The Antiplanner’s exurban area has been filled with smoke the last few days as winds have blown soot from wildfires in western Oregon towards central Oregon. As bad as the air has been here, it usually wasn’t as bad as it was in New York City a couple of months ago due to fires in Canada.
Smoke obscures the sun from New York’s Long Island in June 2023. Photo by Don Sutherland.
Canada has seen more land burn so far this year — more than 34 million acres as of August 18 — than any full year in its history: the previous record was 17.5 million acres for all of 1995. The Maui fires, of course, have had unprecedented impacts, with at least 115 known dead to date and more than 1,000 missing. Many are blaming these fires on or saying they are evidence of human-caused climate change.
Recent fire history of the rest of the United States, however, doesn’t support those claims. As of yesterday, a total of 1.8 million acres in the 49 states other than Hawaii have burned, just 37 percent of the previous 10-year average up to this date of 4.8 million acres. The year isn’t over yet, but fewer acres have burned so far this year than by the same date in any of the previous ten years.
The National Interagency Fire Center “situation report” shows acres burned broken down by 10 different regions, and all but the Eastern Region have seen less fire this year than the previous 10-year average. The Eastern Region typically sees less than 1 percent of total annual acres burned, so the 2023 high isn’t very important.
So far this year, Northern California has seen only 4 percent of the acres burned in the previous 10 years. The Great Basin is 14 percent, Alaska is 21 percent, and the central and northern Rockies are under 40 percent. Other than the East, only southern California is close to its 10-year average at 85 percent.
Nationally, the worst fire year since 2012 was 2015, when more than 7.4 million acres burned. But that was mainly because of large fires in Alaska.
On a region-by-region basis, no single year stands out as worst for the entire country. The closest is 2021, which was the worst fire year for three regions — northern California, the northern Rockies, and the East — but was a relatively mild fire year for Alaska and southern California.
The worst fire year for the Pacific Northwest was 2014, when hardly any acres burned in southern California. Alaska’s worst was in 2015, which was a mild fire year in the South. Southern California saw the most acres burn in 2016, when few acres burned in northern California. The Great Basin and South both peaked in 2017, when burning in the East was at its minimum. The central Rockies were in 2018, when fires were minimal in the northern Rockies. The Southwest’s worst was 2022, when fires were minimal in southern California.
The United States represents only a small portion of the earth’s surface, but this shows there is no general trend in this nation, and anyone who claims that particular fires are evidence of climate change is ignoring the broader picture.
We know the Maui fires were severe not because of climate change but because of invasive grasses in farms abandoned due to the state’s restrictive land-use laws. Some western states have seen record-sized fires in recent years because firefighting agencies have changed firefighting strategy to protect firefighter lives by allowing more acres to burn. It may be that this year’s record fires in Canada also have a local explanation rather than the generalized “climate change.”
Fire’s role in dryland ecology is well known and researched, It substitutes the role normally reserved by decomposers like bacteria and fungi. In more humid and wetter environments they break down wood/plant matter into soluble nutrients for plant uptake. In xeric ecosystems this process is less efficient or virtually non-existant. So fire substitutes that role by charing material into water soluble ash.
It’s not climate change responsible for these catastrophic fires; it’s California’s land use practices. Jennifer Marlon, a scientist at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and colleagues, looked at charcoal accumulation in sedimentary rocks, among other data, to understand the impact of fires in the West over the past 3,000 years. The “lowest levels” of Western fires occurred in the 20th century and between 1400 and 1700, while prominent peaks in forest fires” took place between 950 and 1250 and during the 1800s, the paper found. The researchers add that the 21st century rate of burning “is not unusual” based on patterns over the past 3,000 years. based on this data, To sum it up; We’re in a fire deficit.
Fire is natures way of recycling.
But THAT’S NOT THE ISSUE. These fires aren’t natural, nor are they the result of climate change. It’s a byproduct of decades of bad land and water management. For the last 120 years, the big cities and agriculture business have pulled water from Major rivers, Sierra Nevada mountains and sub surface wells and springs which have been tapped to accommodate domestic water consumption so LA County residents and suburbanites can have jungle plants in a xeric climate. Canada’s Boreal region is very dry most of the year, and a summer heat wave will undoubtedly make it worse. Combine a drastic reduction in the natural ground water, the replacement of native vegetation with weedy, invasives (and sometimes oil rich plants like Eucalyptus) and suburban sprawl of houses made of dried WOOD and lawns and gardens made of plants not suited for the environment and a hardscape that doesn’t support water retention. It is a recipe for disaster. So the subsurface water has been depleted; Western US’s forests have lost significant ground water; soil moisture has heavily declined, so trees have to scrounge water where they can, becoming dry tinder in the summer.
Logging wont stop fires, prescribed burns wont stop fires. REHYDRATION will slow these fires.
INDIA, figured it. So they install rainwater recharge pits. When a well is depleted or low productivity, they dig the well up and replace it with a surrounding pit of rock to keep the dugout and filtering charcoal and sand. Water from Agricultural runoff, treated water, rainwater fills these drains……and water recharges.
https://5.imimg.com/data5/PO/ML/PM/ANDROID-11592709/product-jpeg.jpg
Modern Suburbs despite the appearance of green, half or more landscape is hardscape, thus is infrastructure for cars. With hardscape water cannot penetrate and just runs off to storm drains, since storm water management is about dumping in nearest body of water.
Diversion and storage is superior and Canada towns and neighborhoods should adapt that. It may cost some money to taxpayers,
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But will save Billions in flood damage. Even deserts suffer effects of floods…..
Saudi Arabia had springs, Oasis, underground water, filled by rains and recharged rivers it spent; they date back to the Bible took 10,000 years to fill; Saudi Arabia in it’s quest for being a wheat exporter, depleted it in 40.
“Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last two decades.”
https://www.noaa.gov/noaa-wildfire/wildfire-climate-connection
“A 2021 study supported by NOAA concluded that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire weather offsite link in the western United States.”
Link to study’s abstract: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2111875118#executive-summary-abstract
Enjoy the smoke, Antiplanner! You’re seeing decades of your hard work defending the fossil fuel and automobile industries coming home to pay a visit.
@janehavisham
I think I painstakingly covered cause of Canadian wildfires ?. Result of decades of sprawls land use pattern. The soils are dry.
I wonder what it feels like to look back on your life’s work, after getting fired/retired from CATO, and realizing that you spent your most productive years in being a small part in transforming the Earth’s climate for the worse for human life. And not a little bit worse, but a lot worse.
@janehavisham
If CO2 were Earth planetary climate control know why are deserts, the hottest region on earth, turn freezing cold at night?
Because lack of humidity store heat. Water vapor is preeminent Greenhouse Gas
Let’s electrify everything! ‘Cause global warming causes wildfires, dammit!
Maui government files lawsuit, accuses Hawaiian electric company of causing Lahaina wildfires
(CNN) — Maui County filed a lawsuit Thursday against Hawaiian Electric Company and its subsidiaries, alleging that the utility company’s negligence caused the devastating wildfires that burned thousands of acres of land in the state and killed more than 100 people earlier this month.
The lawsuit alleges that the electric company, known as HECO, “inexcusably kept their power lines energized” in early August, despite the fact that the National Weather Service issued a High Wind Watch and a Fire Warning. The warnings cautioned that strong winds could knock down power lines and ignite a fire that would spread quickly due to dry conditions, the lawsuit indicated.
“The fire was a direct and legal result of the negligence, carelessness, and recklessness, and/or unlawfulness” of HECO, the lawsuit states.
I wonder what it feels like to look back on your comment and realizing that you are advocating making life worse for humans and other animals. And not a little bit worse, but a lot worse.