different question than the one posed by the authors, which emphasized whether or not contemporary fires are unprecedented.
Ah. . a little 'raking' is in order.
Many small fires are better than a few huge ones. Whouda thunk it?
It's not just the amount but the type of vegetation that matters. It turns out that even well-intended plant introductions can have side effects. I visited a friend in Tucson AZ who is a volunteer with an organization working to stop the spread of buffelgrass (buffel is Afrikaans for "buffalo"). It was imported in the 1930s as cattle forage and for erosion control because of its deep roots. Seemed like a fine idea, but unfortunately, it also burns at 1400 degrees, 3x hotter than fire in native plants. It's highly flammable, and uses fire to spread. These hot fires can kill off giant saguaro which can take 150 years to grow and would survive fires in native vegetation.
Great essay, sir, thank you. I would add my "wow" to the collection.
A phrase from the paper caught my eye – “fragmentation from land development and other land uses…” In CA, that fragmentation comes in the form of very expensive houses, which are, due to poor construction, as much a fire-trap as a congested undergrowth. But the value of that undergrowth is pennies, compared to the millions of the homes. You have said on many occasions that “If you want to understand trends in extreme weather, look at weather data, not economic data.” The economic losses are what is driving the climate change paranoia.
If the historical record shows no trend in extremes, but economic losses continue to rise, shouldn’t the focus be on measures to curb economic losses instead of climate change? For example, sensible building codes and reasonable decarbonization? Growth must happen, but that growth has to be informed by experience. Better materials, building codes written for regional extremes, and so forth? I think Florida is doing this, but, according to your colleague Ms. Weinkle, California isn’t.
If you look at traditional houses in the mountains of Greece and Southern Italy, the walls are made of stone and the rooves of slate or ceramic tiles. There is little exposed wood.
That's very true, and exactly what I'm talking about when I mentioned "better materials."
Were Greece and Italy forested? I would think that rocks would be far easier to come by than wood/lumber. Southern California, on the other hand, wood is more plentiful.
My husband’s parents are from the mountains of Greece. Yes, they have forests there. In fact, they have a lot of oak, chestnut, beech and pine trees. The internal beams of traditional houses in Greece are wood, but not the rooves or external facing walls. A number of years ago, I had the privilege of speaking extensively to some of the elders in my husband’s family’s village. The decision to build in stone with slate rooves was deliberate. They had oral histories of fire, caused both by lighting and by warfare. It is Greece after all, where the cultural memory is long: Zeus: God of the Sky and Thunder. When building a house, none of these elders would have built a house that would easily light on fire.
My grandfather was chairman of the Forestry and Range Management department at a land-grant university in the Pacific Northwest in the 70s and early 80s. He constantly shook his head in frustration with the younger members of his department, who thought they knew better than the senior members of the department when it came to managing forests.
The younger members were basically parroting Sierra Club talking points as if they were gospel, instead of unscientific nonsense. Logging of any sort — well- or poorly-managed — hurts both the forest’s ecology and its dignity, they insisted. That “sacred Gaia” attitude prevailed in forestry departments across the U.S. by the mid 90s, if not earlier.
Grandpa said they were doing much more damage than they were helping, and now we’re living with the results of this major and shortsighted shift in forest management.
Thank you, Professor Pielke (or should I drop the “professor” now?) for such an interesting piece.
Wow as well. I find it bizarre that someone with sufficient knowledge to be a peer reviewer would actually talk about "deniers of climate change".
Not really, that is how you get to be a peer reviewer.
"Wow as well. I find it bizarre that someone with sufficient knowledge to be a peer reviewer would actually talk about 'deniers of climate change'."
The stories I could tell you (from a career spent in environmental research)!
Bottom line: climate change is very much considered to be a moral issue. It doesn't surprise me at all that "someone with sufficient knowledge to be a peer reviewer" would use the phrase "deniers of climate change."
I doubt there are any 'climate deniers' of nite. However, a great number of 'man-made' vclimate change skeptics and deniers.