Thread by @ncdave4life

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp There are no "increased stressors on crops" due to climate change. Neither droughts nor wildfire incidence have worsened. Wildfires incidence has everything to do with land management practices, and nothing at all to do with climate change.

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp Here's what's happened to crop yields as CO2 levels have risen. Only part of the improvement is due to rising CO2 levels, but it is a significant part:

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp Blaming fires on climate change is "Cargo Cult Science." There is no scientific basis for it. Man-made climate change does not significantly affect the risk or severity of fires. Fire severity depends mostly on land management practices, not air temperatures.

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp There's no evidence that global warming (or warmer temperatures in general) worsen forest fires. Droughts do increase fire risk, but droughts are not worsening. Here's a paper, and a graph from it (except that I added the horizontal lines):

nature.com/articles/sdata…

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp Here's a NOAA chart:

ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-preci…

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp The only “climate change” which has contributed significantly to fire risk is the dawn of the Holocene interglacial. There were no wildfires in Wisconsin and Michigan when they were under a mile or more of ice:

sealevel.info/Cordilleran_an…

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp Here's a list of the deadliest wildfire disasters in U.S. history (through 2018):

1,200+ deaths, 1871 (Peshtigo Fire, Wisconsin)

453+ deaths, 1918 (Cloquet Fire, Minnesota)

418+ deaths, 1894 (Hinkley Fire, Minnesota)

282 deaths, 1882 (Thumb Fire, Michigan)
...

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp ...
87 deaths, 1910 (Great Fire of 1910, Idaho and Montana)

84 deaths, 2018 (Camp Fire, Paradise, California)

65 deaths, 1902 (Yacolt Burn, Oregon and Washington)

29 deaths, 1933 (Griffith Park Fire, Los Angeles, California)

Source:

mercurynews.com/2018/11/22/571…

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp Do you see it? The four worst fires, and six of the seven worst fires, were all in northern states. If warmer temperatures really caused wildfires to be worse, then most of the worst fires should have been in southern states.

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp The reason that the most catastrophic fires were in the distant past is explained by changing technology. But that doesn’t change the fact that wildfires are not correlated with warm climate.

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp Not only is there no correlation between average temperature and wild fires, the temperature changes caused by mankind are minuscule compared to the natural differences in temperature between the American north and the American south.

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp If someone thinks that temperature increases cause wildfires, then you should ask him why aren’t wildfires a bigger problem in the American south than in the north?

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp Depending on whose temperature index you use, we’ve seen an average of between 0.4 and 0.9 °C of warming since 1958 (when Mauna Loa CO2 measurements began). Here’s a graph, contrasting different temperature indexes:

sealevel.info/GISS_vs_UAH_an…

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp We might get another 1°C of warming, but the last 1°C of warming we got was clearly beneficial. So the prospect of another 1°C isn't scary. In the American breadbasket states, farmers can compensate for that much warming by planting about one week earlier.

@irish2witter @climpeter @IPCC_CH @mpclimate @bobkopp 1°C of warming is an average isotherm shift of only 60-70 miles. It's what you get from an elevation change of only about 800 feet. It is hardly noticeable.

Plus, "global" is a misnomer, because it hasn't happened everywhere.

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