November, 2018, Part 2,I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Bad Political Policy Caused The California Wildfires, Not Global Warming

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of man made global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaim.

1) Unless you are totally out of touch with current events, you know that California is suffering through some massive wildfires. Tragically, many have died, many more are missing and the property damage is massive. Of course, global warming advocates are never going to pass up a tragedy like this to advocate for their climate and global warming positions, even if it means pathetically doing their advocacy when people are still grieving and suffering.

But before we get to this current wildfire situation let’s review the reality from wildfires in a scientific, data driven, reality perspective. Consider the following set of real data that we have previously talked about concerning wildfires:

Wild Fires

Research by James Taylor, writing for Forbes magazine, found that “2013 was one of the quietest wildfire years in U.S. history.” If global warming/climate change was such a bad thing from a weather perspective, one could expect to see a growing trend of wildfires as severe weather, droughts, etc. resulting in more wildfires.

But according to a government agency, the National Interagency Fire Center, an entity that tracks the number of forest fires every year and has been doing so since 1960, well before global warming theory took hold: 

• The year 2013 had the fewest forest fires since data tracking began.
• From 1962 through 1982, there were at least 100,000 forest fires tracked every one of those years. But since 1982 there has not been a single year where forest fires totalled above 100,000.
• Fifty years prior, in 1964, forest fires totalled three times as many vs. 2014 and burned up twice as many acres.
• Twenty years ago, in 1994, there were 79,000 forest fires vs. 63,000 in 2014.

But this is not the only source of real data that shows forest fires, and the severe weather that might affect them, is down on a historical basis despite global warming/climate change:

• According to the Weather Underground, the two largest forest fires in American history occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• The first of these forest fires occurred in Wisconsin 1871 and burned 3.8 million acres and killed 1,500 people.
• The second worse forest fire hit Idaho and Montana in 1910 and destroyed 3 million acres and killed 87 people.
• The 47,579 forest fires in 2013 destroyed only 4.3 million acres, an average of 90.79 acres per fire.
• Furthermore, research in 2009 analysis by R.M. Beaty and A.H. Taylor researched charcoal records in northern California to study wildfires over thousands of years. They concluded that “current fire episode frequency is at one of its lowest points in at least the last 14,000 years.” And certainly manmade global warming and climate change was not a topic of concern or a reality 14,000 years ago.

That whole post where the above passage was taken, a post that also looks at other types of natural disasters, can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/06/june-2015-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

So yes, the California wildfires raging today are very, very bad. But are they really just a statistical anomaly which is what real data would show? You cannot take one situation, today’s California wildfires, and all of a sudden throw out thousands of years worth of real data to conclude man made global warming is the culprit. One data point is not a trend.

Let’s look at another set of real data from that same post referenced above:

Roger Pielke Jr. is an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in Colorado. On may 22, 2015 he a graph on his blog that showed a slight DECREASE in global droughts since 1982, a time period of extensive worries about global warming and weather. His data is based on a 2013 publication in the magazine Nature which tracked “historical drought severity data.”

Fraction of the Globe in Drought: 1982-2012



The graph above shows the proportion of the planet in drought, by intensity, 1982-2012. The graph comes from a paper in a new Nature publication called Scientific Data and is open access.

So, again, the California wildfires are bad. But from a historical perspective, the world is not in a drought infested state, the historical data shows that if anything, drought situations are slowly decreasing over time, a direct contradiction of what global warming advocates would tell us.So if the long term trend for drought and wildfires is down as measured by real data, a direct contradiction of what global warming advocates measure by real hysteria, what could possibly be going on in California to fuel these current fires?Consider a recent Forbes article from November 16, 2018 by Chuck DeVore, Texas Public Policy Foundation VP and former California legislator. The title of his article is, “California's Deadliest Fires Could Have Been Mitigated By Prevention.” Given his background as a California politician, and years spent with the state’s National Guard fighting disasters, he does have some credibility about talking about his current state’s situation:

• He starts off the article by recognizing how bad the situation is: “At least 63 people have been killed with 631 reported missing in the California fires as thousands of firefighters, including 200 sent from Texas as well as other states, battle to contain the blazes. More than 7,000 structures have been destroyed, including up to 90 percent of the homes in Paradise, population 26,682, in Northern California’s Butte County. More than a quarter of a million people have been evacuated in both the north of the state by the Camp Fire and by other fires in Southern California, Hill and Woolsey.”
• Given his first hand experience, it is his experienced opinion that political policy bears at least some of the blame for these massive fires.
• He cites the opinion of Mike Marcucci, the assistant chief of CAL FIRE, California’s main firefighting agency, who in a recent interview blamed decades of political policy of discouraging controlled burns as a safety precaution to reduce the natural wood fuel that feeds massive wildfires.
• These needed burns were decreased as a result of environmental lawsuits and the fear of air quality degradation, a concern that has certainly backfired big time with the air degradation caused by these wildfires which have been many times greater than what would have happened under much smaller, controlled burns.
• Real data show that in the three decades before 1990, lumber companies annually took out 10-12 billion board feet of lumber from our national forests, much of which is located in California.
• By 2013, environmental policies had reduced that annual forest thinning down to a meager 2.5 billion board feet.
• Concurrent with that reduction, the thinning of underbrush and dead trees also declined dramatically.
• According to the article, the following simple truth is that, “Harvesting trees on public land is controversial but helps pay for needed brush clearing. Many environmental groups vigorously oppose both. But fighting the larger, hotter fires that result without active forest management is even more costly and threatens lives.”
• California, and its much tighter environmental controls and higher and higher prices for forest harvesting permits, has cut employment in the lumber industry by half since the 1990s, and with that has led to the overgrowth of the forests in the state.
• Of course, global warming advocates like California governor Jerry Brown ignored all of this reality when he blamed the fires on, no surprise, global warming, “During this summer’s fires, outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown blamed the record-breaking fires on climate change. In a press conference he warned that the level of climate change-induced forest fires predicted in 20 to 30 years were “now occurring in real time.””

It is tragically ironic that the zeal of environmentalists and global warming advocates along with stupid political and environmental policies have likely resulted in the intensity and death and destruction of these recent fires. These current wildfires have likely given off 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, about 12% of the state’s entire annual emissions in addition to creating incredibly bad air quality, the exact opposite of what environmentalists advocate for. As we said above, one data point, the current fires, do not represent a trend. But leaving behind billions and billions of lumber board feet not harvested along with the ever growing underbrush and dead trees that go with it, is a trend that has resulted in the current wildfire situation in the state, not global warming.2) When Trump recently suggested that bad environmental policies had contributed mightily to the current California wildfires, Governor Jerry Brown pooh poohed the idea since he is one of the biggest global warming advocates around, data, science, and reality be damned. But after the camera and news crews left the area after Trump’s visit and Brown’s retort, something curious happened:

• According to Emily Zanotti, writing for the Daily Wire on November 19, 2018, Brown quietly starting urging California politicians to undo some of the environmental legislation that so greatly reduced logging in the state and created the current combustible disaster that exists today in the state’s forests.
• In fact, he is not suggesting minor tweeks, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper, some of his proposed changes are the most significant changes in the state’s logging industry in almost 50 years: "Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing broad new changes to California's logging rules that would allow landowners to cut larger trees and build temporary roads without obtaining a permit as a way to thin more forests across the state." 
• Specifically: "Under Brown's proposal, private landowners would be able to cut trees up to 36 inches in diameter - up from the current 26 inches - on property 300 acres or less without getting a timber harvest permit from the state, as long as their purpose was to thin forests to reduce fire risk. They also would be able to build roads of up to 600 feet long without getting a permit, as long as they repaired and replanted them." 

So Trump gets crucified by global warming advocates for suggesting the need for more forest pruning and better forest management. But when one of the global warming heroes, Brown, proposes the same thing, crickets from the global warming crowd. The hypocrisy is deafening.To the man made global warming/climate change advocates, please stop knee jerking. Look at data, look at history, be logical and not hysterical and maybe then we can all have a mature, adult, reality based discussion on climate. Until then, I will continue to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

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http://www.reason.com
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