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THE DENIGRATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE BY CLIMATE CRISIS POLITICS

at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VWVg8rQ6MI

The transcript is provided belwo

Today I'll examine the science, the history and politics of the Department of Defense's October, 2021 climate analysis. 

Since the 1880s, when the military assisted controlling the huge Yellowstone fire, one important mission of the military has been to protect and assist Americans from devastating fires, floods, and other extreme weather events. But President Biden has now perverted the DOD into a sock puppet propagandizing, the fabricated existential threat of climate change. 

In October, 2021, the DOD released his climate risk analysis that was mandated by president Biden's January executive order.

Lloyd Austin is a five-star general whose military career made him a much worthySecretary of Defense, but he announced that to keep the nation secure, we must tackle the existential threat of climate change, protecting against wildfires floods, droughts in extreme weather.

But the military had already been protecting Americans from devastating weather events for over a century. Past military analyses had provided critical information to help Americans predict and prepare for wildfires in extreme weather on just short notice. Better forecasting still requires more robust investigations into all the contributing factors causing wildfires.

But in contrast to providing valuable timely forecasts, the recent push to add climate analysis, at its very best,  can only hypothesize about wildfires and extreme weather events several decades into the future. In the 19oos, Americans were honestly advised by scientists not to confuse weather with climate change. Climate analyses require at least 30 and better yet a 100 years of data in order to account for natural oscillations like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. But media fear-mongering and the politicization of climate change, now claims we are experiencing climate change with each and every weather event.

Clearly secretary of Austin has no background in climate science. Whether climate changes aree natural or human induced, he has been naively reduced to Biden's mouthpiece pushing a climate crisis.

Kathleen Hicks is the new Undersecretary of Defense and her mission seems to have been to peddle to the public, why a DOD climate analysis is so important. So she appeared on National Public Radio claiming that sending troops to assist in wildfires, supposedly made worse by climate change, was diverting troops from their more important missions and training, even though fighting wildfires has been one of the military's critical missions for more than a century. Hicks also lacks a science background in fire ecology, and so misleadingly propagandized climate change was causing the once short fire season into a fire year. Oblivious to the military's involvement and past wildfire research, she ignored, perhaps unintentionally, the military sponsored publications in 1966, detailing why several regions in the United States are always subjected to year round critical fire weather

Those reports were motivated by several historical fires, such as the 1906 San Francisco fire and the 1943 Hamburg firestorm, all made worse by critical fire weather. The researcher's aim was to determine what constituted critical fire weather, so firefighting agencies could be more prepared. Those timely alerts can never be improved upon by a long-term climate analysis of future events. 

The study detailed the natural weather patterns that produce strong winds, low humidity, high temperatures, and low rainfall. And they detailed why several regions experienced dangerous fire weather all year long. 

Due to the strains on resources from fighting fires in the cool 1960s, the modular airborne firefighting system, or MAFFS, was created in the 1970s consisting of modules of pressurized fire retardants that are easily loaded onto aircraft. 

The DOD promised to further assist with aircraft flight crews and maintenance. And since 1975, the DOD also pledged to provide, as needed, firefighting battalions, each consisting of about 550 people. 

Now the National Interagency Fire Center coordinates military assistance. From their website, they report two battalions were sent this August, 2021 to assist in California's second largest fire, the Dixie fire.

Similar assistance was provided in most previous years.

And one of the largest forces ever sent, fought the 1988 Yellowstone fire at a time when firefighting policies had switched from total suppression to a "let it burn" policy. The DOD then sent six army and two Marine battalions plus 57 helicopters and MAFFS.

 The environmental fire triangle explains why different regions experience different degrees of critical fire weather due to different vegetation, different topography that also affects winds in vegetation, and different weather conditions, common to regional climates. 

A map of wildfire activity clearly shows that the Western USA experiences the greatest amount of wildfires, because it is dominated by the Pacific High pressure system that limits rainfall, making the western climate much drier. In contrast ,the Atlantic High pressure system pumps moisture into the Eastern USA, making the east's climate much wetter .

Their study also detailed why critical fire season was not tied to the hottest months and here are a few examples. 

The middle Mississippi valley region is prone to fires from March to November, but in some years also in winter, 

the Southern Plains region experiences, fire weather year round, commonly due to the Chinook winds, descending from the Rocky mountains and further drying the land. 

The Southwest regions are also experiencing year round fire weather.

And due to annual summer droughts, Northern and central California experiences critical fire weather from March to November, especially when the cooler weather amplifies the Diablo winds, 

Southern California experiences year round fire weather with the most dangerous weather in the cooler months when the Santa Ana winds dominate 

And the Northern Intermountain regions indoor critical fire weather June to October also due to dry windy conditions, driven by seasonal changes in the Pacific high pressure system.

The DOD is well-known for its red team blue team strategy analyses. A red team is assembled to test the correctness of a given policy or a plan that has been proposed by the blue team.

Red teaming mirrors, a scientific process where scientists must publish their hypothesis so that the scientific community and the general public can evaluate the hypothesis. Correct adherence to that rigorous process is why we trust science and why we should trust a proper Red teaming analysis. 

In 2003, the DOD science task force published a report outlining how the secretary of defense should take steps to make red teaming more effective throughout the department.

I certainly hope secretary Austin does the same for climate analyses instead of blindly repeating climate crisis narratives.

From my 40 years of studying fire ecology, blaming increasing wildfires on rising CO2 is the height of idiocy. There are far more significant factors factors we can readily address in alleviate only a red team. Blue team debate would clarify such scientific differences for the public in 2017.

Steve Steve Koonin, a former Obama under secretary of energy and New York university professor also argues for a red team style debate to test the claims of whether or not climate change is the greatest catastrophe, phasing the planet, or just a nothing burger. 

However scientists who had hitched their fame and fortune to promoting catastrophic climate change hypotheses, quickly denounced any such debates, claiming the science was settled. But the only science that's settled is the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and greenhouse gases helped keep the Earth's average temperature above freezing. However, the science of how CO2 affects wildfires has never been settled. 

Oddly Michael Mann, a climatologist from Penn state university, disingenuously called red team debates, "a bad faith effort to stack the deck against mainstream science"  claiming sufficient debate has already been happening. But Mann had been perverting the scientific process for years by actively trying to prevent any debate that might create doubt regards his catastrophic global warming hypotheses.

He has claimed the mantle of "science personified" claiming if you disagree with his hypotheses, that you must be anti-science. He led the charge to marginalize all skeptical scientists by calling them deniers. He has threatened to boycott scientific journals for publishing skeptical scientific research and worked behind the scenes to get university administrators to distance themselves from skeptical scientists. 

So here are some disputed issues regarding climate change in wildfires that a fully transparent, public red team blue team debate could resolve.

First what is the proper timeframe to determine the contribution from climate change to wildfires.

Proponents of the hypotheses that rising CO2 is causing more and worse wildfires, typically restrict their published timeframes starting around 1975 or 1985 to show increasing wildfire threats. 

Some timeframes began in the 1950s.

But the starting point for the trends of all these small timeframes begin during the period of heavy fire suppression policies which then switched to the "Let It Burn" policies of the late 1980s. 

But many fire ecologists argue we must examine fire history before the fire suppression policies began reaching their greatest application in 1935, when the forest service began its 10:00 AM policy requiring any new fire to be extinguished by 10:00 AM the next day.

By examining acres burnt between 1911 and 2017, the Oregon Department of Forestry found far more burnt acres in the first decades of the 20th century.

Likewise, by examining charcoal layers in the soil and fire scars and dead and living trees, fire ecologists, Thomas sweat now found far more fires between 1700 and 1900 in the Southwest region than we see now at the present.

The fire triangle outlines the physics controlling the frequency and extent of wildfires. How much heat is needed to dry the land or ignite the fire? Natural fires are started by lightning versus humans that supplied the needed heat via electrical sparks, the lit match of an arsonist or an escaped campfire, or other such accidents.

Fires require oxygen that makes up 21% of our atmosphere. But if fires consume enough oxygen, they can drop levels to just 16%. And the fire is extinguished due to suffocation. 

So the dynamics affecting the winds must be examined because winds replenish the supply of oxygen as well as more rapidly spreading a fire.

Lastly, the fuel loads are critical. Dead grasses, weeds and leaves provide easily ignitable fuels that become flammable in just one warm sunny day. The amount of ground fuels determine if enough heat can be supplied to sustain a fire that ignites larger branches in trees. 

So a red team blue team debate can determine if CO2 contributes enough heat to significantly affect wildfire ignitions, or fuel dryness. 

Now, according to NASA, CO2 increased from a little more than 300 parts per million in 1960 to almost 400 parts per million by 2010.   And now recent concentrations are over 414 parts per million, potentially adding three Watts per meter squared of energy to the planet. 

The same NASA study showed global average temperatures also rose by 0.6 degrees Celsius during that same timeframe.

So how does that added energy compared to human sources of ignition? 

Well, if flaming match produces temperatures between 600 and 800 degrees Celsius or up to 1400 degrees Fahrenheit, the average, uh, so CO2 only contributes about 0.1 to 0.8% of the heat igniting a fire. T

The average surface fire contributes 800 plus degrees Celsius and in extreme condition adds 10 million Watts per meter squared of heat and easily provides enough heat to dry the vegetation as the flames approach.

CO2 provides just  0.00003% of that added energy 

Moisture content affects the temperature needed to ignite the fine fuels like dead grasses and twigs Because hay needs to be carefully dried to maintain quality and prevent rod., several experiments have documented how much time it takes to dry hay. 

When first cut, hay has about 80% moisture content. Depending on how its spread out moisture content is down to 60% in just four to eight hours. In two to three dry days, its down to 12% moisture content. So in sunny California fine fuels like dead grasses, weeds leaves and twigs are readily dried and flammable in a day 

A discarded cigarette producing temperatures of 330 degrees Celsius, will easily ignite grasses and the grass is dried to 12% moisture.

But a flaming match producing 600 to 800 degrees Celsius temperatures,  easily ignites grass if even when the contains only 60% moisture. And that is easily reached in just one sunny afternoon. So global warming climate change is clearly irrelevant, irrelevant to this daily drying. 

Red team blue team could also clarify how changing vegetation types increased wildfire ignitions and if they have added to the current extent of wildfire spread 

Cheat grass is an invasive species from Eurasia that typically dies in dries out by late may in California Studies, such as Bosch in 2012, found cheat grass burns 4 times more frequently than the native vegetation And of the 50 largest wildfires in the USA, cheat grass accounts for 24% of the burnt land area 

Red team blue team debate could decipher how much fire suppression has added to ground fuel accumulation, which also accounts for bigger and more intense fires than have been happening recently 

 

In the past, frequent natural fires created a mosaic across the land, with patches of burnt areas that have lower fuel loads. Lower fuel loads minimize the sustain heat needed for intense forest fires, and  limit thee  extent of any one fire.

The same wisdom that applies to creating a defensible space around one's home applies to protecting our forest. A home's defensible space requires a mosaic of vegetation with open space and little ground ccover that could carry a fire to the house, 

But as seen in the October, 2017 Tubbs fire that demolished a few neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, California, because houses were so close together, once the fire reached one home, either via embers or ground fire, each burning house produced enough radiant heat to ignite the neighboring house, but not enough to burn the well spaced trees.

The same dynamic can be seen in the Camp Fire destruction that destroyed much of Paradise, California

 Red team blue team debates can clarify if climate change has amplified the Chinooks or  Santa Ana and Diablo winds that dry,the land and rapidly spread fires in the west. These winds that have spread most of the Western USA's deadly fires are a type of foehn winds. 

in California because the land cools more quickly than the ocean, a high pressure system develops in the high elevation inland deserts during the cool seasons causing the winds to blow towards the lower pressure regions created by relatively warmer oceans.

As the winds descend due to increasing air pressure, they warm without any added energy and the wind's relative humidity rapidly falls, further amplifying critical fire weather.

The good news is if climate change causes warmer winters, these fire enhancing winds should be reduced. 

The red team blue team could separate the effects of human ignitions versus climate change regards attributions to the lengthening of the fire season, as under-secretary Hicks suggested in her radio interviews. Studies have shown that human ignitions have started 80 to 90% of all USA fires. Along the coast of central and southern California, where lightning is rare, humans usually start 100% of the fires.

 Lightning starts most fires from June to August. The red areas show how human ignitions have created more fires outside this natural lightning fire season. More importantly, human ignitions create more fires during the winter and the spring when the Santa Ana and Diablo winds are at full strength, 

More frequent fires, also conveeert landscapes from forests to shrub lands, and then to grasslands. Three human ignited fires in 12 years in southern California's Malibu canyon converted the landscape from shrublands seen on the left the grassland now on the right 

Grassland creates more easily ignited and rapidly spreading fires. 

Red team blue team debates must clarify the different effects of the global average temperature trends versus the local temperature trends. The deadly campfire, that destroyed Paradise California happened during high Diablo winds, despite local maximum temperatures being lower than in the 1930s. 

Similarly, the 2018 Mendocino complex fire, California's third largest fire ever, happened when a farmer driving a metal stake hit a rock and sparked. That spark ignited a field of dry grass despite local maximum temperatures being far lower than the 1930s.

And finally a red team blue team debate must clarify the contributions of natural climate oscillations to recent wildfires. 

Based on tree ring studies of California's rainfall-sensitive blue Oak trees, a natural oscillation between extreme dry and extreme wet years has been demonstrated. The blue star represents the extreme 2014 drought year. The dashed blue line indicates the level of drought that would be expected under similar weather.

The thin black lines reveal that more extreme drought have happened three to five times every century for the past 700 years. Also a similar frequency of extreme wet years is detected as indicated by the black lines extending above the dash red line. This alternation of extremes is due to El Ninos and La Nina's and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation 

The US Forest Service study of burnt area on federal lands found that phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation aligned with the extent of forest fires. Of special interests here, is the extent of burnt land in the 1920s and 30s was similar to recent decades, suggesting there's a natural fire cycle.

The department of defense and its Red teaming strategies exemplify the scientific process. They are in a much needed position to truthfully examine the causes of varying wildfire frequency and wildfire extent, and to offer Americans tangible solutions, such as the management of ground fuels and invasive grasses, More than ever Americans need the truth. And Red teaming is America's last hope of getting honest science that separates the climate crisis narratives of the media and politicians from the scientific truth

I urge secretaries, Austin and Hicks to resist Biden's efforts to pervert the DOD from its truth seeking Red teaming by further transforming the DOD into sock puppets that simply supports misleading climate crises narratives!!!

Up next I'll examine why the Department of Defense's recent climate analyses of precipitation changes also jeopardizes our safety.

But until then embrace renowned scientist's Thomas Huxley advice that

"Skepticism is the highest of duties and blind faith the one unpardonable sin." 

And if you appreciate the science clearly presented here, science rarely presented by mainstream media. then please give it a like, press share or copy the video's URL and send it by email to your friends, subscribe to my channel, or read my book, Landscapes and Cycles and environmentalists Journey to Climate Skepticism. 

Thank you.