This is comforting. Hopefully it means uncontrollable fire is less of a risk than we had been led to believe.
I have to point out though, that big fires have been occurring in areas of the world where North American forestry was not managing the area. I am sure an element of this was down to journalists scouring the planet for fire stories.
Wider analysis would be very helpful.
The truth is that a change in climate is bound to leave some areas with more forests and other areas with fewer. The fires can be an indication of this.
We certainly need to get a hell of a lot better at change management than we are right now.
One comment mentions that solid estimates of annual wildfire extent didn't exist before 1900. True. But I remember finding the annual estimates of wildfire acres burned from 1900 to the present, and I believe the published source was the United States Forest Service. I looked again for that source and couldn't find it but there are online similar sources that begin in 1926. Bottom line that from 1900 to approximately 1950 acres burned in the US 'averaged 20-30 MILLION acres per year. Following WWII with changes in policy, more resources and a more 'war-fighting' approach to fighting wildfires, the annual acres burned was reduced to around 5 Million acres per year from about mid century on. In recent decades the average acres burned has increased a bit to around 8 million acres, giving rise to the argument that climate change has resulted in an increase in fires. Maybe we'll get back to 20 or 30 millions burned annually . . .because of climate change? s wilson
Isn’t it ironic. The brain-washed corporate media ignorantly blames one human cause for these fires (carbon dioxide emissions) when it’s other human activities that are truly causative (forest mis-management).
The crusaders posing as reporters in the legacy media are blinded by their irrational hatred of oil and oil companies. This makes them incapable, and, even more significantly, unwilling to consider evidence that anything else is in play.
Contemporary reporting on forest fires is always useful to check theory with facts on the ground, but there is very little contemporary reporting prior to about 1900. However, there is one excellent instance of this, the great fire of 1870 which nearly destroyed Canada’s capital city Ottawa (just google ‘Ottawa 1870 fire’). The fire was started by human agency (railway workers clearing brush with a controlled burn which got out of hand) and aided by gale force winds following an exceptionally dry spring and summer proceeded to cover several hundred square miles of the Ottawa river valley. The fire burned so hot that tree roots were still smoldering underground the following winter.
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
Yeah I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a statement that basically says “global warming is still a big problem that raises risk across a whole host of domains and this paper shouldn’t be interpreted as a call for inaction.”
Roger often includes a similar line in his posts and he’s right to do so.
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."
Deficit is based upon the natural range of variation. In many of these areas fires didn't have human ignition sources. The theory is that ecosystems are most resilient and biodiverse when they have the amounts of forest types and age classes across the landscape as would occur under natural disturbance dynamics. Hope that helps.
Yes I understand that theory. But it’s just a theory, and has always been. And humans have been around influencing forest ecosystems since glaciation, so is that “natural” or not? I think we used to call it “historic” range. There have been papers criticizing the concept but I can’t find one right now. I laid out some of my arguments in this comment https://forestpolicypub.com/2020/09/08/whats-the-problem-again-wildfires-framing-climate-and-hrv/#comment-467423
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.
This is comforting. Hopefully it means uncontrollable fire is less of a risk than we had been led to believe.
I have to point out though, that big fires have been occurring in areas of the world where North American forestry was not managing the area. I am sure an element of this was down to journalists scouring the planet for fire stories.
Wider analysis would be very helpful.
The truth is that a change in climate is bound to leave some areas with more forests and other areas with fewer. The fires can be an indication of this.
We certainly need to get a hell of a lot better at change management than we are right now.
Thank you for sharing this. Very informative.
One comment mentions that solid estimates of annual wildfire extent didn't exist before 1900. True. But I remember finding the annual estimates of wildfire acres burned from 1900 to the present, and I believe the published source was the United States Forest Service. I looked again for that source and couldn't find it but there are online similar sources that begin in 1926. Bottom line that from 1900 to approximately 1950 acres burned in the US 'averaged 20-30 MILLION acres per year. Following WWII with changes in policy, more resources and a more 'war-fighting' approach to fighting wildfires, the annual acres burned was reduced to around 5 Million acres per year from about mid century on. In recent decades the average acres burned has increased a bit to around 8 million acres, giving rise to the argument that climate change has resulted in an increase in fires. Maybe we'll get back to 20 or 30 millions burned annually . . .because of climate change? s wilson
Wow! Indeed.
Is it the only study of its kind? How do I know this article is not just cherry-picking?
“There is no carbon dioxide emissions control knob that can be used to moderate fire occurrence or severity”
Applies to everything
Isn’t it ironic. The brain-washed corporate media ignorantly blames one human cause for these fires (carbon dioxide emissions) when it’s other human activities that are truly causative (forest mis-management).
The crusaders posing as reporters in the legacy media are blinded by their irrational hatred of oil and oil companies. This makes them incapable, and, even more significantly, unwilling to consider evidence that anything else is in play.
Contemporary reporting on forest fires is always useful to check theory with facts on the ground, but there is very little contemporary reporting prior to about 1900. However, there is one excellent instance of this, the great fire of 1870 which nearly destroyed Canada’s capital city Ottawa (just google ‘Ottawa 1870 fire’). The fire was started by human agency (railway workers clearing brush with a controlled burn which got out of hand) and aided by gale force winds following an exceptionally dry spring and summer proceeded to cover several hundred square miles of the Ottawa river valley. The fire burned so hot that tree roots were still smoldering underground the following winter.
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
Yeah I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a statement that basically says “global warming is still a big problem that raises risk across a whole host of domains and this paper shouldn’t be interpreted as a call for inaction.”
Roger often includes a similar line in his posts and he’s right to do so.
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
Which book are you referring to?
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."
Deficit is based upon the natural range of variation. In many of these areas fires didn't have human ignition sources. The theory is that ecosystems are most resilient and biodiverse when they have the amounts of forest types and age classes across the landscape as would occur under natural disturbance dynamics. Hope that helps.
Yes I understand that theory. But it’s just a theory, and has always been. And humans have been around influencing forest ecosystems since glaciation, so is that “natural” or not? I think we used to call it “historic” range. There have been papers criticizing the concept but I can’t find one right now. I laid out some of my arguments in this comment https://forestpolicypub.com/2020/09/08/whats-the-problem-again-wildfires-framing-climate-and-hrv/#comment-467423
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.