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Scientific American - 2019 - what to expect...

Quaestio said:
Please see your tens of thousands of mindlessly copied and pasted blog posts from pseudoscience conspiracy blogs.
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[FONT=&quot]This paper was just published in the Royal Society Biological Sciences journal. The takeaways:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“Global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world[/FONT]
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wildfire-occurence-720x249.jpg
Figure 2. Wildfire occurrence (a) and corresponding area burnt (b) in the European Mediterranean region for the period 1980–2010. Source: San-Miguel-Ayanz et al. [37].​
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Abstract[FONT=&quot]Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth’s surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence. Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. Regarding fire severity, limited data are available. For the western USA, they indicate little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement. Direct fatalities from fire and economic losses also show no clear trends over the past three decades. Trends in indirect impacts, such as health problems from smoke or disruption to social functioning, remain insufficiently quantified to be examined. Global predictions for increased fire under a warming climate highlight the already urgent need for a more sustainable coexistence with fire. The data evaluation presented here aims to contribute to this by reducing misconceptions and facilitating a more informed understanding of the realities of global fire.This article is part of themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The paper: Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2016 Jun 5;371(1696). pii: 20150345. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0345.
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1696/20150345



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Jack Hays said:
[FONT="]This paper was just published in the Royal Society Biological Sciences journal.
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So you found a link to a paper on one of your pseudoscience conspiracy blogs and haven't even read it before copying and pasting it here.

Did you want a medal? Or a chest to pin it on?

Please see your tens of thousands of mindlessly copied and pasted blog posts from pseudoscience conspiracy blogs.
 
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Quaestio said:
So you found a link to a paper on one of your pseudoscience conspiracy blogs and haven't even read it before copying and pasting it here.

Did you want a medal? Or a chest to pin it on?

Please see your tens of thousands of mindlessly copied and pasted blog posts from pseudoscience conspiracy blogs.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's a paper I have read and posted several times because it's very useful in knocking down climate change BS.
 
Jack Hays said:
Actually, it's a paper I have read and posted several times because it's very useful in knocking down climate change BS.
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Yes sure Jack. Your history speaks for itself.
 
Jack Hays said:
You can't insult your way to debate success.
When you go low, I go high.
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That you believe you "go high" and are a "debate success" by mindlessly copying and pasting tens of thousands of conspiracy blog posts, makes it even worse.
 
Jack Hays said:
All the best.
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Is that what Anthony Watts from WUWT conspiracy blog tells you every year when he emails you a gold star for all your efforts to increase his click bait revenue?
 
Jack Hays said:
[FONT="]This paper was just published in the Royal Society Biological Sciences journal. The takeaways:[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#404040][FONT="]“Global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]
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Yes, you've posted this hundreds of times. The Royal Society is British, and you may be misinterpreting their data. You should really write to the source and ask them if they've used data prior to 1983, which is unreliable. Here's what the United States National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) has to say.

https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
The National Interagency Coordination Center at NIFC compiles annual wildland fire statistics for federal and state agencies. This information is provided through Situation Reports, which have been in use for several decades. Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data.

I am not going to post all of the data, but if you go to the NIFC site, you will see that acreage burned in the US is way up since 2000, despite the fact that the number of fires hasn't increased proportionally. This is a sign that the wildfires are much harder to control due to the excessive heat, and associated dryness in the West. The US West temperature increases due to climate change have been much more pronounced than the rest of the US - almost 4 deg F above normal.
 
Media_Truth said:
Yes, you've posted this hundreds of times. The Royal Society is British, and you may be misinterpreting their data. You should really write to the source and ask them if they've used data prior to 1983, which is unreliable. Here's what the United States National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) has to say.

https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
The National Interagency Coordination Center at NIFC compiles annual wildland fire statistics for federal and state agencies. This information is provided through Situation Reports, which have been in use for several decades. Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data.

I am not going to post all of the data, but if you go to the NIFC site, you will see that acreage burned in the US is way up since 2000, despite the fact that the number of fires hasn't increased proportionally. This is a sign that the wildfires are much harder to control due to the excessive heat, and associated dryness in the West. The US West temperature increases due to climate change have been much more pronounced than the rest of the US - almost 4 deg F above normal.
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I suggest you read the Royal Society paper.
 
Jack Hays said:
I suggest you read the Royal Society paper.
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I've read it. I suggest you look at the NIFC data. This is the United States organization that has been tracking wildfires for years.
 
Jack Hays said:
What point are you trying to make?
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You're a work of Art! This thread is about a Scientific American article that talks about what to expect in 2019, regarding Climate Change. You randomly post an off-topic article about wildfires, which has some incorrect data. I correct you're error, and you ask "my point". I think your brain is Blogged-Out!
 
Media_Truth said:
You're a work of Art! This thread is about a Scientific American article that talks about what to expect in 2019, regarding Climate Change. You randomly post an off-topic article about wildfires, which has some incorrect data. I correct you're error, and you ask "my point". I think your brain is Blogged-Out!
Click to expand...

There is no incorrect data in the Royal Society paper. I posted it in response to a question from another poster. Please see #19.
 
Jack Hays said:
There is no incorrect data in the Royal Society paper. I posted it in response to a question from another poster. Please see #19.
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Either an error or you are misinterpreting what they are saying. I suggest you look at the NIFC data. Link posted above.
 
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Jack Hays said:
They are not in conflict. The Royal Society authors reference NFIC. (See reference number 48.)

Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world
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Then you are misinterpreting. I looked at this article, but I'm not going to review it again. I linked to the source directly - which is certainly the best resource for accuracy. Conclusion - Wildfire-burned-acreage in the US West is up substantially!!! If you want to refute that, refute it with the source data from NIFC.
 
Media_Truth said:
Then you are misinterpreting. I looked at this article, but I'm not going to review it again. I linked to the source directly - which is certainly the best resource for accuracy. Conclusion - Wildfire-burned-acreage in the US West is up substantially!!! If you want to refute that, refute it with the source data from NIFC.
Click to expand...

The Royal Society authors don't dispute that point. Apparently you never read the paper.

At coarse regional scales, overall trends for the period 1996–2012 are rather contrasting [35]. For example, data for Europe and Australia/New Zealand show a strong decline in area burned of 5% yr−1, despite the latter region experiencing the largest annual area burned in the final year of the observation period. In contrast, for Southeast Asia, the Middle East and boreal North America the estimated area burned increased by 3–4%. For temperate North America the very small increase in area burned (0.1% yr−1) estimated by Giglio et al. [35] over this period may seem surprising when compared with the widely reported increase in area burned for the USA [42] and particularly the western USA in recent decades [43–46]. This discrepancy may at least in part be because (i) the region used in Giglio et al.'s analysis excludes the boreal and drier southeastern zones of the USA, and (ii) area burned in the studies focused on the USA [42–46] is based on national and regional fire statistics produced using a variety of methods. These statistics need to be viewed with some caution when examining trends as annual reporting methods and biases have undergone changes over time [47]. Indeed, according to national statistics for the USA, while area burned by prescribed fire has changed little overall since reporting began in 1998 (10 year average: 8853 km2), area burned by wildfires has seen an overall strong trend of increase by over 5% yr−1 over the period 1991–2015, with 2015 exceeding 40 000 km2 burned for the first time during the past 25 years (figure 3). This increase has been accompanied by an overall decline in the number of fires (figure 3). This suggests a general trend of fewer, but larger wildfires, which is also highlighted for forests in the western USA by Westerling for the period 1983–2012 [46]. However, caution is advised when considering the relative rates of change for area burned. The comparatively brief periods of observation discussed here are strongly influenced by regional interannual variability and are too short to be indicative of longer-term trends. For example, if only the past 16 full reporting years for the USA are considered (2000–2015), where annual area burned ranged between 14 284 (2001) and 40 975 km2 (2015), the overall annual increase has been less than 1% [48]. Longer-term records can indeed reveal rather different perspectives. For example, for the Californian Cascades and Sierra Nevada, Mallek et al. [49] suggest that ‘modern’ (1984–2009) annual area burned was only 14% of that burned annually prior to European settlement (approx. 1500–1850). In addition to climate, changes in vegetation patterns and fire regimes also play an important role here and are discussed in the context of fire severity in §3a.
rstb20150345f03.jpg
Figure 3.Area burned, number of fires and suppression costs (inflation adjusted to 2016 equivalent) for the USA with linear trend lines (1991–2015). Data: National Interagency Fire Center [48].
 
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Jack Hays said:
The Royal Society authors don't dispute that point. Apparently you never actually read the paper.
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Those guys only ready what their priests tell them to read.
 
Media_Truth said:
You're a work of Art! This thread is about a Scientific American article that talks about what to expect in 2019, regarding Climate Change. You randomly post an off-topic article about wildfires, which has some incorrect data. I correct you're error, and you ask "my point". I think your brain is Blogged-Out!
Click to expand...

What do wildfires have to do with a meaningless buzzword?
 
Jack Hays said:
The Royal Society authors don't dispute that point. Apparently you never read the paper.

[FONT=&]At coarse regional scales, overall trends for the period 1996–2012 are rather contrasting [35]. For example, data for Europe and Australia/New Zealand show a strong decline in area burned of 5% yr−1, despite the latter region experiencing the largest annual area burned in the final year of the observation period. In contrast, for Southeast Asia, the Middle East and boreal North America the estimated area burned increased by 3–4%. For temperate North America the very small increase in area burned (0.1% yr−1) estimated by Giglio et al. [35] over this period may seem surprising when compared with the widely reported increase in area burned for the USA [42] and particularly the western USA in recent decades [43–46]. This discrepancy may at least in part be because (i) the region used in Giglio et al.'s analysis excludes the boreal and drier southeastern zones of the USA, and (ii) area burned in the studies focused on the USA [42–46] is based on national and regional fire statistics produced using a variety of methods. These statistics need to be viewed with some caution when examining trends as annual reporting methods and biases have undergone changes over time [47]. Indeed, according to national statistics for the USA, while area burned by prescribed fire has changed little overall since reporting began in 1998 (10 year average: 8853 km2), area burned by wildfires has seen an overall strong trend of increase by over 5% yr−1 over the period 1991–2015, with 2015 exceeding 40 000 km2 burned for the first time during the past 25 years (figure 3). This increase has been accompanied by an overall decline in the number of fires (figure 3). This suggests a general trend of fewer, but larger wildfires, which is also highlighted for forests in the western USA by Westerling for the period 1983–2012 [46]. However, caution is advised when considering the relative rates of change for area burned. The comparatively brief periods of observation discussed here are strongly influenced by regional interannual variability and are too short to be indicative of longer-term trends. For example, if only the past 16 full reporting years for the USA are considered (2000–2015), where annual area burned ranged between 14 284 (2001) and 40 975 km2 (2015), the overall annual increase has been less than 1% [48]. Longer-term records can indeed reveal rather different perspectives. For example, for the Californian Cascades and Sierra Nevada, Mallek et al. [49] suggest that ‘modern’ (1984–2009) annual area burned was only 14% of that burned annually prior to European settlement (approx. 1500–1850). In addition to climate, changes in vegetation patterns and fire regimes also play an important role here and are discussed in the context of fire severity in §3a.[/FONT]
rstb20150345f03.jpg
Figure 3.Area burned, number of fires and suppression costs (inflation adjusted to 2016 equivalent) for the USA with linear trend lines (1991–2015). Data: National Interagency Fire Center [48].
Click to expand...

I have posted that same graph from the NIFC. Thank you for finally conceding my point - the acreage burned in the Western US is up, while the number of wildfires is down. It doesn't show 2017, which was another Mountain West 10 million+ acre-burn year, very close to the record 2015 record burn year.
 
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Media_Truth said:
I have posted that same graph from the NIFC. Thank you for finally conceding my point - the acreage burned in the Western US is up, while the number of wildfires is down. It doesn't show 2017, which was another Mountain West 10 million+ acre-burn year, very close to the record 2015 record burn year.
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That point has never been in dispute so there's nothing to concede.
 
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[h=1]Reassessing the RCPs[/h][FONT=&quot]From Judith Curry’s Climate Etc Posted on January 28, 2019 by curryja | by Kevin Murphy A response to: “Is RCP8.5 an impossible scenario?”. This post demonstrates that RCP8.5 is so highly improbable that it should be dismissed from consideration, and thereby draws into question the validity of RCP8.5-based assertions such as those made in…
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