Yet another example of naive actions to "save the earth�......
"Forest fire management policy over the past 100 years has been to stop even small to moderate-size fires as fast as possible, which has resulted in a very large amount of forest undergrowth. The availability of this dry, undergrowth has added a lot more potential fuel than normal to these fires, increasing the chances of mega-fires."
If we continue to try things "because it's better than nothing" or "we have to do something", we will have to survive the consequences and stop complaining. Forest fires ARE natural and always existed ....even before man!
If our "experts" don't understand the complexities of the natural balance which always exists on this planet, then they must re-evaluate their competencies and re-focus their interests elsewhere.
Let's try to do something productive for a change!

I worked as a wilderness ranger a couple of summers in graduate school in the Cibola and Santa Fe National Forests in New Mexico, and have lived most of my life in or next to National Forests in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

A normal, healthy Ponderosa Pine forest consists of large trees, widely spaced - with minimal litter on the forest floor. After 100 years of fire suppression, most of the Ponderosa Pine forests in the west had become choked with thin, scraggly trees and massive amounts of litter on the forest floor. It was a bonfire waiting to happen, and it did in many places. Los Alamos had large fires in 1976 and 2000, and I visited the burn regions over Thanksgiving. They are growing back into a much healthier forest now, thanks to the fire - with lots of Gambell Oak and Aspen adding color and replacing the mess they had previously.

The huge Aspen groves along the west side of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains near Santa Fe are the result of massive fires in the late 19th century. Lodgepole Pine, which is the dominant species here in Northern Colorado, can not germinate without fire. Aspen forests in the west are also completely dependent on fire. Fire is an essential part of the cycle, and the long term policy of suppression is widely understood now to have created the rash of fires in recent years.

Another important thing to realize is that after the drought of 1999-2002 - we have been wet in Colorado and the biggest problem the trees have right now is being buried in snow. New Mexico has lots of snow. Arizona has lots of snow. California has lots of snow. Except for last winter, California has been very wet this decade. The Pacific Northwest has lots of snow. Alaska has lots of snow.

Our forests are doing just fine....

As the "Tunnels" regulate SSTs as we see fit this can reuglate climate conditions to where we can control forest fires by bringing rain to them!! Computer Modeling will show this.

Brett:

This segment originally ran during the fire season this past summer. (Reply: I did not know that, as I said, I do not watch 60 minutes that much.) What you fail to mention in your post was the fact that in the beginning of the segment the Forestry Service conceded the increase in mega fires was at least partially, and possibly mostly, self-induced. (Reply: If you read my blog, I discuss that as well, so no, I did not fail to mention that)
The Forestry Service's century-long policy of putting out every fire as soon as possible, even naturally occuring ones in remote areas, led to an incredible builup of fuel in the form of low lying brush in our alll of our forested areas. There is no scientific evidence at all to suggest climate change/global warming has any effect on the severity of any given burn season. If you add a massive amount of fuel to a burn zone, however, you greatly increase the risk of having very large fires. The global warming connection was thrown in at the end of the piece IMO because, well, it's 60 Minutes after all. (Reply: I doubt that. Those conclusions came from the firefighters on the line who have been doing this job for many years. It was not the conclusion of the 60 minutes reporter.)

It's off topic, but Shepherd Bay ended up with a mean monthly temp of -18 F, about 5 F warmer than normal. Depressing.
Iceman, how did things end up at some of the stations you monitor? We ought to start a "Nunavut Watch" club!

I'd also like to report on Summit Camp in Greenland, but I have been completely unsuccessful in locating climatic normal statistics for that station. I think that the camp may be too young to have accumulated a good base period yet. For what it's worth, Summit's mean temp in Dec was -41 F, which I'm going to guess is in the normal ball park.

What the greenies do not tell you is that one of the major reasons for such large fires is the laws in many areas prohibiting logging and even the clean up of downed and dead trees, but it is much easier to blame global warming. Reply: way back when, I highly doubt that downed and dead trees were cleaned up on a large scale.

" Unfortunately, fire ecologists have seen a marked increase in mega-fires across the West recently and are blaming global warming,"

Fire Ecologists? of course they are not going to blame themselves. They've been putting out every fire.

"The fire season in the last 15 years or so has increased more than two months over the whole western U.S., said Tom Swetnam, fire ecologist at the University of Arizona."

Yep, you dummy, and leaving all that fuel, the underbrush, gave fires a better chance of getting started in what used to be less than ideal conditions. That is what moved the season up and made the season last longer.

"Tom Boatner, the federal governments chief of fire operations, who has worked the fire lines for 30 years and has seen the change first hand. "We're seeing century-old forests that had never sustained these kinds of fires before, being razed to the ground," said Boatner.

The obvious connection is centuries ago, we did not have Fire Ecologists.

.

Brett,

Happy New Year. I appreciate everything you do here. I enjoy this site a great deal and have learned a lot from people on both sides of this issue.
Thanks again.

In terms of this story, it seems a stretch to me to attribute this to Global Warming. The question I would ask is, how much warming has been seen in these areas over the last 30 years?

I would think the amount of precipitation, combined with the undergrowth is the issue.
Just some thoughts.

Reply: I think it is a combination of warming, drought and certainly forest management policy of wildfires over the past 100 years that has brought the region to this point.

The largest forest fires in US history were in the 19th century. Must have been all those horse drawn Hummers pumping out GHG.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forest_fires#North_America

1825 3,000,000 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km�) Miramichi Fire New Brunswick Killed 160 people.
1846 0,450,000 450,000 acres (1,800 km�) Yachina Fire Oregon
1865 1,000,000 1,000,000 acres (4,000 km�) Silverton Fire Oregon Worst recorded fire in state's history
1871 1,200,000 1,200,000 acres (4900 km�) Peshtigo Fire Wisconsin Killed over 1,000 people. Overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire occurring the same day

"(Reply: I doubt that. Those conclusions came from the firefighters on the line who have been doing this job for many years. It was not the conclusion of the 60 minutes reporter.)"

Fire fighters who have been told over and over by fire ecologists that it's not their fault, it's global warming.

How about that, now we have fire fighters as experts on global warming too.

. Sorry I do't keep the basic numbers around for reference but I beleive the global temperature hasn't gone up over a dergree celsius in the last 30 years. So, are we to believe a change in the average overall global temperature of probably less then a degree has led to a two month increase in the fire season and a massive increase in the damage from forest fires. To whatever extent warming may play a role in this increase it would seem much more likely it would be because of cyclic variations affecting various regions of the planet. Reply: Nothing was mentioned about man-made global warming, just global warming in general.

One of the problems with ancedotal reports about changes e.g. "has worked the fire lines for 30 years and has seen the change first hand" is that a human life time isn't really long enough to judge what is normal. (Reply: true to a certain extent, but it is long enough to notice a definite change in the wildfire patterns which is interesting and important.) Wasn't it about 30 years ago in the 70s that we were just coming out of a short term cooling period and the global cooling concern?

cb,

Here's some stations up there I checked out for December. All is not lost.

Eureka +1.5
Cambridge Bay +2.5
Resolute +1.9
Pond Inlet -1.3
Iqaluit -3.4
Clyde -.4

Also,
Churchill -.4

Brett:

My apologies, you did indeed mention the fuel problem in your blog and I simply read right past it. However, I still take issue with the way global warming was introduced into the piece by Scott Pelle. In the last minute or so of a 12-15 minute piece when speaking to Boatner he said something to the effect of, "You know, there are still people out there who don't believe in global warming", to which Boatner replied, "I'm living with it every day", or something similar. Pelle's statement is an excellent encapsulation of how subtlely television producers and editors can put forth a particular train of thought or opinion and can guide a conversation any way they choose. "Believe in global warming" is a perfect way to put it, because belief requires a certain amount of faith in that which cannot be proven, as with religion. I don't "believe" in gravity, electomagnetism or Boyle's law because they are demonstrable principles of our physical world. I am convinced that they are sound principles, rather than believe that they are real and correct. On the other hand, the idea that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is contributing to mega fires is exactly that, a theory. Does an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere create some warming? Of course it does. How much? Hard to say definitely. That's what I would like to know and I have very little faith that the IPCC can provide an objective and accurate assessment based on their last two reports. Since the atmosphere (and understanding of climate) is possibly the most complicated open system we've ever known - and its study is in its infancy compared to say nuclear phsyics - I think it requires an enormous amount of hubris to claim the science is setteled. BTW, thanks for the blog! It's great to find a place that is willing to discuss both sides of these important issues.

Reply: Glad to have your participation Charles.

Drought, fire, heat and the New York Times worried about climate change 1864-1871

From the NYT 1871
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A07E2DA1739E43BBC4051DFB366838A669FDE&oref=slogin

It would seem as if sections of the Western country were doomed to take turns in suffering from droughts. Last season sections of the North-western states were damaged greatly from this cause.... On the Pacific slope the country is parched and burnt to such a degree that there is much alarm....a summer of almost unexampled heat... naturally led to the conclusion that the present would be marked by great vicissitudes of wither drought or rain, or other climatic changes of greater or less intensity; but speculations of the kind are rarely reliable

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1871_Great_Chicago_Fire

In that hot, dry and windy autumn, three other major fires occurred along the shores of Lake Michigan at the same time as the Great Chicago Fire. Some 400 miles (600 km) to the north, a prairie fire driven by strong winds consumed the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin along with a dozen other villages, killing 1,200 to 2,500 people and charring approximately 1.5 million acres (6,000 km�). Though the Peshtigo Fire remains the deadliest in American history, the remoteness of the region meant it was little noticed at the time. Across the lake to the east, the town of Holland, Michigan and other nearby areas burned to the ground. Some 100 miles to the north of Holland the lumbering community of Manistee, Michigan also suffered a tremendous fire, known as the Port Huron Fire of 1871.

First the denialists hate our sailors, now they hate our firefighters! I believe I'm detecting an insufficiency of patriotism.

Shorter Paul: All those PhDs don't know anything!

Shorter PH: Nobody can prove that global warming has yet affected me, personally, so it must not be true!

Keep it up, Lost Boys. /sarcasm

There are other markers of global warming in the West, including increased insect pest ranges of and the retreat of alpine species to higher altitudes. There are recent peer-reviewed papers on all of this.

There are also interesting climate model results showing a teleconnection (linkage) between Western U.S. drying and Arctic sea ice decline. IOW we can very much expect the present trend to worsen. How nice.

I should also mention that natural climate variability in the western U.S. can and frequently does produce very nasty droughts that last decades. The last really big one was marked by the end of the Anasazi culture in the 14th century. To illustrate, a local (SF Bay Area) water district hydrologist I spoke to a couple of years ago mentioned that there was a period of several years during that period when Lake Tenaya (in a normally very wet location in Yosemite) had zero measured runoff (i.e., no detectable sediment layers for those years), meaning that the central high Sierra received nearly no precipitation of any kind. The big concern of such folks is that global warming is making such events more likely and more severe.

The 20th century was an almost uniquely wet period in the record, and since it coincided with the period of intense settlement and agricultural development people assumed it was normal. Our infrastructure was built and land use decisions made based on that assumption, which is already compounding the problem.

"'Steve Bloom:
First the denialists hate our sailors, now they hate our firefighters! I believe I'm detecting an insufficiency of patriotism."'

Steve, don't make yourself look silly.

Hi Steve Bloom,

Interesting comments from you about historical climate change and the unusual nature of the 20th century. You seem to recognize that there is a great deal of natural variability to the climate - enough in fact to wipe out civilizations such as the Anasazi and the Viking settlements in Greenland around the same time.

So please tell us what causes these wide swings in climate, and why your buddy Mann tries to hide them in his graphs.

BTW - I spent the winters of 1997/1998 1998/1999 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 in the South Bay, and it rained nearly continuously during each of those years. In 1999 there was a foot of snow in the Santa Cruz Mountains just above Palo Alto, and mud slides were blocking highway 17 nearly every week in March, 2006. Hard to see much of a pattern of drought there.

Steve Bloom,

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
- Samuel Johnson

My experience with PhD's is that many tend to know a great deal about one particular topic, and believe that also produces enlightenment on other topics they know nothing about.

There was a great belief among scientists in the 1950s and 60s that they would cure all the world's problems through chemistry and nuclear technology. Later, their solutions became the very thing they were most afraid of. In fact you can trace every global warming concern back to solutions from the previous generation of scientists.

Many science fiction stories are based on the idea of runaway science from single-minded scientists, focused on one idea, oblivious to the big picture, and incapable of engaging in cost/benefit analysis.

You certainly have the right to believe in the global warming hoax if you wish, but the rest of us believe in a Creator who DID NOT create a species that can destroy what He brought into existence.

Kat V,

So your point of view is

"Global Warming can't be true, because God wouldn't allow it."

Have you ever considered the idea that you are wrong?

Steve Bloom,

Great comments. The one cogent voice in the abyss.

Keep it up!

!

It would be nice if someone had some numbers on how much has been burned from year to year that wasn't started by humans.By that I mean intentionally set or by discarded cigarette butts and not for fire control.Would there be an increase then? Just curious.

For most of the Far West forests there needs to be wet winters and hot dry summers for large scale forest fires to build. For Southern California in particular, autumn maritime polar highs anchored across the 4-Corners region are needed to induce the famous Santa Anna Winds.

In most cases of large scale forest fires, due to the lack of controlled burns, as well as land development and arson have aided.

Drought can come in both a warming and a cooling climate. Large scale droughts occured in North America during the coldest decades of the LIA, as well as during a period of regional warming (1900-1940).

In Austrailia, the worst case scenario for large wild fires occur when certain regions have wet, cool winters follwed by hot dry summers.