Editor’s Note 8/3/2015: Welcome to another summer of record-breaking heat in the Northwest. From rain forests to wheat farms, thousands of acres have been burned. The Lake Chelan wildfire in Washington quadrupled in size; there have been 1,390 wildfires in BC this season; and more than 800 people are working to contain the Southern Oregon wildfires. Here’s a popular Flashcard from last summer with a few quick and easy ways to talk about how climate change is fueling these monster wildfires.
This week, the LA Times reported on the wildfire raging in Washington State, describing “tornadoes of fire” engulfing a small town. It’s a scary picture and a bleak reminder that global warming is amplifying certain kinds of destruction here, now, right in our backyard:
The Carlton Complex fire will probably go down as the biggest conflagration in Washington state history, torching about 240,000 acres and counting. Pateros, one of Washington’s littlest towns, was no match for its fury. An estimated 20% of the buildings in the city, population 600 or so, have been destroyed. There is no electricity, no drinking water.
Speaking about the fire, President Obama said, “A lot of it has to do with drought, a lot of it has to do with changing precipitation patterns and a lot of that has to do with climate change.”
Climate change is making for wildfires in the American West that are more severe and more difficult to fight. Some are calling the new climate-fueled wildfires “monster” or “mega” fires. It’s important to put wildfires into context the way Obama has. So, we’re reissuing our talking points on global warming and wildfires.
Journalists, policymakers, and advocates should reinforce the connections between climate change and the trend toward more frequent, wilder, hotter, bigger and less predictable wildfires. There are plenty of excellent resources to go deep on the science. (Some of the best are here, here, here, here, and here.) But mostly people need to hear the basics: Climate change is fueling dangerous mega fires.
Take last year’s Yosemite Rim Fire. After visiting the site, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said climate change is leaving the West more vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires that are huge, “incredibly difficult to control and very expensive.” “This is a gnarly fire,” he said. “It’s got high attention, huge fuels, big flame lengths and lots of really, really dry, climate-driven conditions.” Andrew Freedman lays out just how drought amplifies a wildfire like that one.
As fire geographer Michael Medler testified in a congressional hearing, “On the fire lines it is clear, global warming is changing fire behavior, creating longer fire seasons and causing more frequent, large-scale, high-severity wildfires.” (That was back in 2007.) The science here is clear. Low snow pack and early snow-melt along with hotter temperatures and more severe droughts are making forests dry and highly flammable. More and more people live next door to these tinderboxes. Fire season now lasts two months longer and destroys twice as much land as it did 40 years ago, according to Thomas Tidwell, the head of the United States Forest Service. Western fires are straining firefighting budgets to the max.
Climate change isn’t the only culprit creating the conditions for more severe and dangerous fires, but it doesn’t take a climate scientist or even a great detective to see the fingerprints of human-caused climate change on most wildfire crime scenes.
And this is just the beginning. In coming years, things are projected to get much worse. (For one example, according to Harvard researchers, by 2050—when my daughter is around my age—the area burned in the month of August could increase by 65 percent in the Pacific Northwest, and could nearly double in the Eastern Rocky Mountains/Great Plains regions and quadruple in the Rocky Mountains Forest region.)
Here are some simple, powerful ways to talk about global warming and wildfires:
Global Warming and Monster Wildfires
Climate change is here, now. We’re seeing the growing risks and costs.
Global warming is fueling dangerous “mega fires.” We are more vulnerable to wildfires that are bigger, more dangerous, more difficult for firefighters to control, and more expensive than ever.
Global warming isn’t the only culprit, but the science is clear: the fingerprints of climate change are all over wildfire crime scenes. Hotter weather and heat waves, more frequent droughts, low snow-pack, and early snow melt add up to conditions that extend fire seasons and spike the risk of more frequent, larger, and more severe wildfires.
Steve Erickson
Please, please, please, don’t ever say that wildfire “destroys” land (quote from the article above). In these fire dependent ecosystems, fire renews the land, or at least the vegetation communities. Using the word “destroy” (or something similar) in regards to the land feeds the western European myth that wildfire is evil and bad. Its not. It really is natural. We really do need to learn to live with it. And use it.
Of course, building mega-mansions on hill tops or plopping trailers in the woods (to cover both needs of the economic spectrum) pretty much means that whenever there’s a wildlife the wildfire-industrial complex (and it is very very big) is going to spring into action and expend huge amounts of money on a completely futile goal. So lets deal with wildland sprawl. Maybe push for a new requirement in GMA? In the fire prone counties, require a comprehensive plan element addressing wildfire and development. Require regulations prohibiting development that is not defensible and includes methods for sheltering in place. I know, I know. We will hear lots of bleating about how its every american’s God-given right to get burned up and get other people killed who are trying to rescue them or even more importantly, their precious private property. But really, aren’t headlines about firefighters getting trapped and crispy fried trying to do the impossible getting a little old? Not to mention spending 10s of millions of $$ doing it?
Dawn Stover
There is little doubt that climate change exacerbates wildfire risk in many areas, but the picture is more complicated than most people believe. Climate change not only increases temperatures but also changes precipitation patterns, and wildfire risk depends on vegetation and humidity factors as well as heat.
Where I live in southwest Washington, wildfires (which occurred naturally even before the onset of anthropogenic global warming) are being used to justify deforestation, both with “salvage” logging operations after fires and with clear-cutting operations to “prevent” fires. Most efforts to help people make their homes fire-safe involve removing trees and other vegetation, rather than making modifications to homes and other structures that have been shown to reduce risk. There are few incentives from government or insurance companies for the latter.
My anecdotal observation is that deforested areas are much hotter and drier than forested areas. When I walk from a deforested area into one that still has some trees, I notice an immediate drop in temperature and rise in humidity. This is not just because of shade, but also because the Northwest’s trees are designed to store water to survive dry seasons (that’s why they are so tall) and to “exhale” water vapor into the air throughout the year.
A lot has been written about the urban “heat island” effect, i.e. how removing trees and paving over land makes cities hot. Nobody talks about rural heat islands, but I see them everywhere. I’m not talking here about thinning forests to reduce fuel loads, but rather clearing them and replacing them with seedlings that store far less water. Crispy clearcuts may not have much fuel load, but deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, whether it’s carried out by chainsaws or by fire.
Wildlife is an excellent metaphor for climate change. Fire is not only natural but essential from an ecological perspective, but what we’re seeing today are extremes that are beginning to deviate wildly from natural variability. Fighting a mega-fire requires an all-out community effort, which is exactly what we currently lack for mitigating climate change. I have written about this from the perspective of someone who lives in wildfire country: http://thebulletin.org/fired
Dave McArthur
Please, please, please also embrace physics and communicate thermodynamics. It is heart wrenching to observe the very well-meaning people at Sightline destroying the state of science in our communities. Please understand that without global warming there is no life on Earth. Indeed any form is essentially a momentary, local thermal balance i.e. it is warming at the same rate as it is cooling. Its temperature is stable.
Please understand that a form ceases to be when a thermal imbalance occurs i.e. it warms up or cools down. Confusing “global warming” with “global warming-up” denies the essential change of the universe. (The human ego tends to abhor any reminder of mortality.)
Also a paradox of communication is that a symbol use simultaneously generates and reflects our state of being. Confusing “climate change” with “human-induced climate change” reflects and generates a deep disconnection and denial of personal stewardship of our use of the planet. Sages have long advised how the ego, which is born of disconnection, can cause us to self-destruct. We see this in the demonization of global warming and climate change. The good news is we can enjoy the state of science and transcend the ingenious trickery of the ego by embracing compassion. Much more at http://www.truehope.info