« Climate Change »

Roger,
Perhaps the basic problem is that the whole GW debate has become a religious war. One is either with the forces of righteousness completely or one is an apostate.

I too noticed the glaring absence of 20th century (and sometimes continuing) policy of putting out forest fires "just because" - other than anecdotally. The crowning and sterilization effects of overfueled wildfires is an immense problem, and to blame it on "global warming" without even attempting to quantify the effect of decades of policy is misdirection and alarmism at its worst.

Also, I might add that a product of wildfire combustion is ash, so given that an immature forest uses more CO2 for growth than a mature forest, wildfires are a negative feedback to "global warming."

Update-

I spoke to the reporter, he said he was on deadline with little time to check everything, and he did have more in the story that got cut. And of course he didn't write the headline. Fair enough.

He said they might issue a correction. He asked me to send in some statements from my writings which more accurately characterize my perspective than his statement did. So I sent them to him.

The WSJ carried a story today on the study.

The first sentence of the fifth paragraph reads: "The paper doesn't make a link between higher regional temperatures in the western U.S. and the planetwide trend known as global warming."

The front page blurb was "A climate study found a recent rise in frequency and severity of Western wildfires in recent years was probably caused by global warming."

Perhaps it is a general trend among reporters and their editors to blame every bad thing on GW.

I think it's worth noting the distinction the authors draw between northern and southern forests in the study area. The sort of stand-replacing crown fire that Steve H. talks about does seem to be an unnatural response to fire suppression in the Southwest, where he and I live (though even that is still under some debate). In this area, therefore, past fire suppression policies do seem to have a significant effect on the current fire regime.

The fire record in the Northern Rockies, which dominates the dataset used for the paper, is one where infrequent stand-replacing crown fires represent the natural fire regime.

The distinction is important for understanding their results. It doesn't answer Roger's question about the effect of current firefighting policies during the study period on the resulting data, but it is how the authors answer the broader question about the effects of past firefighting policies on current fire regimes.

As for Steve H.'s suggestion that forest fires are a negative feedback, I'd be interested in seeing citations in support of that argument.

Hmmm.... I was afraid John was going to ask for references that forest fires yield ash. Sorry, the only reference I have is from being downwind of them and seeing the ash rain down.

w.r.t biomass burning, it is a net positive feedback. The relevant emissions are not ash (which falls out very quickly), but soot (black carbon), CO + NOx + CH4 (ozone precursors) and CO2 itself. All of which have positive forcings....There is a small SO2 source (which leads to sulphates and a cooling term), but that is more than offset by the other terms. All of the terms are small in the context of the global picture though.

I wasn't asking for a reference on the fact that fires create ash. I was asking for a reference on your resulting inference - that it's a negative feedback.

I can't help but be struck by the delicious irony implicit in Steve H.'s response. He's frequently critical of climate modellers for believing what their models say and failing to test them against empirical data. And yet, again and again, he does the same thing - building a "model" ("wildfires are a negative feedback") and then being resolutely unwilling to provide any evidence that he's checked it against the empirical data.

Thanks to Gavin for his explanation.

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2006/07/characterising_pielke_jr.php

:-)

My response on William's blog . . .

William-

Surely one can keep in their mind at the same time the notion that global warming represents a serious environmental threat, but is not the most important factor in hurricane damage?

It is exactly this sort of all-or-nothing categorization that I object to. You and I have had this conversation about a half-dozen times. Global warming is a major environmental threat. It is not the most important factor in hurricane damages.

It is too much to ask journalists and bloggers to appreciate that there are more views out their than the cartoonish images of right-wing skeptics and left-wing alarmists?

The question is how much CO2 is used up creating the biomass and how much carbon is deposited as ash. That is the concept I was referring to. I agree it's not a major factor, but to call it a "positive feedback" without quantifying the carbon removed from the atmosphere as biomass > ash is irrational. To support the irrationality is ... well, "popular" I suppose.

Of course I could be labeled just as irrational by proclaiming it "is" a negative feedback. I have to correct that and say it "could be" a negative feedback. My mistake.

Gavin Schmidt writes, "w.r.t biomass burning, it is a net positive feedback. The relevant emissions are not ash (which falls out very quickly), but soot (black carbon), CO + NOx + CH4 (ozone precursors) and CO2 itself. All of which have positive forcings."

I'm curious why you didn't mention organic carbon (OC)? Per Bond et al. (JGR, 2004) biomass burning emissions of BC in 1996 were 8,035 Gg, but biomass burning emissions of OC were 25,425 Gg.

Per LLNL, the direct negative forcing from biomass burning OC appears ~2-3 times as large as the direct positive forcing from BC:

http://www.llnl.gov/str/April03/Chuang.html

Or do you think that's wrong?

UPDATE

Thanks to Tony Davis and the AZ Star:

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/136969.php
Corrections
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 07.08.2006
advertisement
● An A1 story Friday inaccurately described a University of Colorado scientist's views on global warming. Roger Pielke Jr. said he accepts the basic premise that climate change is a serious environmental threat, but he's seeking a "third way" on the issue between skeptics and alarmists.

Steve H. -

You could be labeled irrational for saying it "is" a negative feedback rather than saying it "could be" a negative feedback. Or you could labeled irrational for believing the results of your own idle speculation, thinking you can puzzle through the answer for yourself in some sort of a gedankenexperiment rather than simply looking to the scientific literature to the people who have collected actual data.

It's more a methodological question. I've no idea what the answer is, but in the past I've found the scientific literature to be a more fruitful place to find it than your thought experiments.

Well, John, maybe you can answer why Gavin ignores that ash removes CO2 from the atmosphere (because it "falls out very quickly" ??). Oh, wait, you thanked him for that. Since he's "published" he must be right, whether or not reality is involved?

Steve -

I didn't question Gavin because a) his comment was consistent with what I saw in my quick look at the literature, while yours was not b) Gavin's track record in conversations with me is good, which is to say well-grounded in the actual scientific literature, while yours is not, and c) you're the one who raised this issue, not Gavin.

Well, I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between #1 and #2, since that's Gavin's job - but you're the literary expert... Obviously since his job is producing these documents he will be more familiar with the hundreds of thousands of them. (Yes, I'm going there again, but that's *reality*)

I'm afraid I’m more in tune with reality. My funding doesn't depend on how alarmed I can get people - not that he and hundreds of others depending on that necessarily do it on purpose – sometimes that's just where they're coming from. They’ve focused on that because of their concerns, and have found the penultimate psychosis thereof - the ultimate, of course, being simple religion - of various other "faiths." So, “simply looking to the scientific literature to the people who have collected actual data” without putting it in context is for simpletons. There is a part of “AGW” that is a blame game – blaming it on previous generations, for example. Also, blaming it on those with, for another example, bigger cars. Longing for the mythical "good old days."

My belief system lies in the sciences - The art of Geometry; the attempt to understand nature, and to synchronize with it. There is no such thing as "the ideal climate." That's why they call it weather. It is not a given that the warmer Earth is the more variable the weather. The warmer the poles, the less the differential between there and the equator. Hurricane intensity seems should increase, but there is not statistically significant evidence thereof, except in the minds of those on the bandwagon scurrying for more funding. New Orleans will be gone by the end of the century one way or another – unless we get some prodigious flood which moves the sediment down there that we’re artificially storing upstream – and then it might just be buried anyway…

Summarizing, I don’t know either. I do know that the claims of alarmists like Gavin are sometimes irrational (as shown here) but that's their paradigm, and their tribal language shows that wandering into their camp puts a truth seeker in for some heavy ad hoministic gauntlet running (e.g. that wholly juvenile term “septic”).

But, there are those of us who see through the smoke and mirrors and are attempting to beat them about the head and shoulders with a big hammer - one called reality. As I’ve said repeatedly, just because A causes B doesn’t mean all of B is caused by A, or even that it can be sensed because of other variables. That's a logic lesson sadly missing here.

So perhaps you're right, that "'simply looking to the scientific literature, to the people who have collected actual data' without putting it in context is for simpletons." But your response - to ignore the scientific literature completely and simply speculate about what it might or might not say, then criticize that, as you've done yet again here - seems a singularly unhelpful alternative.

John -

Don't get me wrong - in fact it's too late for that if you believe, as you say, that I "ignore the scientific literature completely." That's ludicrous and if I gave you that impression I either mispoke or you are under the spell of the Oil for Food thugs. When did I say it?

However, there are two aspects of studies. One is the facts thereof, the other is the extrapolation or conclusions of the authors. The primary example, of course, is that although CO2 causes an increase in the greenhouse effect, to say therefore most global warming is caused by increased CO2 is fallacious - As I've said many times before, just because A causes B doesn't mean all of B is caused by A, nor that it's even sensible. It’s like saying if you stick your arm out of a car’s window you increase the wind resistance so the car will theoretically slow, which is the reason your car is slowing down – while ignoring the fact you’ve just run out of gas…

Another example of why I'm sometimes skeptical - or septical if you're a kiddie:
http://tinyurl.com/phyrj
If I'm not mistaken, the Sahara is hotter than the Amazon, so to say decreased transpiration cools Earth is, to me, questionable.

The science is not settled, as even the High Priest of Alarmism Al Gore admitted:
"They just don't know"
http://newsbusters.org/node/6231

So I do, and I think everyone should, reserve the right to question dogma.

It is also quite possible that the effect of black carbon is much more potent by mass than that of CO2, so in fact burning forest fires may be a positive feedback, depending on the time period chosen. Gavin could be right :-)

By "ignore the scientific literature completely," I simply mean that, in the many discussions we've had, on issues like ash in the forest, urban heat islands, flora response to CO2, the effect of planetary warming on the Anasazi, shortcomings of the models, etc., you have repeatedly and resolutely refused to cite literature.

You claim to want to "to beat them about the head and shoulders with a big hammer - one called reality." In this case, reality involves the actual amount of carbon in the biomass of a forest before it burns, the amount of ash left after, the amount converted to soot, etc. This can be measured, and there is a rich literature created by people who have actually done that - just as they've gathered data on the relationship between climate and the Anasazi, on urban heat islands, on the response of plants to enhanced CO2, etc. Willfully ignoring that data, as you have done in this and many other discussions, seems an odd way of bringing your beloved and oft-invoked "reality" to the table.

jfleck said:

"By "ignore the scientific literature completely," I simply mean that, in the many discussions we've had, ... you have repeatedly and resolutely refused to cite literature"

Prone to exaggeration are we John? I've *never* cited literature? Obviously there is some other cause for your hostility. Whatever it is, your apparent complete dependence on the existing literature puts us in different universes, and your recent tendency to use your bully pulpit means we have nothing further to discuss.