Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
The L. A. Times published a Ca. climate alarmist wildfire story falsely claiming that the states most recent wildfires are result of “heat like the state has never seen”.
As usual with climate fear articles like this one in the L. A. Times the scientific reality present a far different picture. The latest scientific study completed by the Royal Society concludes that global wildfires are in decline.
The reduction is global wildfires is summarized graphically in Figure 2 contained in this study.
Additionally a study by the USGS of wildfires in the western U.S. provides scientific evidence documenting the decline of wildfires over the last 40 years in California using both USFS and Cal Fire historical fire data sources.
Not only is this L. A. Times Ca. wildfire propaganda claim wrong about the pattern of wildfire occurrences in California it is also wrong about its flawed claim that these fires are the result of “heat like the state has never seen”.
The Times offers its “heat” evidence in the following graphs which fails to include maximum monthly temperature data for all summer months of June through September as provided by NOAA temperature data for California covering the period between 1895 to 2018.
The complete summer month maximum temperature data for June through September from NOAA’s California temperature data base shows that the state has experienced the present “heat” levels many times before.
The NOAA California maximum monthly summer temperature record documents that the highest temperatures occurred in 1960 (58 years ago), followed by 2003 (15 years ago), followed by 2008 (8 years ago), followed by 2017, followed by 2006 (12 years ago), followed by 2016 (2 years ago), followed by 1981 (37 years ago), etc.
Additionally a 2015 study by the University of California at Berkeley concluded that the present extremely high level of vegetation now fueling California wildfires has occurred because of fire fighting forest management policies over the last century which have allowed an unsustainable amount of vegetation to accumulate. The Berkeley study notes:
“National parks and other protected areas clearly provide an important function in removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it,” said Battles. “But we also know from previous research that a century of fire suppression has contributed to a potentially unsustainable buildup of vegetation. This buildup provides abundant fuel for fires that contribute to carbon emissions.”
The Berkeley study concludes that changed fire fighting forest management policies will likely be required to improve the present unnatural centuries long buildup of high vegetation that exists in the state.
The L. A. Times continues its climate alarmism propaganda campaign while ignoring and hiding from its readers significant scientific data and studies which completely undermine its alarmists claims.
