Garbled Warming
USA Today today reports that the 2010 Fire Season has been a mild one, due to the weather, not “climate change” of course.
USA catches a break this year with mild wildfire season
Both in terms of total number of wildfires as well as acres burned, 2010 is the least active year of the past decade.
By Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, September 8, 2010 [here]
The USA is enjoying an unusually quiet year for wildfires, the least fiery of the past 10 years, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
Both in terms of total number of wildfires as well as acres burned, 2010 is the least active year of the past decade.
Weather conditions have been ideal this year for a calm wildfire season, particularly in the fire-prone West.
“It’s been a combination of rain at the right time of year in the right place,” says Robyn Heffernan, assistant fire weather program manager of the fire center.
“The weakening of El Nino (and eventual transition to La Nina) brought abundant spring rain to the Northwest and kept a persistent West Coast trough of low pressure throughout the summer,” she adds. “This kept (wildfire) fuels moist in the Northwest quarter of the country into the summer fire season.
“It was the perfect combination for little fire activity in the lower 48.”
As of Sept. 3, 43,470 fires had burned in the USA, slightly less than the 45,152 that burned in 2003, according to the fire center. This amount is 71% of the average of 61,219 fires.
The total acres burned across the USA has been less than half of an average year. So far in 2010, 2.6 million acres have burned nationally; in a typical year, 5.7 million have been scorched, to date.
Also thanks to El Nino, the spring was very wet in the Southern tier of states, reports Heffernan, which is typically that region’s most active season.
“Last winter was under the influence of an El Nino, which gave the Southern tier of states moist conditions going into the spring fire season,” Heffernan says.
Many of the wildfires this year have been in Alaska. “They were busy in their peak of fire season, which is in June,” she adds.
Alaska burned around 150% of its normal number of fires and in excess of 200% of normal acreage.
“If you took those fires out, the lower 48 total would be significantly lower.” …
That’s not to say that there haven’t been devastating fires. Thousands of acres of spotted owl forests have been incinerated in various Let It Burn fires, and homes destroyed in numerous others.
Note: the worst of this year’s home-destroying wildfires is burning right now west of Boulder, CO. The Four Mile Canyon Fire [here] has burned more than 50 homes so far. The West Fire [here] and Bull Fire [here] in Kern County, CA burned 30+ residences in July. And the typical fall wildfire season in Southern California has not kicked in yet.
But the numbers don’t lie; this year has been a relatively mild fire season to-date.
The “conventional” wisdom has been that the globe is heating up like a frog in a microwave oven, though. The “models” are off the charts. Some “experts” like NASA’s James “Venus Syndrome” Hansen believe the seas are going to boil away into outer space if we don’t stop driving SUV’s [here].
It has been a popular alarmist refrain that early snowmelt and increased spring and summer temperatures have occurred and are driving increases in wildfire acreage. A single speculative paper is most often cited: Westerling, A.L.; Hidalgo, H.G.; Cayan, D.R.; Swetnam, T.W. 2006. Warming and earlier spring increase Western U.S. forest wildfire activity. Science, Vol. 313: 940-843 [here] for this dire report.
Of course, one unchallenged study using uncertainty-laden computer models does not equal truth. That hasn’t impeded AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarmists from trumpeting it, however. The Draft Cohesive Strategy [here], for instance, was written by Westerling et al. true believers.
The problem with the alarmist theories is that the weather won’t cooperate with the climate models. Despite the overwhelming consensus of People Without a Clue [here, here, here, for instance], colder-than-usual weather keeps contradicting the Incredible Warming Models.
Even the President and Chief Alarmist Barky Obama had to concede last winter that Snowmageddon had arrived [here]. Al “Sex Poodle” Gore bought a mansion on the beach, indicating his money doesn’t go where his mouth does [here]. Record salmon runs have filled western rivers [here], in response to the PDO shift [here] to colder waters. And despite their best efforts, the Nation’s Interagency and Interdepartmental Wildland Fire Management Community has not been able to burn as many acres as they had hoped for. $Billions in FLAME Act funds are not getting spent, much to everyone’s chagrin.
Our cold, wet Spring and the Shortest Summer On Record have pretty much shot the Incredible Warming Models full of holes. Which was also predicted [here]. It’s that darn weather. It just won’t cooperate.
World Governments are doing all they can to raise taxes and inflict economy busting regulations, and they need evidence to justify their Luddititude. But the evidence keeps undermining the Alarmist wonkies. The seas won’t boil, the fires won’t burn, and the weather won’t do what the models tell it to do.
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody seems to be able to make it do what they want.
But not to worry. The Lame Ducks will quack things up. Get out your check books, or sell your kids if you have to. The Largest Tax Hikes in History are coming. They’ll cure what ails the weather, or my name isn’t Quetzalcoatl.
Lest we forget, we are just a part of North America here in the West. Far to the south, in Argentina and Chile, winter has been brutal during our summer. The Andes are full of sick children with pneumonia, and hundreds have died from asphyxiation due to burning charcoal or gas heaters inside to keep warm in the abnormal cold.
The area of Argentina where they are trying to grow blueberries has seen snow three times since 1905 — once in 2008 and twice in July 2010. The second was snow enough to collapse barn roofs and kill tens of thousands of livestock. The frost protection equipment used to produce early blueberries ran out of fuel and the roads were not passable to get more.
If you watched World Cup football, in South Africa you saw the cold people huddled in stands, and the players trying to direct a cold ball that flew around like a baseball knuckleball. The Southern Hemisphere has been very and unusually cold this winter, our summer. No indication of global warming there this year. Only death and misery and lots of property loss.
Algore wouldn’t know sitting in his villa in Santa Barbara, CA… I will note that I was talking last week to some people who had been in San Diego this summer for a couple of days, and said it was cold there, in July… let alone the SE Alaska weather this summer that was just miserable. Maybe 8 clear days all summer.
But public opinion is made on the East Coast of this country, and there it was very hot all summer. Ergo, global warming is proven. Bang! The gavel falls and the decision has been made. Those people can’t even remember their prior winter. And will ignore this one upcoming.
Reply: Propaganda is propaganda. The goal is to get people to deny the reality in front of their own faces, to lose confidence in their own lying eyes, and alter their perceptions in subservience to government thugs. It’s not difficult to drive an entire nation insane with propaganda. Look at Germany under Hitler, or Russia under Stalin. Millions of Americans would rather accept the lies they are told than confront the the fact that they are being lied to.