{"id":277859,"date":"2023-09-08T15:40:36","date_gmt":"2023-09-08T13:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=277859"},"modified":"2023-09-08T15:40:38","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T13:40:38","slug":"wired-and-the-conversation-are-wrong-the-2023-burning-man-rainstorm-wasnt-caused-by-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=277859","title":{"rendered":"Wired and The Conversation are Wrong, the 2023 Burning Man Rainstorm Wasn\u2019t Caused By Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ByLinnea Lueken<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jon Evans from Toronto, Canada, CC BY 2.0\u00a0<\/em>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This year, the popular music festival Burning Man, which is held in the Black Rock Desert area of Nevada, was interrupted by a rainstorm that left many participants stranded. Wired and The Conversation, among other media outlets, attributed the rain storm, as well as the heat wave the area experienced a few weeks prior, to human-caused climate change. This is false. The recent rains were made more intense by the aftermath of hurricane Hilary, and neither \u201cmonsoon\u201d rains, nor heatwaves, are an unprecedented or even rare in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a story posted by Wired, \u201cClimate Change Has Finally Come for Burning Man<\/a>,\u201d contributor Chris Stokel-Walker writes that the downpour that trapped many festival-goers was caused by climate change. He wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Extreme weather wrought by climate change, which is resulting in\u00a0increasing amounts of rain<\/a>\u00a0being dumped on the southwestern US states at this time of year. \u201cThese sorts of heavy summer rainfall events in the region are expected, as the well-known southwestern summer monsoon is expected to yield larger amounts of rainfall in a warming climate,\u201d says Michael Mann, presidential distinguished professor in the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Department of Earth and Environmental Science.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A piece in The Conversation<\/a> took a more balanced approach, pointing out that bad weather striking a festival isn\u2019t new, that \u201c[t]he legendary 1969 Woodstock festival in New York State was also a mud pit<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with reasonably suggesting that festival planners take potential weather problems into account, The Conversation unfortunately also claims that \u201c[a]s we heat the planet, we\u2019re getting more frequent, intense and longer-lasting heatwaves across the world. We also know we\u2019re seeing more and more intense short-duration downpours which cause flash flooding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These claims are also false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Dr. Mann and Wired\u2019s credit, the summer monsoon is a real season in the southwest, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has \u201chigh confidence<\/a>\u201d that precipitation in general has increased over the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. This has not led to more flooding, however, according to the IPCC as discussed in Climate at a Glance: Floods<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heatwaves likewise do not appear to be getting worse<\/a> in the United States, and data show that most the U.S., including parts of Nevada, have seen fewer unusually hot days, as shown in the post \u201cMedia Chases \u2018Climate Enhanced\u2019 Heat Waves, Misses Data Showing They are Less Frequent<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hurricane Hilary, discussed in the Climate Realism<\/em> post \u201cNo, BBC, Hurricane Hilary Was Not Unprecedented<\/a>,\u201d undoubtedly had an impact on the amount of rainfall Burning Man saw this year as the remnants of the storm moved inland from its landfall as a tropical storm in Southern California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The monsoon season is a regular event known to scientists and nearby residents. Also, this isn\u2019t the first time Burning Man itself was disturbed by a downpour. A brief Google search reveals<\/a> many<\/a> articles<\/a> and blog posts from as far back as 2000 that describe rain around the same time of year creating sticky, impassible<\/a> mud. Anyone operates an outdoors festival in the desert Southwest during the monsoon season should not be surprised to get heavy amounts of rain on occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This particularly sticky, slippery mud, is also a known feature of the dry lakebed Burning Man takes place in. Its primary composition is gypsum, silica, and bentonite-clay type dirt that can form famous white-out dust storms<\/a> when dry, and soak up water and turn into particularly sticky mud when wet. When it rains \u2013 and rains hard \u2013 in the desert, a dry lakebed is not the place to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As discussed, many times by Climate Realism<\/em>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, for example, these kinds of drought and deluge patterns are normal for the region; desert rain does not soak easily into the ground, it runs off and collects, leading to flooding, including flash floods, which are dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there were certainly unsafe and unsanitary conditions at Burning Man this year, the weather that led to it is not unprecedented. Burning Man has been rained out before, and none of the conditions that led to the situation can be honestly attributed to human emissions of carbon dioxide, as outlets like Wired and The Conversation are implying when they claim this kind of rainfall is indicative of climate change. Data does not show that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent or intense in the Southwestern United States. Climate change can\u2019t be causing weather changes that data show aren\u2019t occurring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Linnea Lueken<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Linnea Lueken<\/a><\/blockquote>