Tag: wildfire

Wrong Again, Associated Press, Climate Change Isn’t Overrunning Evolution

The AP’s framing is rhetorically catchy but scientifically shallow: it ignores well-documented rapid biological responses, conflates climate stress with direct human impacts (logging, development, poor land management), and treats modest ~1°C warming over 150 years as unprecedented when ecosystems have handled far larger swings through plasticity, migration, hybridization, and selection.

The Associated Press published a story on April 10, 2026, headlined “Climate change is outpacing evolution.

Scientists are using DNA to catch up.” It argues that evolution—operating over millennia—can’t match the speed of modern warming driven by fossil fuels, leading to ecosystem collapse in places like California’s redwoods, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs.

The piece promotes “conservation genomics” (DNA sequencing to identify and breed heat/drought-tolerant traits) as scientists’ way to “close the gap,” while quoting experts who stress it’s no substitute for cutting emissions.

This is the same recycled narrative Climate Realism dismantled in their April 13, 2026.

The AP’s framing is rhetorically catchy but scientifically shallow: it ignores well-documented rapid biological responses, conflates climate stress with direct human impacts (logging, development, poor land management), and treats modest ~1°C warming over 150 years as unprecedented when ecosystems have handled far larger swings through plasticity, migration, hybridization, and selection.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

The Associated Press (AP) claims in “Climate change is outpacing evolution. Scientists are using DNA to catch up” that climate change is moving so fast that species cannot adapt quickly enough, forcing scientists to intervene genetically. This is ridiculous and false. The dramatic comparison between evolutionary timescales and modern warming is rhetorically powerful but scientifically shallow, and it ignores how evolution, ecological adaptation, and climate variability actually work.

The article opens with the declarative line, “Evolution works over millennia. Climate change is moving far faster.”  That framing sets up the entire scare narrative. It suggests an unprecedented mismatch between biology and climate that will inevitably result in ecosystem collapse.

But the time comparison AP made is completely irrelevant.

Species do not adapt only through slow, geological-scale evolutionary shifts. They respond through migration, phenotypic plasticity, genetic variability already present within populations, hybridization, and ecological reorganization. The AP article describes a naturally occurring hybrid eelgrass in Mission Bay that “outperformed its parent species” under murkier conditions. That is evolution and adaptation in action, not failure.

Climate has never been static. During the Holocene alone, temperatures have fluctuated as seen in the graph below from Climate at a Glance:

Drought regimes have shifted, sea levels have risen thousands of years before industrial emissions, and ecosystems reorganized accordingly. Coral reefs expanded and contracted. Forest boundaries migrated. Species ranges shifted north and south. None of that required human-directed genomics.

The AP article also leans heavily on marine heat waves and wildfire, suggesting they are pushing ecosystems “beyond their limits.” Yet wildfire regimes in California, for example, are influenced heavily by poor forest management, fuel loads, and land-use policy. The article even acknowledges that logging eliminated roughly 95 percent of old-growth redwoods, drastically reducing genetic diversity. That is a land management issue first and foremost, not a minor temperature change problem.

Similarly, coastal development and sediment runoff are cited as stressors in Mission Bay. Urbanization clouds water, reduces light penetration, and alters habitat. Those impacts are local and mechanical. They are not evidence that “climate change is outpacing evolution.”

The evolutionary timescale comparison also ignores rates. Modern warming since the late nineteenth century is on the order of about 1 degree Celsius globally. That change has occurred over roughly 150 years, not instantaneously. During past deglaciations, regional temperatures shifted far more dramatically over centuries, yet ecosystems reorganized rather than universally collapsing.

Moreover, extinction narratives are frequently exaggerated. The article references a 2019 report suggesting one million species face extinction. That widely cited figure is a projection based on habitat modeling and scenario assumptions. It is not an observed count of species vanishing due to temperature rise.

The genomic work described in the piece is interesting and potentially useful. Sequencing corals, eelgrass, and redwoods to understand genetic resilience is legitimate science. But presenting it as a necessary emergency response to an evolutionary crisis is unjustifiably alarming. There is no climate crisis shifting habitats or changing weather at unprecedented rates, so there is no climatic change in need of adapting to.

Even the scientists quoted in the article admit limits. “Conservation genomics alone cannot solve climate change,” one expert notes. Another acknowledges that engineering tolerance in one species “is not an ecosystem.”  Those caveats undercut the apocalyptic framing of the headline.

The deeper problem is the spinning of a false narrative implying a biological catastrophe is underway. By declaring that climate change is “outpacing evolution,” the article implies that life on Earth is fundamentally unable to cope with gradual warming. Yet species have endured ice ages, volcanic winters, megadroughts, and abrupt regional shifts long before fossil fuels existed.

Adaptation is not limited to modest changes over millennia requiring radical new mutations. It includes range shifts, behavioral changes, hybrid vigor, and ecological turnover. The eelgrass example highlighted by AP demonstrates precisely that natural adaptive capacity.

Climate change presents challenges. So do habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and overharvesting. Conflating all environmental pressures into a single narrative of evolutionary collapse oversimplifies complex ecological dynamics.

Climate change is not a binary cliff presenting tipping points for species or ecosystems. Human habitat change has a far greater and more direct impact on species and ecological niches, than gradual climate change and on a much shorter time scale.

The Associated Press has taken an emerging field of conservation genomics and wrapped it in an existential storyline that exaggerates the speed and uniqueness of current climate trends. That is false science reporting. Unfortunately, it is what we have come to expect from the Associated Press when it writes about climate change, a low quality narrative largely bereft of facts and context.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

AP wraps legitimate genomics research in existential alarm, ignoring that human habitat alteration (logging 95% of old-growth redwoods, coastal urbanization clouding waters) often drives declines faster than climate.

Wildfires in California are amplified by fuel buildup and management failures more than marginal warming. Genomics is a valuable conservation tool—not proof of biological defeat.

Experts in the AP piece acknowledge limits: “We’re not going to engineer our way out of climate change.” The rebuttal agrees—genomics helps targeted restoration but doesn’t validate a “crisis outpacing evolution.”

Climate stresses some populations and drives selection.

Local declines happen amid multiple pressures. But blanket claims of evolution being “overrun” ignore plasticity, rapid adaptation across taxa, historical resilience, and non-climate factors.

Life isn’t locked in a losing race; it responds via mechanisms honed over billions of years.

Media like AP amplifies worst-case modeling and vulnerable-case studies while downplaying evidence of ongoing success (like that hybrid eelgrass).

Conservation genomics is smart science; the doomsday framing around it isn’t.

Ecosystems adapt, reorganize, and endure—often faster than headlines suggest.

Scapegoating climate to hide callous government malfeasance

Wildfires near Los Angeles have left Pacific Palisades looking like Dresden after the WWII fire-bombings. Over 12,000 homes, schools and businesses have been incinerated, dozens of people have died, at least 70,000 have been left homeless, and fires still rage.

animal in the meadow looking right at the camera

From CFACT

By Paul Driessen

Wildfires near Los Angeles have left Pacific Palisades looking like Dresden after the WWII fire-bombings. Over 12,000 homes, schools and businesses have been incinerated, dozens of people have died, at least 70,000 have been left homeless, and fires still rage.

AccuWeather estimates that just two of the fires will destroy $135-150 billion in property!

It’s a doubly horrific tragedy, because most of the death and devastation could have been prevented.

California has 33,000,000 acres of federal, state and private forestland – equivalent to Wisconsin. As the state’s population expanded, forests and wildlife increasingly merged with human habitats. And yet federal and state land managers – compelled by ideology, activists, legislators and judges – have steadfastly refused to permit timber cutting, tree thinning or brush removal, or take other actions that would reduce the likelihood of conflagrations.

So many trees are so jammed together now that they’re starved for space, water, nutrients and sunlight. Many are diseased. They are skinny matchsticks, primed to erupt in flames. Some 36,000,000 trees died just in 2022, across just 8% of these forestlands. But even dead and diseased trees are rarely removed.

Rainy fall and winter months stimulate tree, brush and grass growth. Parched summers dry everything out. Extended dry periods leave all this fuel ready to ignite for more months.

Lightning, sparks from cars or power lines, campfires and arsonists set areas aflame. Dry Santa Ana winds (40-70 mph, with gusts of 120-150 mph) whip fires into infernos. Depleted, defunded fire departments often arrive long after they could extinguish fires in their infancy.

The conflagrations generate still more powerful winds that carry embers, branches, even small trees thousands of feet – often into communities that are ill-prepared to cope.

This barely begins the litany of California government failures that help cause repeated fire calamities. However, state and local politicians adroitly avoid responsibility.

Their most common excuse is manmade climate change. They even have a new fear-inducing term: hydroclimate whiplash! Fossil-fuel-driven climate change supposedly brought two exceptionally wet winters, spurring unprecedented plant growth – and then caused unprecedented arid conditions and previously unheard-of Santa Ana winds that made these infernos unpredictable but inevitable.

Calling the massive, repeated government failures “incompetence” is too generous. Deliberate, callous, destructive malfeasance is more apt. Criminal may be appropriate.

Governor Gavin Newsom wants a special session to discuss spending $25-50 million to “Trump-proof” state policies. He wants to use a new $10 billion “climate bond” to reduce farm and ranch greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improve “equitable access to nature,” build more parks in “disadvantaged communities,” upgrade ports to handle deepwater offshore wind projects, and more.

California is still pouring billions into EV subsidies, its “clean” energy transition, and the $100 billion “bullet train to nowhere.” It’s spending more billions supporting “sanctuary” status for illegal immigrants, maintaining gender and DEI programs, and ministering to America’s largest number of homeless people – which will now include 70,000+ who’ve lost everything to the 2025 wildfires.

One wonders whether they’ll treat these now-homeless taxpayers as well as they have illegal populations.

Legislated restrictions on how companies may conduct fire-risk assessments and what rates they can charge for homeowners insurance in high-fire-risk areas have caused insurers to leave the state or stop issuing new policies. Hundreds of thousands of families are now uninsured, underinsured or dependent on the state’s FAIR Plan, which has only $385 million in reserves.

Meanwhile, California devoted only $2.6 billion to “forest and wildfire resilience” across all state-managed forestlands, including Topanga State Park, where the fires started, right next to what once was Pacific Palisades – versus $14.7 billion for EVs and “clean renewable energy.”

With memories of the horrific 2018 Paradise (Camp) fire still causing nightmares, Mayor Karen Bass cut $17.6 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department budget, fired 100 firefighters who didn’t get Covid vaccines, and was partying at an embassy reception in Ghana as the fires erupted

LA Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley (salary: $654,000) has spent millions on DEI programs and hiring more women, gays and minorities. Deputy/Diversity Chief Kristine Larson (salary: $307,000) says victims want to see emergency responders that “look like” them, and if she isn’t strong enough to carry your husband out of a fire, he “got himself in the wrong place.”

They then failed to keep extra firefighters and firetrucks on duty as winds picked up just before the first forest fires were spotted – apparently to avoid paying overtime. That meant the LAFD couldn’t get there before fires roared out of control.

Exhausted firefighters trying to save multi-million-dollar homes in Palisades ran out of water. A major reason was that LA Water and Power Department CEO Janisse Quiñones (salary: $750,000) had the 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir drained to repair cracks in its base. A full reservoir would have replenished huge storage tanks that feed and pressurize local fire hydrants.

Quiñones has said her “number one” priority is equity and social justice. Does that explain why the reservoir was drained in February 2024; no contractor was hired until November 2024; and even then no workers, equipment or materials were in place for 24/7 repairs?

Just as callously incompetent, why was there no plan (or no action taken) to utilize fireboats, tugboats, barges and other vessels from Long Beach Harbor and the San Diego Navy Base? Many are equipped with water storage, pumps, hoses and nozzles. They could spray seawater directly on coastal homes or run hoses ashore to connect to fire hydrant systems.

Some salt would remain in soils and kill some plants. However, the choice should be easy. Lose some prized vegetation to lingering salts – or have prized vegetation, homes, priceless heirlooms and artworks, and everything else incinerated by raging infernos. Homeowners never got to make that choice.

The incineration of these forests and communities released far more greenhouse gases than all the state’s now-shuttered coal- and gas-fired power plants would have over many decades.

Further complicating matters, the fires sent ash and pollutants into skies and left toxic chemicals behind – from plastics, paints, batteries, solvents and other materials in homes, buildings and vehicles. They’ve contaminated waters and soils, which could result in long cleanup and rebuilding delays.

Governor Newsom says he wants to expedite rebuilding. But LA health officials say debris removal and reconstruction are prohibited until licensed officials have carefully examined sites for toxics – dangerous or barely detectable levels? New building codes for fire resistance? Or homeowner demands for them?

Citizens need to discuss all this at town hall meetings, before the next conflagration strikes – inevitably, if proper forest and water management and personnel hiring are not implemented immediately. Put simply, the woke idiots responsible for this rampant destruction and loss of life must be replaced with people who understand their Number One Job is protecting citizens from crime, fires and other natural disasters.

Mr. Newsom also wants an investigation into the loss of fire hydrant water pressure. Californians have good reason to suspect he’s merely trying to find excuses and scapegoats, so that he and his favorite legislators can save their political hides.

Golden Staters need to revamp their political, bureaucratic, policy and woke systems. They need to rely less on government – and more on themselves, the way the Getty Villa and several neighbors did in Malibu, thereby saving homes, treasures and lives. Otherwise, these needless tragedies will be repeated.

Joe Romm’s the Climate Ate My Homework! (re Southern California fires)

Just add “policy” in two places in Romm’s quotation above, and substitute “inaction” for “action” at the end, and his conclusion can be fixed. But who is Joe Romm? And what is his track record? I have tangled with Angry Joe for decades (I am a ‘sociopath’ to him) and can address these questions.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“In a rational and moral world, the catastrophe of the Los Angeles fires, fueled in part by climate change, would be one of many climate ‘Pearl Harbors’ that might help wake up the public to the urgent need for climate action.” (- Joe Romm, last week)

“Is it just a coincidence that the worst of the worst happened in California, the Climate State? The Green State? The DEI State? Joe, the mainstream is not buying your ‘Climate Ate My Homework’ reasoning.” (below)

Just add “policy” in two places in Romm’s quotation above, and substitute “inaction” for “action” at the end, and his conclusion can be fixed. But who is Joe Romm? And what is his track record? I have tangled with Angry Joe for decades (I am a ‘sociopath’ to him) and can address these questions.

Who Is Joe Romm?

Joe Romm has been a trenchant voice for climate alarm and forced energy transformation (wind, solar, batteries, efficiency) for many decades. [1] I have challenged him ever since the 1990s when his energy-efficiencies dreams led him to praise Enron (“a company I greatly respect”) and its most fraudulent division, Enron Energy Services.

I continued to spar with him until the ‘indispensible blog‘ Climate Progress (Center for American Progress) went defunct. (My suspicion is that his emotional, virulent style–“stunning” for the liked; “heads exploding” for the disliked–grew tiresome.)

His exaggerations are legion, including We Don’t have 12 Years to Save the Climate. We Have 14 Months, (July 2019). But go back to his “Mideast Oil Forever?” (The Atlantic Monthly, April 1996), analyzed here, where Joe (and his coauthor Charles Curtis) stated:

… let’s start by examining the likelihood that an oil crisis will occur in the coming decade. Forecasting is always risky, especially where oil is concerned, but consider what a variety of experienced energy hands from every point on the political spectrum have said in the past year alone [many experts quoted–all errant].

That “energy crisis” never happened except for government energy/climate policy increases prices and reducing reliability. The first two oil crises came from price and allocation controls–the third never came from an absence of the same.

And in Romm’s 2007 book, Hell and High Water:

We have no room for error…. Barring a major reversal in U.S. policies in the very next decade, come the 2020s, most everyone will know the grim fate that awaits the next fifty generations. [The alternative to inaction] is a [later] massive, sustained government intervention into every aspect of our lives on a scale that far surpasses what this country did during World War II.

Joe Romm Today

Joe Romm is an expert! Currently a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media (PCSSM), Romm describes himself as

Former Acting Assistant Secretary of Efficiency and Renewables, Speaker, 2x TEDx, author, “The Hype About Hydrogen.” Economist Paul Krugman: “I have learned a lot of what I know about energy economics from Joe Romm.”

And:

2024 Ban Ki-Moon Award for Environmental Leadership, 2009 TIME magazine “Hero of the Environment” & Rolling Stone one of “100 people reinventing America.” Former Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. CNN host Van Jones called me “The communicator’s communicator” after reading my book “How to Go Viral and Reach Millions.” Bill McKibben said, “Joe Romm understands the secret of making things go viral.”

And:

Author of 10 books, including “Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University Press) which New York magazine called “The best single source primer on the state of climate change.”

Never shy, often wrong. Romm’s professional life is as an expert versus the ill-informed public. The premise of climate alarmism and wind/solar/energy/efficiency to save the planet from fossil fuels (really CO2, the nonpollutant) is Romm’s multi-decade theme.

The Latest?

“In a rational and moral world,” Romm states regarding the southern California fire box,

the catastrophe of the Los Angeles fires, fueled in part by climate change, would be one of many climate “Pearl Harbors” that might help wake up the public to the urgent need for climate action. But in our world, the initial flame of disinformation that the fossil fuel companies lit over half-century ago to delay action on climate change has spread like wildfire until it’s a firestorm of falsehoods.

What disinformation! Is it just a coincidence that the worst of the worst happened in California, the Climate State? The Green State? The DEI State? Joe, the mainstream is not buying your “Climate Ate My Homework” reasoning.

Appendix: Romm in Action

“What Is the Difference Between a Psychic and a Climate Science Denier” (March 25, 2014), (expunged, but reviewed here)

I know what the similarities are between psychics and deniers. They both use unscientific methods, generally make stuff up with no evidence to support their views, and have consistently been debunked when scrutinized. What is the difference between a psychic and a climate science denier? In fairness, psychics sometimes guess the right answer.

Earth Day post:

With 7 billion people going to 9 billion, much of the environment is unsavable … the relatively stable environment and climate that made modern human civilization possible will be ruined, probably for hundreds of years … with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe. And that means misery for many if not most of the next 10 to 20 billion people to walk the planet (expunged, but reviewed here).

Enough said … for now.

—————–

[1] Romm, on the other hand, correctly dismisses new nuclear capacity, hydrogen, and carbon capture & storage. He also calls a spade a spade when it comes to the failure of climate mitigation policies. But climate alarm and industrializing the living space with wind, solar, and batteries–and energy-usage bans–is where this authoritarian lives.

Exploiting California’s tragic fires for climate propaganda is just wrong

Thousands of Californians have been burned out of their homes.  The danger is not yet over.   It’s hard to breathe.  People lie dead in the ashes of their American dream.

From CFACT

By Craig Rucker

Shameless!

Thousands of Californians have been burned out of their homes.  The danger is not yet over.   It’s hard to breathe.  People lie dead in the ashes of their American dream.

For people of good conscience, this is a time for empathy, prayer, and whatever aid is needed to keep survivors safe, help them rebuild, and improve government’s ability to prevent and respond in the future.

For climate kleptocrats and ideologues, every crisis is an opportunity to increase their wealth and power.

Climate campaigners are “weaponizing every weather event,” is how CFACT’s Marc Morano put it on the radio.

Bogus “attribution” has become the woke-climate campaigner’s favorite weapon.  Whenever tragic weather strikes, the media parrots campaigners’ claims that climate change makes extreme weather “more likely.”

How much more likely?

If the media was doing its job, reporters would vet these claims by following up with, “how meaningful was the climate change impact on this event?”  This would force campaigners to concede that the impact was minimal, or not present.  Particularly, if opposing analysis was fairly included.

We posted an explanation by data prodigy Chris Martz at CFACT.org.

“To a hammer,” the saying goes, “everything looks like a nail.”  To Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, everything looks like a pretext to expand the power of government.

Sanders, predictably, jumped on X, attributed the fires to climate and demanded that “Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis it is,” i.e, submit to the UN climate regime.

Chris Martz was having none of it.

“Hi there Colonel Sanders.” Chris tweeted. “Do you like facts? I hope you do, because you’re about to be sacked with some.”

Take a look at the epic sacking that ensued.  Chris laid out the hard, historical weather data with detailed support from the high holy peer-reviewed scientific literature on California, fire and climate.

To sum up, the Santa Ana Winds blow hard every year.  Past fires have been almost universally attributed to human causes, not how you use energy. Fallen power lines are frequently to blame, along with other accidents, and arson — which is no accident at all.

This current round of fires became a blast furnace when the Santa Ana winds reached hurricane force at the same time the fires burned.  No amount of wind turbines, solar panels or electric vehicles could have saved the day.

Better forest, water and emergency management might have minimized them, and certainly would have mitigated their impact.

The Pacific Palisades have burned before.  That is historically normal.  What is new is the billions of dollars of development that has occurred since the last time they did.

How meaningful would the impact of better, smarter government have been?  Very meaningful.

Pray for those whose lives and homes have been lost.

Lend them your helping hand.

Take action to ensure California is better prepared next time.

Why California Fires Are Getting Bigger | Jim Steele | Ian Faloona

“What makes these fires bigger has a lot to do with how we’ve mismanaged the landscapes for the last 100 years. Fire suppression, changes in grazing patterns, loss of wetlands. We allow shrub lands and grasses to build up underneath it, add more fuel to the fire, and you have more urban development, just the more asphalt, the more cement you’re raising temperatures,” says professor Jim Steele, Director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus.

California Insider

“What makes these fires bigger has a lot to do with how we’ve mismanaged the landscapes for the last 100 years. Fire suppression, changes in grazing patterns, loss of wetlands. We allow shrub lands and grasses to build up underneath it, add more fuel to the fire, and you have more urban development, just the more asphalt, the more cement you’re raising temperatures,” says professor Jim Steele, Director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus.

Siyamak sits down with ecologist and author Jim Steele, who has studied the factors behind the increasing wildfires in California, and Ian Faloona, an associate professor and Biomicrometeorologist at the University of California Davis, who has been researching how wildfires impact air quality in the state.

“It’s a different type of chemical environment. This new source, not only has it become visible, it’s growing tremendous. It’s a new era of how we think about air pollution,” professor Faloona says. *Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

EU Wildfire Trends

The 2022 report states that 96% of wildfires are caused by human actions. It is a simple fact that much of the Mediterranean region is a tinder box every summer, just waiting for a spark.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/burnt-forest-area-in-five-4#tab-chart_5

The European Environment Agency has not yet published its wildfire data for 2023 yet, but they did issue the final data for 2022 in October. So I have updated its graph above of burnt area for EUMEDS, the five countries listed  – Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece – which it has not updated since 2020.

https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/reports-and-publications/effis-related-publications

The chart gives the lie to claims that wildfires are now much worse.

The 2022 report states that 96% of wildfires are caused by human actions. It is a simple fact that much of the Mediterranean region is a tinder box every summer, just waiting for a spark.

Provisional data for last year is, I believe, due out in April, so I’ll update then.

Wrong, LA Times, There is No Evidence ‘Climate Change Boosts Risk of Explosive Wildfire Growth in California’

An article in The Los Angeles Times (LA Times) published on September 4, 2023 makes the claim that a study by a Berkeley think tank proves “Climate change has ratcheted up the risk of explosive wildfire growth in California by 25%.” This is false.

From ClimateRealism

ByAnthony Watts

An article in The Los Angeles Times (LA Times) published on September 4, 2023 makes the claim that a study by a Berkeley think tank proves “Climate change has ratcheted up the risk of explosive wildfire growth in California by 25%.” This is false. The study ignores other more important factors, and real-world data shows the moisture in the regions of California most affected by wildfires has actually increased, rather than decreased as the study claims.

The LA Times cites a Nature study titled “Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California.” In the abstract of the paper the authors make an important admission: “Some portion of the change in wildfire behavior is attributable to anthropogenic climate warming, but formally quantifying this contribution is difficult because of numerous confounding factors and because wildfires are below the grid scale of global climate models.”

They also say: “We find that the influence of anthropogenic warming on the risk of extreme daily wildfire growth varies appreciably on a fire-by-fire and day-by-day basis, depending on whether or not climate warming pushes conditions over certain thresholds of aridity, such as 1.5 kPa of vapor-pressure deficit and 10% dead fuel moisture.”

The study fails on these two points because later in the study they cite global climate models using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tease out relationships that can’t be accounted for in the grid-scale climate models to produce predictions. Models, and especially AI enhanced results are not actual data – they are projections based on the assumptions built into the models and the AI.

The models fail to account for the myriad confounding factors the authors themselves previously acknowledged, such as the increase in arson caused wildfires. In fact, the word “arson” is not mentioned anywhere in the study nor is there any detailed discussion of the actual contributions to increased wildfires of the so-called “confounding factors” in the study.

Ironically, the answer lies in an LA Times article from 2021 which stated: “Electrical equipment accounted for about 12% and lightning 6%. But arson was also a factor, sparking about 9% of fires in 2019, and roughly 8% to 10% of the state’s wildfires in any given year.”

The authors also ignored a 2017 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) which looked at actual data instead of computer models and concluded that in the United States, humans accounted for 84% of wildfires:

Our analysis of two decades of government agency wildfire records highlights the fundamental role of human ignitions. Human-started wildfires accounted for 84% of all wildfires, tripled the length of the fire season, dominated an area seven times greater than that affected by lightning fires, and were responsible for nearly half of all area burned.

A second problematic aspect of the study relates to their use of, “vapor-pressure deficit and 10% dead fuel moisture.” Leaving aside the study’s use of AI enhanced modeling to sift for correlations between small scale moisture changes and wildfire, the researchers also used a novel and little-known approach to link the so-called drought and heat to fossil fuel emissions: Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD). The VPD is similar to, but not the same as, the more commonly known relative humidity seen in daily weather reports.  In layman’s terms, VPD measures how much water is in the air versus the maximum amount of water vapor that can exist in that air. This atmospheric metric is hardly ever used. Climate Realism has refuted the use of VPD to understand drought and wildfire previously.

Most egregious of all, the Nature study itself ignored actual published data about VPD drying. The 2020 paper, Plant responses to rising vapor pressure deficit, examines actual data for the western U.S., specifically in the mountains of California, and shows VPD has decreased, indicating more moisture. These areas show VPD values that indicate more moisture, rather than less, and completely contradict the claims of drying made in the Nature study. This is seen in Figure 1 below, with both the U.S. and an expanded magnified panel showing the western area of the study. The green colors indicate wetter conditions.

Figure 1 – Figure 1A from the paper Plant responses to rising vapor pressure deficit, magnified and annotated by A. Watts to show the Western U.S. and Canada regions cited in the Nature paper. Green areas in California and Western Canada indicate wetter conditions, yet these are areas where the biggest wildfires occurred.

Not only are the authors of the Nature study ignoring the easily available and contradictory VPD evidence in their paper, but they also used global scale climate models to support their assertion that climate change induced VPD deficits are driving wildfires in California, while at the same time admitting the models aren’t suitable for purpose at that scale. Instead, they use AI to tease out fire projections they believe are there but really aren’t.

This is a classic example of the overreliance on models (and now AI) in climate research, instead of actual data. Models are not data, nor do they define reality as actual data does. It is shameful that science and the LA Times present model outputs as such.

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts.

He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.

Those who don’t study weather history are condemned to repeat it as ‘climate alarmism’

Our friend Steve Hayward over at Powerline Blog gave me permission to reprint this. It’s weather deja vu all over again. These familiar headlines could just as well be happening today, excpet back then it was reported as weather, not climate. – Anthony

Watts Up With That?

Our friend Steve Hayward over at Powerline Blog gave me permission to reprint this. It’s weather deja vu all over again. These familiar headlines could just as well be happening today, excpet back then it was reported as weather, not climate. – Anthony

WHITHER THE WEATHER?

The scenes out of Lahaina on Maui are horrific, but naturally the climate cult is rushing to say the inferno that engulfed the town is yet more proof of climate change, and hand over your car keys and gas stoves now. “Yes, I Blame the Climate Crisis for the Horrors on Maui,” says a writer in that premier science journal Esquire. Never mind that Hawaiian officials have been warning for years that overgrowth of non-native grasses on the dry side of Maui and other Hawaiian islands was creating a severe wildfire risk. (For an antidote to the madness, see “Stop claiming that fires in Canada, Greece, and now Maui are due to climate change.”)

Much of the summer’s news has been about heat waves, which are also said to be proof of climate change, even though very few record high temperatures were broken this summer. Heat waves have always been big news for the media, but decades ago no one thought to blame them on human sin.

It is worth following a fellow named Don Penim on Twitter. Mr. Penim appears to have sufficient leisure time on his hands to scour old newspaper archives for articles on heat waves and extreme weather events, and he also turned up headlines from a few decades ago to remind us that wildfires are not unusual for Hawaii:

Let’s note a few others from Mr. Penim’s archive while we’re here—note the dates of most of these stories:

And never forget these 1970s-era gems of climate prediction:

I could go on. Mr. Penim has lots more.  What about recent high temps? Here are some of the official temperature records for places suffering from extreme climate change in recent weeks:

Chaser—The Babylon Bee, reporting the real news as usual:

Maui fires not climate

Exploiting these tragic fires for climate propaganda purposes is not and is 100% shameful.

From CFACT

By CFACT Ed 

The fires in Maui are tragic, but they were not unforeseeable.

Dr. Clay Trauernicht predicted this a decade ago.

Dr. Trauernicht is a professor of natural resources and environmental management at the University of Hawaii.  In 2013, he wrote in a paper that giant swaths of grasses that are not native to Hawaii, coupled with dry conditions and high winds, pose a substantial threat of devastating wildfire.

You can read Dr. Trauernicht’s warnings at Pacific Fire Exchange.

A nightmare of fire swept rapidly through Maui killing and burning as it went.  The loss is heartbreaking.

An immediate and effective disaster response is underway and is 100% warranted.

Exploiting these tragic fires for climate propaganda purposes is not and is 100% shameful.

The usual suspects, however, just couldn’t help themselves.  Here’s just the start:

  • “How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox” The New York Times
  • “Maui Wildfires: Climate Change is Wrecking Former Havens”  Mike Gongloff in Bloomberg
  • “The role climate change has played in Hawaii’s devastating wildfires” NPR
  • “How climate change is making Hawaii more prone to wildfires” CBS

There is nothing meaningful that taxing, regulating and banning your energy use could have done to prevent nonnative grasses invading unused farmland.  Your lifestyle is not responsible for normal dry conditions, nor would giving up travel and electric-powered conveniences have prevented high wind gusts from naturally occurring Hurricane Dora, hundreds of miles away, from fanning the flames.

Hawaii will (hopefully) learn from this tragedy and implement better fire prevention strategies.

The danger remains, however, that this natural disaster, along with other naturally occurring events such as heat in Athens or fires in Canada, will be used to amplify calls for the UN and President Biden to declare a “climate emergency.” An emergency declaration would bypass the checks and balances built into our constitutional government.

“If there ever was an emergency, the climate crisis is one,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer infamously said.

CFACT’s Marc Morano has been sounding the alarm on the push for Biden to govern by climate emergency decree.  This threat is as genuine as it is dangerous.

Emergency declarations are about taking immediate action when there is no time to deliberate. Sending aid to rescue people suffering from the fires in Maui is a perfect example.

How Americans live, work and use energy is not.

There is plenty of time to make policy using proper legislative and regulatory processes.

The President’s inability to garner majority support for his policies may be frustrating for the Climate-Left, but this is not why presidents are entrusted with emergency powers.

Declaring a “climate emergency” to bypass democracy is dangerous, abusive and cannot be permitted.

As President Reagan warned us, “if we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”

Quebec Wildfires Due to Arson?

The thick wildfire smoke that choked major metro areas like Toronto and New York City in the last couple of days originated from over 40 hotspots in Quebec. What is suspicious to me is that most of those hotspots ignited within just a few hours on the morning of Friday, June 2, 2023.

From Roy Spencer, PhD.

June 8th, 2023 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The thick wildfire smoke that choked major metro areas like Toronto and New York City in the last couple of days originated from over 40 hotspots in Quebec. What is suspicious to me is that most of those hotspots ignited within just a few hours on the morning of Friday, June 2, 2023.

Here’s a GOES-East 3.9 micron image from midday on June 2, which shows the bright near-infrared emissions from those hotspots. You can make your own loops of archived imagery collected every 10 minutes here.

Here’s a loop of the daytime 3.9 micron imagery on June 2 (large file):

There were no “dry thunderstorms” in the area, so it is impossible they occurred naturally through lightning strikes. It seems improbable that all of this fires ignited at nearly the same time by chance. The Toronto Sun is reporting that Quebec police are investigating whether some of the fires might have been deliberately set.