Hayhoe Is At It Again

 

Well, she’s just a co-author, I should give credit where credit is due.  A Max A. Moritz is the lead author.  The story is about wild fires and climate change.  Of course, as you’d expect, we’re all doomed. 

It’s an interesting paper…….. (html) well, not really, but the paper has some interesting characteristics.  First of all, they reference like a million other papers to run down.  Well, okay, not a million but lots!  About 85 or so if one was inclined to do so.  And, of course, it includes our old friends, those “useful works of fiction”, global climate models (GCMs)!  They integrate observed fires from 1996–2007.  Oddly, they use 1971–2000 for their baseline for the climate models.  Well, of course they would.  Why use that other decade?  You know, the one where no warming has occurred,

Woodfortrees

But, that’s besides the point, right?  They also had other variables input.  But, back to the GCMs for a moment.  Uhmm, they don’t predict areas very well….. in fact, no better than a random walk (pdf) .  (oh, never mind then. )  There’s lots in the paper which raise an eyebrow or two, but, I’m not going to bother to run them down.  The paper has what I consider a rather humorous passage….

……..the majority of the globe (55%) shows low agreement in the direction of projected change. Even so, the ensemble mean change in fire probabilities for many of these areas of low agreement may, in fact, be relatively small. Accordingly, some of this uncertainty could equate to relative stability in fire activity over the next few decades. However, the magnitude of change and the degree of agreement among GCMs grows substantially through time. By the end of the century there is consensus that the vast majority of the globe (82%) will experience disruptions in fire activity.

LMAO!!!  The models start out as crap, but as we go through time and far into the future, the certitude increases.    Clearly this is because conditions nearer the present are less known than the conditions further in the future. 

Here’s the sampling of the models’ output.

Lol.  Okay!  With this sort of agreement, Katherine can certainly go on her media blitz and proclaim Study: Climate change will increase wildfires, Study: West can expect more fires due to warming, Climate change will produce more wildfires in the US | GlobalPost  …. etc, ad nauseum.

Oh, there was one more quirk in the paper.  I was interested in the empirical fire data they used.  I wanted to see if there was any evidence that the frequency of fires had increased.  There’s no data given by the paper.  None.  There’s no “supplemental information” link.  There’s just nothing. 

I was able to find an old carbon tracker site which estimates CO2 emissions from fires.  You can see it here.  If anyone has a more recent or better site to see if fires are actually showing a trend, please post it here.  But, judging by this, there is no trend. 

I suppose I could ask the author, but, I’d like some mechanism to verify any information I’d get. 

And lastly, while this doesn’t have anything directly to do with the paper, I thought I’d add it here.  It may be analogous.  (Warning some profanity is spoken!)