How Bad Science & Horrific Journalism Misrepresent Wildfires and Climate

How Bad Science & Horrific Journalism Misrepresent Wildfires and Climate 

As one wildfire expert wrote, “Predicting future fire regimes is not rocket science; it is far more complicated than that.” But regardless of accuracy, most people are attracted to very simple narratives such as: more CO₂ causes global warming causes more fires. Accordingly in the summer of 2019, CNN trumpeted the headline California wildfires burn 500% more land because of climate change. They claimed, “the cause of the increase is simple. Hotter temperatures cause drier land, which causes a parched atmosphere.” CNN based their claims on a scientific paper by lead authors Park Williams and John Abatzoglou titled Observed Impacts of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Wildfire in California. The authors are very knowledgeable but appear to have hitched their fame and fortune to pushing a very simple claim that climate change drives bigger wildfires. As will be seen, their advocacy appears to have caused them to stray from objective scientific analyses. 

If Williams and Abatzoglou were not so focused on forcing a global warming connection, they would have at least raised the question, ‘why did much bigger fires happen during cooler decades?’ The 1825 New Brunswick fire burned 3,000,000 acres. In Idaho and Montana the Great Fire of 1910 burnt another 3,000,000 acres. In 1871, the Great Michigan Fire burned 2,500,000 acres. Those fires were not only 6 times larger than California’s biggest fire, they occurred in moister regions, regions that don’t experience California’s Mediterranean climate with its guaranteed months of drought each and every summer. If those huge devastating fires occurred in much cooler times, what are the other driving factors of big wildfires? 

Bad analyses cause bad remedies, and here is why Williams and Abatzoglou’s last paper exemplifies a bad scientific analysis. Analyzing changes in California’s burned areas from 1972 to 2018 they claimed, “The clearest link between California wildfires and anthropogenic climate change thus far, has been via warming-driven increases in atmospheric aridity, which works to dry fuels and promote summer forest fire.” But natural cycles of low rainfall due to La Niñas also cause dry fuels. The increase in burned area is also attributed to increases in human ignitions such as faulty electrical grids, to increased surface fuels from years of fire suppression, and to changes in vegetation that increased the abundance of easily ignited fine fuels like annual grasses. Furthermore, temperatures in some local regions experiencing the biggest fires have not been warming over the past 50 years (See temperature graphs in this essay’s last segment. Data from Western Regional Climate Center). All those factors promote rapid wildfire spread and greater burned areas. Although good science demands separating those contributing factors before analyzing a possible correlation between temperature and area burned, Williams and Abatzoglou oddly did not do so! That’s bad science. 

Although Williams and Abatzoglou did acknowledge that other factors modulate the effects of warming on burned areas they admitted their statistical correlations did not “control” for those effects. To “control” for all those contributing factors, they could have easily subtracted estimates of burned areas associated with those factors. For example, a 2018 research paper estimates, “Since the year 2000 there’ve been a half-million acres burned due to powerline-ignited fires, which is five times more than we saw in the previous 20 years.”  Did Williams and Abatzoglou not do the needed subtractions of other well-established factors because it would weaken their global warming correlation?

Similarly, CNN journalists were content to simply blame climate change. However, in light of the increasing devastation caused by powerline-ignited fires, good investigative journalists should have asked the former California Governor Jerry Brown if he now regrets having vetoed the bipartisan bill crafted to secure the power grid; an action that could have saved so many lives and property. Instead CNN simply promoted Brown’s persistent climate fearmongering quoting, “This is only a taste of the horror and terror that will occur in decades.”

Ignoring the complex effects of human ignitions, CNN also parroted claims that global warming is causing fire season to last all year. But as seen in the graph below from a 2017 wildfire study, the United States’ natural fire season is due to lightning and only dominates during the months of July and August, when California’s high wind events are low. In contrast it is human ignitions that extend fire season, dramatically increasing ignitions throughout the winter months when fuel moisture is higher, and into seasons when cooling desert air generates strong episodes of Santa Ana and Diablo winds. Those high winds cause fires to spread rapidly, burning 2-3 times more area than fires ignited during low winds, and California’s most destructive fires recently occurred during those high wind events. However, like other researchers, Williams and Abatzoglou reported no trend in those destructive California winds. Furthermore, climate models suggest a warming climate should cause weaker winds. So, without a change in California’s windy conditions, high winds can’t be blamed, directly, for the increased burned areas. However, because more human-caused ignitions occur during the winter, it increases the probability that more fires will be amplified by those strong winter winds. As US Geological Survey’s wildfire expert states, “Some will argue that it’s climate change but there is no evidence that it is. It’s the fact that somebody ignites a fire during an extreme [wind] event.”

Human Ignitions Extend Wild Fire Season  from Balch 2017

The timing of human ignitions is but one driver of more and bigger fires. Increased surface fuels are another huge factor. It is well known that past fire suppression has allowed surface fuels to accumulate in forests, leading to bigger and more devastating fires. But the changes in surface fuels are more complex. Some scientists point out that certain logging practices spread “invasive grasses called cheat grass, for example, and other ones that form this really thick mat across the area after logging and that grass just spreads flames very rapidly and fires burn very intensely through that.” California’s Democrat congressman Ro Khanna has been arguing that the U.S. Forest Service policy to clear cut after a wildfire is making California’s forest fires spread faster and burn hotter by increasing the forest floor’s flammable debris. Khanna says, “Because we don’t have the right science, it is costing us lives, and that is the urgency of getting this right.” 

Controlling the spread of cheat grass is urgently needed. Grasses are “fine fuels” that ignite most easily. The 2018 Carr Fire was California’s 7^th largest fire and threatened the town of Redding, California. It started when a towed trailer blew a tire causing its wheel rim to scrape the asphalt creating a spark which ignited roadside grasses. Those grasses carried the fire into the shrublands and forests. Grasses are classified as 1-hour fine fuels, meaning they become highly flammable in just one hour of warm dry conditions. Climate change is totally irrelevant. It does not matter if it was wet and cool, or hot and dry during previous days, weeks or years. Just one hour of warm dry fire weather sets the stage for an explosive grass fire that then gets carried into the forests. Fire weather happens every year, and partially explains why fires could burn 3,000,000 acres in the cool 1800s.

It was not human ignition but lightning that caused the 2012 Rush Fire. It was California’s 4^th largest fire burning 272,000acres of sagebrush habitat, which then continued to burn additional area in Nevada. Historically, because surface fuels are scarce, hot dry sagebrush habitat rarely burned (once every 60-100 years). But invasions of non-native cheat grass have now provided ample fuel to turn small lighting fires into huge conflagrations. Eleven of the USA’s 50 biggest fires in last 20 years are in the Great Basin, where invasive cheatgrass is spreading. Nevada’s largest fire was the 2018 Martin Fire. Rapidly spreading through the cheat grass, it burned 439,000 acres. Cheat grass fires are a great concern for biologists trying to protect the threatened Sage Grouse as cheat grass-dominated sagebrush habitat now burns every 3-5 years. Habitat with high cheat grass abundance are “twice as likely to burn as those with low abundance, and four times more likely to burn multiple times between 2000-2015.”

When experts estimate impending fire danger, they determine how fast a fire will spread. The Spread Component considers the effects of wind and slope and daily changes in the moisture content of the surface fuels. Large dead trees may become flammable after 1000 hours of warm dry conditions, but still thick fuels only ignite if fast burning surface fuels supply enough heat. Thus, the Spread Component only considers smaller-diameter fuels like grasses that can dry out in an hour, as well as twigs and small branches that dry out within 10 to 100 hours. Central and Southern California are dominated by shrubby habitat with small diameter fuels that allow fire to spread rapidly. The December 2017 Thomas Fire was California’s 2nd largest fire. Its human ignition coincided with a Santa Ana wind event resulting in the burning of 282,000 acres in southern California. 

Counter-intuitively Williams and Abatzoglou found the correlation between burned area in the hotter and drier climate of California’s Central and South Coast to be “relatively weak”. Accordingly, they reported “Annual burned area did not change significantly in Central and South Coast.” That insignificant climate effect over half of California escaped the notice of journalists who only cherry-picked the researcher’s more alarming climate narratives. Most interesting, Williams and Abatzoglou suggested the lack of a climate-change correlation with California’s Central and South Coast burned areas was because fires there were “strongly manipulated by humans via ignitions, suppression, and land cover change.” 

Lightning is rare along California’s Central and South Coast, so nearly 100% of those fires are ignited by humans. As California’s population doubled since the 1970s, adding 20 million people, the probability of more human-started fires has increased. Unlike forested areas where fire suppression builds up deadly surfaced fuels, California’s Central and South Coast need to suppress fires. Due to more frequent fires caused by humans, shrublands are converting to grasslands.  The increased fine fuels of the grasslands more readily ignite and spread fire.  Furthermore, California’s natural climate undergoes wet years due to El Nino followed by dry La Nina years. Wet years make fine fuels more abundant. Thus fire suppression is needed to prevent more frequent fires caused by the conversion of shrublands to grasslands.

In contrast to the insignificant changes in burned areas in California’s southern half, Williams and Abatzoglou reported burned areas in the Sierra Nevada and the North Coast increased by more than 600%, which they attributed to human-caused climate change. They reported, “During 1896–2018, March–October Tmax [maximum temperature] averaged across the four California study regions increased by 1.81 °C, with a corresponding increase in VPD [ Vapor Pressure Deficit - a measure of atmospheric dryness] of 1.59 hPa (+13%)…The observed trends in Tmax and VPD are consistent with trends simulated by climate models as part of the CMIP5 experiments, supporting the interpretation that observed increases in California warm‐season temperature and VPD have been largely or entirely driven by anthropogenic forcing.”

But how can only half of California’s fires be due to global warming and the other half not? All of California is “strongly manipulated by humans via ignitions, suppression, and land cover change”?  Were Williams and Abatzoglou straying from objective science? 

Part of the problem is their ill-advised use of a maximum temperature averaged for all California. Several studies have reported that maximum temperatures in the northern half of California have not exceeded the high temperatures of the 1930s. Because the early 20^th century temperatures were deemed natural, unless recent temperatures exceed the natural 1930s, then human-caused warming is unlikely. Curiouser and curiouser, southern California has experienced temperatures that exceeded the 1930s. Yet there Williams and Abatzoglou did not find a significant effect from climate change. 

Regardless Williams and Abatzoglou claimed “The clearest link between California wildfire and anthropogenic climate change thus far, has been via warming-driven increases in atmospheric aridity, which works to dry fuels and promote summer forest fire.”  Yet summer maximum temperatures, averaged from March through October, located in the vicinity of California’s big fires do not indicate global warming. For example, the August 2013 Rim Fire centered around Yosemite National Park, was California’s 5^th largest fire and 2^nd largest in northern California, burning 257,000 acres. It was started by a hunter’s illegal campfire that he let get away. Unfortunately, there is no cure for stupid. Nonetheless, Yosemite’s maximum temperatures were warmer in the early 1900s.  However, an in depth study of the Rim Fire found a strong correlation with the amount of shrubland interspersed with the trees.

Trend in Yosemite NP maximum summer temperatures

The November 2018 Camp Fire was California’s deadliest fire destroying the town of Paradise. It was also its 16^th largest fire burning 153,000 acres. It was ignited by a faulty power grid during a strong Diablo wind event. Similarly, based on weather data from nearby Chico CA, maximum temperatures were higher in the 1930s.

Trend in maximum summer temperature for California's deadliest Paradise/Camp Fire

The Mendocino Complex Fire was California’s largest fire (since 1932). In July of 2018 it burned 459,000 acres. The source of human ignitions is still under investigation. Still, those fires were centered around the town of Ukiah which also reveals a cooling trend since 1930.

Trend in maximum summer temperatures for California's largest fire

In October 2017, the wine country’s Tubbs Fire was the 4^th deadliest. It only burned 37,000 acres but high winds drove embers into the dwellings of the heavily populated outskirts of Santa Rosa. Again, global warming was irrelevant as Santa Rosa has experienced a cooling trend since the 1930s.

 

Trend in maximum summer temperature for deadly Santa Rosa/Tubbs fire

Still some people are determined to link catastrophic fires with climate change. So, they will suggest delayed autumn rains allow more late season ignitions or the fall fires to burn longer. In Williams and Abatzoglou’s abstract they claim, “In fall, wind events and delayed onset of winter precipitation are the dominant promoters of wildfire.” But their results found, “no all‐region trend in onset of winter precipitation or October–November wet‐day frequency during 1915–2018.” As illustrated below by the October precipitation data for Santa Rosa, since 1900 there’s a 10% chance no rains will fall in October. Furthermore, October experienced more zero rainfall months in the early 1900s. A global warming caused delay in autumn rains has not yet been detected.

So, doing my best Greta Thunberg imitation, I say to climate alarmists, “How dare you misrepresent the causes of wildfires. How dare you imply less CO₂ will reduce human ignitions and reduce surface fuels and the spread invasive grasses. Bad analyses lead to bad remedies! Your bad science is stealing Californian’s dreams and your false remedies distract us of from the real solutions. Young people and old alike, must demand better science and better journalism!”

October precipitation for Santa Rosa, CA

Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net 

Protecting California’s Coast & Improving Our Environment

from What's Natural?  column

published in Pacifica Tribune November 6, 2019

Harbor built with Roman Cement

Imagine a seawall surviving 2000 years! Most modern seawalls have been built using Portland cement reinforced with metal rods. Counter-intuitively the metal reacts with seawater causing the concrete to corrode and crack within decades. But Romans developed a different kind of cement. Roman cement needed no reinforcement and has lasted 2000 years. Where no natural harbors existed, Romans created breakwaters and protective artificial harbors. By analyzing the composition of Roman cement, material scientists believe we can build similar long-lasting seawalls and breakwaters, and thus prevent coastal erosion that threatens human communities. Furthermore, scientists who worry about carbon dioxide emissions are likewise promoting Roman cement because it dramatically reduces emissions compared to the manufacture of Portland cement.

Currently, California’s Coastal Commission resists constructing sea walls. They argue seawalls prevent local erosion that is essential to providing sediments needed to maintain beaches. However, locally eroded sediments are often quickly removed to the deep ocean. It is the larger supply of sediments entering the ocean via rivers and streams that primarily determines the fate of a beach. The mining of San Francisco Bay sediments reduces that nourishing sediment supply. Furthermore, most California rivers and streams are dammed. That also reduces our sediment supply and blocks migrating salmon. Because California has historically suffered from natural 100-year droughts, some argue we need more dams to store water. But if there is no rain, there will be no water to store. But there is a promising solution - desalinization.

Developing technology has greatly reduced the cost of converting ocean water into fresh water. If desalinization supplies enough freshwater there would be no need for more dams and our communities would be resilient against inevitable natural droughts. And with an abundant supply of reliable freshwater, we would not need to divert water from critical ecosystems. And possibly, we could remove a few dams that now block sediments and fish. 

One criticism of desalinization had been that the process releases a plume of extremely salty water back into the ocean, which can have detrimental effects on local marine organisms. But we can diffuse and dilute that salty release. More importantly, concentrated sea salt can be harvested and sold at competitive prices. That not only reduces the salty outflow but reduces the cost of desalinization. Harvested salt could also replace supplies from salt ponds, hastening restoration of San Francisco Bay’s tidal marshes. 

Of course, desalinization plants must be constructed on the coast. To protect their buildings, long-lasting seawalls are required. Currently property owners located on fragile bluffs are dropping rip-rap boulders at the foot of eroding cliffs. They armor at their own expense, but not all owners can afford to do so. With a helter-skelter of armoring, waves get re-directed and focused onto unprotected sections, which accelerates local erosion. But coastal property owners are the first-line of defense against further erosion that could eventually undermine the entire community’s roads and infrastructure. The only reasonable solution is to build seawalls that protect coastal communities. Of course, property owners who enjoy their private coastal views should pay a greater share of that construction, but the community must also contribute their share to protect threatened community infrastructure.

Unfortunately, some people are urging coastal residents to “retreat” and “abandon the coast”. They’d rather spend billions moving homes and infrastructure inland. They’re petrified by the most highly-unlikely speculations that suggests a 10-foot sea level rise if Antarctica slides into the ocean. But research reveals Antarctica’s glaciers had retreated far more between 4000 and 6000 years ago. Temperatures were warmer then and still Antarctica remained stable. More importantly, during those warmer times the estimated rise in sea level was only 0.02 inches a year. More recently, research finds increasing snowfall is offsetting ice lost by Antarctica’s glaciers vulnerable to underwater melting.

Armoring fragile coastal bluffs, protects human habitat without harming local ecosystems. Beaches will survive if we maintain the natural sediment supply from local streams and rivers. The O’Shaughnessy seawall protecting San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is a 90-year testament that beaches can still grow in front of seawalls. Creating breakwaters as the Romans had, can further protect beaches and prevent currents from removing beach sand. Secured ocean coastlines can support construction of desalinization plants and secure our freshwater requirements, reduce the need for dams, and reduce water diversions that would otherwise benefit wetland ecosystems. Desalinization can reduce groundwater extraction that’s causing coastal towns to subside below sea level. The sky is not falling. The sky is the limit for possible win-win solutions for both people and the environment.

 O’Shaughnessy seawall  on San Francisco's Ocean Beach, Built in 1929

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism. 

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Chicken Littles vs Adelie Penguins

 from What's Natural  column, published in the Pacifica Tribune October 23, 2019

Nesting Adelie Penguins

Throughout recorded history doomsday cults attract thousands of gullible people. Charismatic cult leaders of the Order of the Solar Temple or Heaven’s Gate convinced their followers to commit suicide due to a coming “environmental apocalypse”. To prevent environmental collapse, a recent mass shooter justified his killings as reducing over-population, while a Swedish scientist has suggested cannibalism. Thus, it’s worrisome that charismatic congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez similarly warns our world is doomed in 12 years. Equally disturbing is the carefully orchestrated fear-mongering, such that the United Nations gave ill-informed, 16-year old Greta Thunberg center stage to rage that CO₂ is causing ecosystem collapse. Terrifying children with ‘the sky is falling’ fears will only bring about dire, unintended consequences.

Who is filling our children’s heads with stories of ecosystem collapse? 

For one Al Gore wrote in 2012, “The fate of the Adelie Penguins, A message from Al Gore”: “As temperatures rise along the West Antarctic Peninsula and the winter sea ice blankets the ocean three months fewer per year than 30 years ago, the local ecosystem is in danger. Everything from the base of the food chain – the phytoplankton (microscopic plants and bacteria) and krill (shrimp like creatures), to one of the continent’s most iconic inhabitants, the Adelie penguins, are under threat…There is an important lesson for us in the story of the Adelie penguins.”   

Indeed, Adelie penguins provide an “important lesson”. Don’t trust apocalyptic hype! 

Adelie penguins may be the best studied bird on earth. In 2009, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated between 4 and 5 million adults, happily listing them as a species of “Least Concern”. However, using dubious IPCC climate models, scientists led by ornithologist David Ainley predicted the most northerly Adelie colonies would soon disappear as ice-melting warmth crept southward. They predicted between the years 2025 and 2052, 70% of the total Adelie population would be lost. Bullied by that virtual death count, the IUCN downgraded Adelies from “Least Concern” to “Near Threatened”. 

In real life, by 2016 Adelie abundance had nearly doubled to 7.6 million, and once again Adelies are a species of Least Concern. So how were scientists so misled? 

Adelie Breeding Colony

Ice Age glaciers had forced Adelies to abandon most of Antarctica’s coast. With warming, glaciers retreated and Adelies rapidly returned to breed and multiply.  However, there was one exception. For over 5400 years Adelies avoided ice free coastlines along Antarctica’s northwestern peninsula. Scientists dubbed this the “northern enigma”. Due to the region’s unfavorable weather, breeding Adelies still avoid much of that region, currently labeled the “Adelie Gap”. As might be expected, breeding colonies adjacent to the “Adelie Gap” are the least stable with some colonies experiencing population declines, and those declining colonies were enough to confirm some scientists’ climate fears.

In the 1990s, the northwestern sector of the Antarctic peninsula coincidently experienced rising temperatures and declining sea ice. Although Antarctica sea ice was not decreasing elsewhere, researchers believed the melting ice and warmer temperatures were just what CO₂-driven climate models predicted. But then the peninsula’s winds shifted. The peninsula’s sea ice has now been growing and temperatures have been cooling for over a decade. Furthermore in contrast to Ainley’s models, colonies at the most northerly limits of the Adelies’ range are not disappearing. Those colonies are thriving and increasing such as the Sandwich Island colonies, and northerly colonies on the Antarctic peninsula’s east side. 

Media headlines are guided by the maxim ‘if it bleeds it leads.’ Likewise, scientific journals. Good news about thriving colonies, or no change, fail to capture headlines. But the addiction to eye-catching catastrophes misleads the public and scientists alike. Despite no warming trend at an Emperor penguin colony, David Ainley was so inebriated by global warming fears, he fabricated a warming temperature graph to falsely explain the colony’s decline! Similarly, extreme researchers of polar bear populations wrongly argued, “we're projecting that, by the middle of this century, two-thirds of the polar bears will be gone from their current populations”.  Again, in reality polar bear abundance has increased.

By perpetuating bogus claims of a world ending in 12 years, the Chicken Littles are doing far more harm than blinding children to scientific evidence that many species, from polar bears to Adelie penguins, are thriving. Our children miss the “important lesson” that a “climate crisis” is only a theory supported by scary narratives, not facts. So how do we protect our children from Chicken Littles who seek to enroll vulnerable minds into their doomsday cults? How do we motivate our children to be good critical thinkers, and not blind group thinkers mesmerized by fear and ‘end of the earth’ scenarios? 

Foxy Loxy invites Chicken Little into the "safety" of his den

We tell children fairy tales to alert them to the real dangers, such as Crying Wolf. In the original Chicken Little tale,  Foxy Loxy offered Chicken Little and friends the shelter of his den so they would be safe from the falling sky. Once inside Foxy's den, they were never heard from again!

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism. 

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Ask John Interviews Jim Steele on Climate

Click to Watch entire interview

Marvelously Resilient Coral

 

Low tide bleaching of Heron Reef

Published October 2, 2019 in California’s Battle Born Media newspapers - the Pacifica Tribune, the Novato Advance, the Sausalito Marin Scope, the Mill Valley Herald, the Twin Cities (Larkspur and Corte Madera) Times, the San Rafael News Pointer and the Ross Valley Herald. 

What’s Natural? 

Marvelously Resilient Coral

Imagine if today’s magnificent coral reefs all dried up and died - from the surface down to a depth of 400 feet. Horrifying! But that was exactly the case 20,000 years ago when growing glaciers of the Last Ice Age lowered sea level 400 feet. Yet coral reefs fully recovered as the earth warmed. So, what makes coral so resilient? 

To survive, coral must also withstand lethal effects of modern cyclones, coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish, and El Niño related bleaching.  Rapid growth has allowed most reefs to fully recover within 7 to 30 years. For example, due to the 1998 El Niño event 12 reefs on the Seychelles, experienced greater than 95% mortality. Yet 6 reefs fully recovered within 7-12 years, and within 16 years coral cover had increased by 135% to 305% of pre-bleaching values. The others continued to recover but at a slower pace.

In contrast to climate crisis claims, cyclones cause the greatest coral mortality. Cyclones have caused 48% of lost coral cover, while crown-of-thorns feeding caused 42%, and bleaching just 10%. Yet regardless of cause, coral growth quickly restored most damaged reefs within 10 years. Known as the Phoenix effect, remnant living tissues can expand, regenerating tissue that covers dead skeletons. After several years of regeneration, plus growth of surviving colonies, coral then produce massive amounts of larvae (young coral) and complete the reef’s recovery. 

Disturbingly, an extreme advocate of a coral climate “crisis”,Terry Hughes argued global warming has impaired recruitment of new coral to the Great Barrier Reef,  despite only 2 years since the 2016 bleaching event. Internet media outlets, eager for ‘click-bait headlines’ wrote, “Great Barrier Reef suffers 89% collapse in new coral” and CNN hyped “Dead Corals Don’t Make Babies”. 

But such reduced larval production is normal whenever adult corals are reduced. For example, after a western Australian reef suffered 70 to 90% mortality, larval production was reduced by 96% for the first 6 years. Nonetheless surviving coral increased their abundance by 5-fold over a period of 12 years. After the first 6 years of increasing coral, larval production rapidly increased. Likewise, in the northern Great Barrier Reef, which was heavily bleached in 2016, an 89% decrease in larvae is expected. And consistent with the potential for rapid recovery, surviving coral in the northern Great Barrier Reef have now increased by 16%. Thus, its highly likely we will witness large increases coral larvae within four years.

Media outlets have also misleadingly conflated coral bleaching with dead coral prompting ridiculous headlines proclaiming the Great Barrier Reef is dead. But bleaching is not always lethal. When over 90% of the coral on the Palmyra Atoll experienced bleaching, there was no loss of coral on the reef flats, and only a 9% loss on the fore reefs. Similarly, despite the severe 2016 bleaching in the Coral Sea Marine Park, researchers reported total coral cover was not significantly reduced by 2017. Most bleached corals survived.  

Reef building corals depend on energy from photosynthesizing symbiotic algae.  But their symbiotic relationship requires careful maintenance. So coral naturally add and subtract symbiotic algae as the seasons change. During the winter, coral increase their symbiotic algae as lower light reduces photosynthesis. Each summer as light intensity increases, they expel symbionts. Bleaching is just an extreme of that behavior. After bleaching, coral can quickly replace their symbiotic algae within days or months with no resulting mortality. 

Scientists are increasingly observing that coral can acquire very different symbiotic algae with different genetics. To adapt to changing climates corals don’t require thousands of years to evolve. Coral get instantaneous genetic upgrades simply by acquiring new symbiotic algae. Acquiring different symbiotic algae allowed coral to adapt to dramatic temperature changes as Ice Ages came and went. And acquiring new symbiotic algae now allows coral to rapidly adapt to 60-year changes caused by ocean oscillations.

Under La Niña like conditions, warm water accumulates over the “coral triangle” in the western Pacific, promoting more rains and heavier cloud cover. This condition can dominate for 30 or more years. However, during El Niños as in 2016, that warm water sloshes towards the Americas causing sea levels to dramatically fall. Falling sea levels expose coral to drying winds and shallower bays will more rapidly heat. Furthermore, during an El Niño, the rains and cloud cover moves eastward. With less clouds, the Great Barrier Reef is exposed to more sunshine and more heatwaves. Scientists now recognize a strong connection between ocean heat waves and El Niños. Coral bleaching correlates best with El Niños. 

Climate models do not agree on how El Niños will change in the future. But there is good news. Michael Mann, who promotes “dire predictions” due to rising CO₂, also published that during past warm periods, the oceans remain in more La Niña-like conditions. And La Niña-like conditions are good for the Great Barrier Reef.

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism. 

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Amazon Fires and Biofuels

What’s Natural 

Brazil’s Fires and Biofuels. 

published September 11, 2019

Trends on Amazon Deforestation

From leaf cutting ants that cultivate fungus gardens to flowers that fool potential pollinating insects into having sex, the magic of rainforest ecology always inspired my love for nature’s creativity. So, it’s no surprise that any and every report of burning rainforests would rally deep concerns across the globe. Nonetheless I am disturbed by dishonest gloom and doom regards recent Amazon fires. NASA reports since 2003 the square kilometers of forest burned each year has dropped by roughly 25 percent. But such good news doesn’t get headlines. 

Although the NY Times wrote the fires have no climate connection, meteorologist Eric Holthaus, who writes numerous catastrophic climate articles for Slate and the New York Times, suggested the fires show, “We are in a climate emergency”.  As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years, but Holthaus dishonestly tweeted, “The current fires are without precedent in the past 20,000 years.” 

fungus garden ants

To heighten global hysteria, French president Macron and actor Leonardo deCaprio, tweeted photographs of forest infernos. But those photos were taken 20 years ago. Likewise, Madonna tweeted wildfire photos taken 30 years ago, and others tweeted flaming photos from regions far from the Amazon. 

Activist vegetarians denounced meat-eaters for deforestation, arguing forests are burnt to create pastures for cattle. But they failed to mention pastures previously created for grazing without deforestation, are now being usurped by biofuel cultivation. Indirectly, it’s the biofuel fad that has driven cattle grazers to carve out new pastures in the rain forests.  

Left-wing politicos blame the fires on Brazil’s rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro, a climate skeptic. They argue Bolsonaro’s views emboldened land grabbers. But the number of Brazilian fires, and rates of rainforest deforestation were far worse before Bolsonaro, peaking in 2004 under a corrupt leftist Workers Party. It seems every tragedy is just an opportunity to demonize one’s opponents, no matter the facts. 

Most 2019 fires have been ignited on land cleared long ago. To clear agricultural stubble or to prevent forests from encroaching on existing farms and pastures, Brazil’s farmers set fires as soon as the dry season begins. According to NASA, Brazil’s “agricultural fire season” traditionally peaks in July and August and ends by early November. To date, there is no data determining the extent of area burnt on existing farms and pastures, versus how much rainforest has actually been lost to fire. 

As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Between 2000 and 2005 an estimated 45,000 square miles per year of rainforest were lost worldwide as biofuel production ramped. Currently only 2.3% of Brazil’s agricultural lands grow biofuels. But that will increase as governments require fuels blended with increasing percentages of biofuels. Most projections suggest biofuels will dominate 36% of arable lands by 2030. More encroachment on rainforests is likely.

Brazil leads all developing countries in biofuel production. Thus, Brazil is at the center of scientific disputes regards biofuels and deforestation. Brazil is the leader in sugarcane production for biofuels. Sugarcane is typically cultivated on disturbed fields far from rainforests, so, there is no evidence of direct deforestation. But there are definitely indirect impacts. As sugar cane fields expanded throughout southern Brazil, soybeans increasingly grown for biodiesel were pushed northward into central Brazil. In turn, usurped pastures pushed cattle grazers further northwards into rainforests.

Nearly 55 million Brazilians live in poverty. Slash and burn agriculture is often practiced by poor farmers. To achieve a win-win solution for rainforests and humanity, we need more efficient land use. But fields once growing food, are being transformed into fields for biofuels. To make-up for lost food production, pristine lands elsewhere are cleared and burnt for new agriculture.

Still there’s hope. America’s early colonists deforested the land and drained wetlands. Marginal farms deforested 80% of Vermont by 1900. But as more efficient land use evolved, marginal farms were abandoned, and Vermont is now 80% re-forested. Similarly the UN’s State of the World’s Forests 2018 reports global net loss of forest area continues to slow, from 0.18 percent per year in the 1990s to just 0.08 percent over the last five-year period. If Bolsanaro’s pro-agriculture advocacy generates greater agricultural efficiency, Brazil’s forests should likewise benefit. 

Deforestation Index

Although there have been admirable attempts by the international Amazon Fund to promote sustainable rainforest agriculture, it has not been enough to raise Brazilians out of poverty. Worse, In the name of fighting climate catastrophes, biofuel subsidies and incentives encourage destruction of Brazil’s rainforests and savannahs, while displacing small farms. We must wait and see but having a newly elected skeptical president in Brazil might be a godsend. Better agricultural practices may evolve if Brazil’s government is not blinded by the false promises of biofuels!

Addendum September 13, 2019:

Having more closely examined the photo I downloaded from the internet of cattle and burning forests, I suspected the red line in the photo suggested it may have been photoshopped. I was just contacted by another scientist suggesting the same thing.

Although it doesn't affect the issue of biofuels, it is likely  another example of how photoshopped pics can be easily and incorrectly used. Although it nicely juxtaposes the fires with cattle,  I warn viewers that the picture is likely photoshopped and I apologize for having used it.

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Listen to the Trees

published in the Pacifica Tribune August 20, 2019

What’s Natural? 

Listen to the Trees!

This summer I taught a class on the Natural History of the Sierra Nevada for San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus. The first day we taught students how to identify the trees. Once students know their trees, they can easily see how tree species vary with elevation, temperature, moisture, and snow pack. They can see which species colonize open sunny areas and which trees need shade before they can invade. Old time naturalists used trees to identify “life-zones” where different species of mammals, birds, insects and other plants can be found. Furthermore, when you listen to the trees, you can see change.

The class explored forests along the North Yuba River. Free from politics, trees tell us about changes in fire frequency, logging, climate change and ecosystem resilience. Photographs taken during the late 1800s during California’s gold rush days, revealed the total devastation of local forests. Gold miners needed wood for heating and cooking, for their metal forges, and for timbers to reinforce their mines. They needed wood to build flume boxes that altered river courses to expose riverbeds. Flume boxes also carried water from high to low elevations where giant water cannons completely washed away hillsides in their search for gold.

Deforested mountains - Downieville, CA late 1800s

Still, by comparing catastrophic photos of forests during the gold miners’ days to our current forest conditions, I was filled with optimism. The forests had totally recovered and again are quite dense. So dense, that local inhabitants fear there’s too much fuel on the forest floor that could feed catastrophic fires. Nevertheless, the lush re-growth is testimony to our forest’s amazing resilience. 

We counted tree rings and determined a majority of trees were no more than 170 years old. Those trees began their lives shortly after the gold miners had cut down all their older relatives. Occasionally we found a few larger trees, 300 years or older, that fortuitously avoided the miners’ ravenous saw blades.

Scientists determine the natural frequency of fires by reading tree rings and fire scars. Low elevation trees like Ponderosa Pines naturally endured wildfires about every 25 years. At higher elevations, where temperatures are colder and the snow pack lingers, fire scars suggest wildfires naturally happen about every 100 years. In contrast to media hype, fire scars in living and fossil trees suggest wildfires were far more common during the cool Little Ice Age.

Tree stumps tell us that trees once bordered Arctic shores 9000 years ago. Since then, cooler temperatures have pushed trees to lower latitudes and warmer elevations. Hikers in the Sierra Nevada often encounter dead trees several hundred feet above our current tree line. Accordingly, researchers determined that for the last 3 thousand years, tree line was mostly higher than today because temperatures were much warmer. However, during the Little Ice Age, between 1300 AD and 1850 AD, it got so cold, tree line dropped and tree seedlings in the Ural Mountains couldn’t germinate for hundreds of years. Ancient tree lines suggest if temperatures increase over the next century, it will not be a crisis. Trees will simply reclaim their former habitats. 

Trees reveal past rainfall patterns. California’s Blue Oaks are very sensitive to changes in precipitation. In drought years they generate narrow rings contrasting with wider rings during wet years. A recent tree ring study of Blue Oaks finds no rainfall trend over the past 700 years, but it suggests Californians can expect extreme droughts and extreme rainfall 3 to 4 times a century. More concerning, tree stumps at the bottom of Lake Tahoe dating back 6000 years ago, suggest Californians can naturally expect far more extreme droughts than living humans have yet to experience. 

Trees tell us how climate has changed. Fossil trees indicate Antarctica once experienced subtropical temperatures 40 million years ago. Similarly, trees tell us about recent temperature changes. Tree rings have correlated accurately with instrumental temperatures for over 100 years. However, since the 1960s, tree ring temperatures suggest a much cooler global climate in contrast to thermometers and models. 

Tree ring temperatures 

Tree rings indicate the warmest decades of the 20^thcentury were the 1930s and 40s, and temperatures have yet to surpass those decades. This divergence between thermometers and trees is best explained by the fact that instrumental temperatures are biased upwards when taken at hot airports or in areas recently suffering from growing urban heat island effects. In contrast, trees measure temperatures in natural habitat.

There are too many fear mongering politicians pushing an “existential climate crisis”. I find the climate history told by the trees far more trustworthy, and the trees are whispering there is no crisis. 

  

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism