Climate Change Deniers Exploit Catastrophic CA Wildfires to Spread Disinformation

[donsutherland1]

Even as the flames of wildfires ringing the Los Angeles area in hellish fashion have consumed some 4,000 structures, climate change deniers are exploiting the catastrophe to push disinformation.

Let's take a quick look. Neither Wielicki nor Martz has sufficient understanding of weather and climate to analyze what has actually taken place. Instead, both push the common fallacy that rainfall in the past (last 20 winters, in this case) means there can't possibly be a drought, much less severe wildfire conditions.

Now the facts:

1. Los Angeles County is in the midst of a moderate or severe drought, as is much of southern California. Moreover, drought conditions were growing rapidly worse. The latest data:

2. Rainfall in past winters means nothing. That rainfall is in the distant past. What matters is how much rain has recently fallen. Many locations have had either their second lowest or lowest rainfall on record since June 1. Through yesterday, Blythe has gone a record 282 consecutive days without measurable rainfall. Lancaster has gone 238 consecutive days without measurable rainfall (second longest such streak).

3. Flash droughts, which can develop in as few as five days are becoming increasingly frequent due to climate change. Two papers:

A global transition to flash droughts under climate change

Global projections of flash drought show increased risk in a warming climate

Increased risk of flash droughts with raised concurrent hot and dry extremes under global warming

4. Climate change is also driving an increase in the vapor pressure deficit leading to more intense and extreme wildfires. One paper:

Quantifying contributions of natural variability and anthropogenic forcings on increased fire weather risk over the western United States

5. The literature has made abundantly clear that climate change is leading to an increased wildfire risk in southern California. A key paper:

The season for large fires in Southern California is projected to lengthen in a changing climate

Two Key Points:

1. Neither person cited in the opening has the background knowledge or information to make an informed judgment about weather, climate, or the antecedent conditions responsible for southern California's catastrophic wildfires. Their reasoning about past precipitation was fallacious. Both had no idea that the region was currently in a drought or any awareness that drought products exist and can readily be accessed by the public. They appear to have no knowledge of the concept of flash droughts, thus there flawed argument about past winters' rainfall. They are unfamiliar with the literature on  the role of climate change in driving flash droughts, increased vapor pressure deficits, and on the wildfire risk to southern California.

2. At a time of great danger and terrible tragedy, such ill-informed social media accounts should refrain from pushing disinformation, if just for ethical reasons. Their misleading people--including those at risk of the wildfires or victims of the fires--can put lives at risk. It can also increase the emotional distress being experienced among those who have already lost much in the raging fires.

[chubbs]

David Swain has a number posts which describe the role of climate change in the LA fire. He references a couple of additional papers: 1) Fire growth speed is increasing in the US; and, 2} A new paper on hydroclimate whiplash, either wet-to-dry or dry-to-wet cycling. As expected, hydroclimate whiplash is increasing around the world with climate change. Per graphic below, The LA fires are a good example.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk5737

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00624-z

[donsutherland1]

For World Weather Attribution's/Clmate Central's 2024 annual report:

https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/116443

 

[donsutherland1]

11 hours ago, chubbs said:

David Swain has a number posts which describe the role of climate change in the LA fire. He references a couple of additional papers: 1) Fire growth speed is increasing in the US; and, 2} A new paper on hydroclimate whiplash, either wet-to-dry or dry-to-wet cycling. As expected, hydroclimate whiplash is increasing around the world with climate change. Per graphic below, The LA fires are a good example.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk5737

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00624-z

Dr. Swain is an outstanding and knowledgeable source. I'm glad to see that his work is gaining more attention and that even CNN gave him some time.

[chubbs]

I moved my family away two years ago because, as California’s climate kept growing drier, hotter and more fiery, I feared that our neighborhood would burn. But even I didn’t think fires of this scale and severity would raze it and other large areas of the city this soon. And yet images of Altadena this week show a hellscape, like a landscape out of Octavia Butler’s uncannily prescient climate novel “Parable of the Sower.”

One lesson climate change teaches us again and again is that bad things can happen ahead of schedule. Model predictions for climate impacts have tended to be optimistically biased. But now, unfortunately, the heating is accelerating, outpacing scientists’ expectations.

We must face the fact that no one is coming to save us, especially in disaster-prone places such as Los Angeles, where the risk of catastrophic wildfire has been clear for years. And so many of us face a real choice — to stay or to leave. I chose to leave.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/opinion/la-fires-los-angeles-wildfires.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oU4.uI8e.voMxKYiiN72M&smid=bs-share

[donsutherland1]

12 hours ago, chubbs said:

I moved my family away two years ago because, as California’s climate kept growing drier, hotter and more fiery, I feared that our neighborhood would burn. But even I didn’t think fires of this scale and severity would raze it and other large areas of the city this soon. And yet images of Altadena this week show a hellscape, like a landscape out of Octavia Butler’s uncannily prescient climate novel “Parable of the Sower.”

One lesson climate change teaches us again and again is that bad things can happen ahead of schedule. Model predictions for climate impacts have tended to be optimistically biased. But now, unfortunately, the heating is accelerating, outpacing scientists’ expectations.

We must face the fact that no one is coming to save us, especially in disaster-prone places such as Los Angeles, where the risk of catastrophic wildfire has been clear for years. And so many of us face a real choice — to stay or to leave. I chose to leave.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/opinion/la-fires-los-angeles-wildfires.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oU4.uI8e.voMxKYiiN72M&smid=bs-share

Apparently, the climate change denier who had no idea that drought products exist (and no idea southern California was in a drought), much less knowledge of flash droughts, has attacked Dr. Kalmus's op-ed. In doing so, he just further exposed that he is essentially illiterate on weather and climate. He has no conception that the fossil fuel burning leads to a warming climate, greater vapor pressure deficits, and increased frequency of drought/emergence of flash drought. All of those antecedent conditions ensure that any fires that start--be they from lightning or human-causes (accidental or otherwise)--will be more intense, more extensive, and more severe.

[Silver Meteor]

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2025/01/why-la-wildfires-have-little-to-with.html

[chubbs]

Whenever there is a climate-related catastrophe, deniers have to develop a story-line to protect their followers worldview. The story only has to be credible to skeptics/deniers, a low bar. Martz and Mass, are missing the main climate drivers for this event, but that's OK, their followers don't know the drivers either, and they readily accept any excuse to deny.

Of course climate change isn't the only factor or the "cause" for this event. People do risky/dumb things and are always going to do dumb things. The fact that people do risky things is another reason to avoid climate change, just makes the risky things worse.  Denying climate change encourages risk taking. Not a good approach when climate impacts are ramping and our infrastructure is becoming increasingly unsuitable for the climate we have.

 

[TheClimateChanger]

@donsutherland1 Here's another example of a denier seizing on the recent cold snap to promote their anti-warming agenda.

First of all, the article mentions the Great Lakes, not the Upper Midwest. While there's a considerable overlap, much of the Great Lakes region is not in the Upper Midwest, and vice versa. Second, nowhere in the article do the predict the "Upper Midwest would become very warm by the year 2030, and millions of people would move there for the climate." There's a thought-provoking possible future headline, but it simply mentions the 21st century - which could be 2050, or 2080, or 2090.

The only projection has a lot of caveats - "may cause a 4 to 9 F temperature increase in the region as early as 2030." Not really a hard and fast projection, given the "may" and "as early as" language, suggesting the rise may occur over a longer timespan that that.

But the crazy thing is the lower end of that projection does not look far off. Here is the temperature trend at Toledo Airport, in Ohio, from 1989 to 2024. Now, the airport, a relatively small, regional one, is located in a mostly rural section of Lucas County, and therefore should have minimal impact from urban heating.

A linear regression shows a warming of 2.9F from 1989 to 2024. A continuance of this trend over the next several years would likely bring total warming to around 3.5F by 2030. And this is fairly representative of much of the Great Lakes region. But a few comments are warranted:

(1) Most recent years have been above the trendline. Should this continue, the slope of the regression line will increase. If we simply compare the first 5 years of data, we find a mean temperature of 50.1F, versus the most recent 5 years, a mean temperature of 53.7F, corresponding to a warming of 3.6F over those two periods.

(2) This does not account for changes in instrument and siting. The HO-83 thermometer, which was in use from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, is known to have produced spuriously high readings. When the NWS switched to ASOS, with the updated sensors, a cooling of as much as 1F or more was noted. This suggests that the temperatures at the beginning of this dataset may be too high, which would have the effect of decreasing the slope of the trendline [and implied warming] for non-climatic reasons.

(3) The graph starts at what was understood at the time to be a very warm period - no cherrypicking at all. The late 1980s and early 1990s were known as a very warm period with mild winters and hot summer temperatures. The Pinatubo eruption, however, did provide some temporary cooling in the 1992-1994 time period, perhaps ameliorating this factor. Regardless, the point is starting just 10 years earlier would probably produce a substantially higher warming trend.

Overall, the forecast was not bad. It would appear that 4F warming from late 1980s base would likely be achieved by 2040. The higher rates of warming were probably based on projections of greenhouse gas emissions that did not come to fruition.

 

[donsutherland1]

37 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

@donsutherland1 Here's another example of a denier seizing on the recent cold snap to promote their anti-warming agenda.

First of all, the article mentions the Great Lakes, not the Upper Midwest. While there's a considerable overlap, much of the Great Lakes region is not in the Upper Midwest, and vice versa. Second, nowhere in the article do the predict the "Upper Midwest would become very warm by the year 2030, and millions of people would move there for the climate." There's a thought-provoking possible future headline, but it simply mentions the 21st century - which could be 2050, or 2080, or 2090.

The only projection has a lot of caveats - "may cause a 4 to 9 F temperature increase in the region as early as 2030." Not really a hard and fast projection, given the "may" and "as early as" language, suggesting the rise may occur over a longer timespan that that.

But the crazy thing is the lower end of that projection does not look far off. Here is the temperature trend at Toledo Airport, in Ohio, from 1989 to 2024. Now, the airport, a relatively small, regional one, is located in a mostly rural section of Lucas County, and therefore should have minimal impact from urban heating.

A linear regression shows a warming of 2.9F from 1989 to 2024. A continuance of this trend over the next several years would likely bring total warming to around 3.5F by 2030. And this is fairly representative of much of the Great Lakes region. But a few comments are warranted:

(1) Most recent years have been above the trendline. Should this continue, the slope of the regression line will increase. If we simply compare the first 5 years of data, we find a mean temperature of 50.1F, versus the most recent 5 years, a mean temperature of 53.7F, corresponding to a warming of 3.6F over those two periods.

(2) This does not account for changes in instrument and siting. The HO-83 thermometer, which was in use from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, is known to have produced spuriously high readings. When the NWS switched to ASOS, with the updated sensors, a cooling of as much as 1F or more was noted. This suggests that the temperatures at the beginning of this dataset may be too high, which would have the effect of decreasing the slope of the trendline [and implied warming] for non-climatic reasons.

(3) The graph starts at what was understood at the time to be a very warm period - no cherrypicking at all. The late 1980s and early 1990s were known as a very warm period with mild winters and hot summer temperatures. The Pinatubo eruption, however, did provide some temporary cooling in the 1992-1994 time period, perhaps ameliorating this factor. Regardless, the point is starting just 10 years earlier would probably produce a substantially higher warming trend.

Overall, the forecast was not bad. It would appear that 4F warming from late 1980s base would likely be achieved by 2040. The higher rates of warming were probably based on projections of greenhouse gas emissions that did not come to fruition.

 

This is no surprise. They will seek to exploit every opportunity or small difference to push their disinformation. The fact is, they have been proved wrong when it comes to the bigger picture of climate change and its leading cause. They have no credible alternative explanations.