DIGITAL BOOK BURNING AND THE DEGRADATION OF SCIENCE

Please view my video

THE NEW BOOK BURNERS AND THE DEGRADATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC CULTURE

link https://youtu.be/p_ihQsyq0jc

Below is the transcript 

Today i want to talk about how a small self-righteous group is trying to control what scientific ideas get shared with the public. I call them the new book burners As Ray Bradbury warned, you dont need to burn books to destroy a culture, ... Just get people to stop reading them

We teach students that science is driven by the scientific method. You make observations that raise questions. Then a plausible explanation or hypothesis is offered to answer those questions. Then experiments are done to test that hypothesis, and results and conclusions are published so others then can evaluate your methods and conclusions. But that is just one turn of many, in the scientific method

Science then requires debate. Others may have had similar observations but different explanations, which lead to different conclusions. We trust science as a truth seeking method because many eyes and many voices can weigh in and debate the final conclusions.

Robust science and our democracy require a culture that holds sacred the freedom of speech and skepticism As Carl Sagan said, science requires an almost complete openess to all ideas, balanced by rigorous and uncompromising skepticism. Similarly, America's founding fathers made sure any form of tyranny over the minds of people should be strongly opposed Walter Gilbert, a 1980 nobel prize winner for his contribution to the methods that enabled the sequencing of DNA and RNA, also praised the virtues of scientific skepticism and independent thought. But he also warned.....good scientists often morph into authoritarians who claim “only their way of doing science is the only valid view”

The first scientific society, the Royal Society, formed in 1660. It published Isaac Newtons' ground breaking research. Newton later became the society's president. America's Benjamin Franklin was in the forefront of promoting science and democracy and his experiments with electricity were published here also. The society's motto was “Nullius en Verba”, meaning take no one’s word for it. They understood that truth seeking science must not be shackled by narratives of so-called authorities.

The roots of our scientific culture began with the publication of Copernicus' book in 1543 that placed the sun ,instead of the earth, at the center of our solar system. It defied what the authorities had been claiming. That publication triggered the scientific revolution and the age of enlightenment But that idea was not new. Many thinkers from around the world had suggested the same thing for many centuries. The problem was - to modify a popular adage - what was expressed in their village stayed in their village It was the earlier invention of the printing press, that enabled Copernicus's views to circulate more extensively to the public.

Our digital media holds even greater promise than the first printing press for freely sharing information and alternative hypotheses from people all over the world. It promises to prevent tyrannical groupthink that always thwarts creativity and truth seeking The New York Times had great influence with over 5.5 million subscribers to its print editions. Their influence has multiplied via its internet outreach. Even greater outreach is seen by Twitter with 500 million tweets per day, Facebook, now called Meta, has 2.4 billion views a year Youtube gets one billion views a month Wikipedia gets 18 billion views a month 

 But with great promise lies great danger Controllers of social media can morph into authoritarians In the name of preventing misinformation or fake news. A very small group can control what you read. They can promote views they like to millions; Or limit views they dislike to less than a hundred. In other words they become digital book burners Beware of these digital book burners

Michael Mann is a climate scientist who morphed into an authoritarian book burner. He believes his view is the only valid view. If you disagree with his CO2 driven climate doom, he brands you a denier and anti-science, no matter how scientific your arguments. But he constantly presents himself as the poor little victim unfairly attacked by fossil fuel funded propaganda But the Climategate emails, released either by a hacker or a whistle blower, revealed Michael Mann has spent 2 decades stifling independent thought by other scientists in peer reviewed journals as well as the social media His public tweets also reveal his attempts to control what you can think and his book burning ways. Unsurprisingly, he just recently tweeted that it is now time for Youtube to “remove climate denial videos” because, they are a threat to humanity.

Mann rose from obscurity when his 1998 reconstruction of northern hemisphere temperatures over the past 1000 years suggested the activity of wealthy fossil fuel burning industrial countries had completely altered and endangered the earth's climate. The graph of his results resembled a hockey stick and became the perfect icon for any politician to suggest a global government is needed to save the world. So his hockeystick graph sat front and center at the United Nations 2001 IPCC climate conference It didn’t matter that it was scientifically flawed, the united nations saw it as a valuable icon; just as it didn’t matter that the 16 year old Greta Thunberg, who totally lacked any climate or ecological science background, was invited to speak and berate leaders at the United Nations. A young girl claiming we must save the earth from ecosystem collapse was another politically valuable fear-mongering icon .

Those with tyrannical political agendas know full well the most influential obstacle to freedom of thought is fear. And that social control is best managed by fear. So was Michael Mann just a shill for global politics, either knowingly or unknowingly? 

A multitude of various agents, knowing they could gain politically by championing solutions to save the earth from a climate crisis, eagerly supported the hockey stick hypothesis of impending climate doom Relishing in his new fame and fortune, Micahel Mann morphed into the authoritarian that Nobel prize scientist Walter Gilbert warned us about. Then Mann viciously attacked any & all who disagreed with his personal science as deniers 

 

So who decides what scientific opinions are valid and which are fake news? Who decides when the science is settled? Most fact checkers are journalists with miniscule scientific backgrounds in climate or ecology, But they stubbornly believe they know enough to judge. Those who accept the climate doom narratives are filled with fear. And readily attack good skeptical scientists ,steeped in the scientific culture, for simply presenting missing facts and offering alternative explanations 

  Due to the battle to control the narratives that enable political power, social media has been under relentless pressure from various actors, including Michale Mann, to prevent any opinions that differ from the climate crisis narrative. Facebook asks, How do we stop false news? But they avoid the critical question .....Who determines what is false news? Facebook, Twitter and Youtube have given control to so-called fact checkers as clearly stated in their policies. If a fact checker has the opinion that your text or video is false or misleading, it is moved lower in the newsfeeds which greatly reduces who will see it,... Precisely the book burning method Ray Bradbury warned us about 

If a fact checker deems you are a repeat offender, they can advocate to have you blocked After posting several of my educational videos promoting natural climate change which are always based on scientific evidence published in peer reviewed science, I suddenly found myself blocked from facebook with this message I went to my twitter account and got the same message that i was blocked. I asked friends if fb or twitter was down but they still had access. Several hours later i was then allowed access to both facebook and twitter at the same time. Apparently the same fact checkers are controlling both these major media outlets My blocking and re-instating also suggests that they dont know how to deal with valid science when it challenges the hockeystick climate crisis 

 John Cook is a psychologist at the Center for Climate Change Communication, a center that supplies fact checkers. Cook is not a climate scientist, but in 2007 Cook started the misleadingly named website SkepticalScience with a mission to disparage all skeptical challenges to the climate crisis hypotheses, A website often recommended by Michael Mann

 Cook's value to Mann's Climate wars was he had published tactics for neutralizing so-called mis-information via inoculation. Coincidentally all skeptic texts and videos now get inoculated Social media calls it providing more information to counter false information 

 For example, on my Facebook page, I posted a link to my friends for my Youtube video in which I analyzed some bad wildfire science in the Sierra Nevada , where I had done ecosystem research for over 25 years Facebook added this inoculating message that linked to their so-called Climate Science Center Although my video's analysis had shown why, fire experts do not use average temperatures to issue Red flag warnings, and the fact that official data shows in the localities where northern California's wildfires have started, the critical maximum temperatures have been lower than in the 1930s, Facebook's Climate Science Center linked to this graph showing rising average temperature to suggest climate change is the cause of worse fires 

 Likewise Youtube is inoculating every skeptic’s video posts. My video on wildfires in the Sierra Nevada was, unsurprisingly, linked to the United Nations' alarmist narratives, despite its narrative being completely devoid of any knowledge of conditions in the Sierra Nevada In an earlier video on natural cycles of warming and drying, it was inoculated with a link to Wikipedia, a site infamous for biased climate views . 

 I also suspected Youtube was manipulating the number of likes (and views) my videos were given, so i began archiving screenshots shared here. At 7 pm i had 34 likes The next morning the same video had 80 more views but...... But Youtube reduced the likes to just 14! Other screen shots of other videos had also revealed reduced views and likes as well I can only assume Youtube is trying to influence future viewers that my video is not worth watching 

 As documented here, Michael Mann has spent 2 decades trying to suppress any skeptical science from being published in scientific journals. In 2002, the high impact journal Science, published results from two paleo-climatologists analyzing tree rings and concluding temperatures today were similar to 1000 years ago, as seen in their graph 

 This challenged Michael Mann's 1998 Hockeystick hypothesis. We know from Climategate emails Mann berated 2 colleagues for not being more critical of that paper and the ranted that they now must do damage control. Then Mann denigrated the esteemed journal's peer review process for allowing a research paper that simply disagreed with the almighty Michael Mann 

 The next year, 2 Harvard Astrophysicists published in the journal Climate Research synthesizing several hundred peer reviewed papers and also suggesting 20th century temperatures were not uniquely warm or extreme over the past 1000 years. Mann descended deeper into conspiratorial despair emailing colleagues that the editorial board of climate research had been hijacked by a few skeptics. Skeptics "had staged a coup!" 

 He then suggested they all blacklist the journal and stop citing any papers published in that journal. Conspiring to stop citing any scientific paper with alternative views has the same effect as social media's factcheckers pushing articles further down the newsfeed, ...it greatly reduces how many people will ever read those papers. 

 Mann's buddy, Dr Tom Wigley, another key government climate scientist, further illustrated the book burning strategies of this cabal of scientists. When he replied... We must get rid of the editor von Storch and block other skeptical scientists like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singers and others Mann and his group pushed to get rid of editors that support skeptics. 

 Like a small group of factcheckers, just a few editors control what gets published To remove such editors., Mann's group conspired to contact the publisher telling them their journal was perceeved as a medium for disseminating misinformation. Wigley emphasized that “it didnt matter if that allegation was true or not”, because the publishers only cared about the economic damage that such a perception might cause. Mann concurred but argued other approaches might also be needed. Mann hated that the paper appeared to be legitimately peer reviewed science and that the authors' Harvard affiliation might give them more authority than Mann's Penn State affiliation. So Mann then successfully lobbied Harvard's scientifically ill-informed administrators to distance themselves from Soon and Baliunas 

In 2005, Mann lobbied editors of the highly respected Geophysical Research Letters journal to stop publishing a skeptical research paper. that strongly challenged the appropriateness of Mann's statistical methods that created Mann's hockeystick results Fortunately, the editor had more integrity and replied all 3 reviewers recommended publishing the paper and he found no reason to interfere with its publication. Still such an incident reveals how politics, and Mann, degrade science. With his attempted censorship thwarted Mann's conspiracy ideation deepened, ranting to colleagues that contrarians now have an “in” at Geophysical Research Letters. So, the journal can “no longer be seen as honest brokers in the climate debates. We best to do an end run around the journal” 

 Unable to completely suppress peer- reviewed skepticism, Mann entered the theater of social media by creating the website, self-righteously named "RealClimate" and announced his team of 9 scientists Some of RealClimate’s early posts took aim at France's highly esteemed scientists Vincent Courtillot and Claude Allegre, trying to cancel them for questioning man-made climate change and daring to suggest natural causes 

 Meanwhile one of Mann's team, William Connolley, was busily editing out thousands of Wikipedia entries that were skeptical of any CO2 driven climate crisis... Finally caught in 2010, Wikipedia's directors unanimously banned Connolley from editing climate topics but worrisomely allowed him to return later. 

 It’s well understood that the public typically lacks the skill or time to determine which scientific conclusions are the most truthful. The public really just wants reassurance their adopted blind beliefs are the truth Accordingly in a 2009 email, Mann admitted “we all know it isn’t about truth" its about plausible deniability Then further advised his team to be careful about what information his group sent to Andy Revkin of the NY Times because, in regards to the narrative Mann wants to push, “Revkin is not as predictable as we like” 

 Illustrating the height of Orwellian double-speak and hypocrisy, Mann teams up with John Cook's fellow psychologist, Stephan Lewandowsky, to blame the public's faulty beliefs for not accepting Mann's climate crisis narratives,... An allegation Mann dishonestly frames as "denial of scientific facts" 

 After 2 decades of trying to control peer review by removing editors and threatening journals who allow skeptical articles, Mann now accused skeptics of avoiding peer review 

And after 2 decades of promoting his own website and John Cook's skeptic bashing website, and after decades with he and his ilk claiming the debate is over, Mann now denigrates skeptics, whose only remaining platform for free speech is the internet, and accuses them of using the internet to stifle debate

 No wonder Michael Mann has been called a Disgrace to his Profession As Orwell warned in his book 1984, the whole purpose of Newspeak is to "narrow the range of thought" Because it makes people more easily controlled 

 Coincidentally, just as I finished drafting this presentation, a verdict on the John sStossel vs Facebook's factchecking slander, was posted to the Watts Up With That website. Court documents revealed that Facebook could not be held liable for the damage done by slandering Stossel's factual videos as fake news and misleading because their ignorant fact checkers are not arguing facts, just opinions; and opinions can’t be prosecuted. 

 But didnt we skeptics always know that about these factcheckers? 

But the power of biased so-called factcheckers' opinions is exactly what Bradbury warned against. Books don’t need to be burnt, just get people to stop reading them 

 So beware people , The thought police are legally immune and very active 

Michael Mann's call for 

Youtube to remove skeptical climate videos 

is just one more step that he and his team's have executed for decades to control what you think! 

Up next, I’m planning several short educational videos discussing how naturally varying locations and intensities of atmospheric pressure systems control climate in order to help people gain an understanding of what determines climate and severe weather events

MEDIA PROMOTES BADLY FLAWED SCIENCE & SPREADS IT LIKE WILDFIRE

Watch the video:  MEDIA PROMOTES BADLY FLAWED SCIENCE
 SPREADING IT LIKE WILDFIRE 

at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu_fdDl6hOs&t=44s

Below it transcript for the video 

I received emails about a flawed published paper on wildfires in the Sierra Nevada that was being over-hyped by the media. Having spent 30 years doing ecological research in the Sierra Nevada, I was appalled by Gutierrez's paper blaming summer temperatures for an increase in wildfires and rashly predicting a 59% increase in burnt areas by 2040. 

I refer to this paper as corrupted science because in order to blame a variable like average summer temperature, it requires controlling for and accounting for,  the other known factors that could also be causing increased fires.

But the media is eager for clickbait news, and blaming climate change attracts the anxious public who are steeped in climate crisis fears. Wildfires provide the perfect propaganda optics, as the so-called proof that CO2 warming has the world on fire. 

So the New York times, which long ago, abandoned good investigative climate journalism quickly highlighted Gutierrez paper is adding to the body of work that climate change is increasing wildfire risk, 

Lesser news outlets, and university media, also lacking journalists knowledgeable in the science,  quickly echoed the New York Times.  And not to be outdone by the Times, CNN fear-mongered that the burnt area in the Sierra Nevada will increase by up to 92% by 2040. CNN created that scary number by adding the 59% to the plus or minus 33% uncertainty factor, but without ever noting that, according to Gutierrez's uncertainty, it was equally possible that there would only be a 26% increase. 

Bad scientific papers, use bad average statistics, and  gutierrez's paper on wildfires is guilty of using a misleading average statistic. An average statistic is only meaningful if it measures the variations within the exact same phenomenon. But if you average different phenomenon, like apples and oranges, you get useless averages like meaningless imaginary "Orpples".

Orpples

The significance of an average can also be grossly misrepresented as seen in the graph of average female heights around the world. By only displaying the difference in the average heights on the y-axis Latvia women who average four inches taller, appear to be giants, while women in India all appear to be Lilliputians. 

An accurate representation of the women's differences requires the Y axis encompass a full five feet, six inches of height,  to put any differences into the proper context. 

Now, suppose you wanted to scientifically determine the effect of diets of various rich fruits and vegetables and how it affects women's average height. Averaging all heights of all women from birth to maturity for each country would provide a worthless average. The category height doesn't mean you're measuring the same dynamics. 

Height needs to be separated into mature heights and still actively growing heights. Including shorter heights before maturity,  corrupts the usefulness of the resulting averages. 

For example, in Latvia, zero to 14-year olds comprise just 15% of the population. Whereas in India, zero to 14-year olds comprise up to 31% of India's population. That higher proportion of still growing girls would bias India's average height much lower.

And likewise, averaging maximum and minimum temperatures creates a meaningless number. The maximum and minimum temperatures are driven by different dynamics and have very different effects on wildfires. 

Now, here is why Gutierrez's analysis, using the average summer temperature, was bad science

In 2014, Rapacciulo published the difference between California's temperatures for each region, comparing the 1900 to 1939, forty-year average to the 1970 to 2009 average. Surprisingly, the maximum temperatures for two thirds of California has significantly cooled.

Of critical importance to fire managers is maximum temperatures, that dry out the ground fuels and raise the risk of wildfires.

In contrast, the average minimum temperatures have warmed across 99% of California. This stark difference is due to the different dynamics affecting the two measurements. Maximums measured the extent of daytime heating versus minimums that measured the extent of nighttime cooling .

Fire experts do not use minimum temperatures when issuing red flag warnings, because even if there's an increase in the minimum temperature, the temperatures may still be below the dew point, which causes water vapor to condense, and moisten the ground fuels.

This dynamic is firmly etched in my mind from doing research in the Sierra Nevada Meadows for 25 years, I was in the field at sunrise and my pants would be soaking wet during the time of minimum temperatures,  and only dried out as temperatures heated towards the maximum. 

But by averaging the maximum plus the minimum together, it falsely appears that most of California is warming. By using that "orpple-like" average temperature Gutierrez argued that climate warming was drying out the fire fuels and raising fire risk. Even though the average was driven by minimum temperatures, they were likely moistening the  ground fuels each morning. 

Now other scientists have published on the different temperature dynamics of maximum and minimum temperatures. Thomas Karl, past director of Noah's Center for Environmental Information, published a paper in 1988, showing how maximum and minimum temperatures react very differently to growing populations 

Relative to weather stations located in rural areas with populations below 2000 people, stations in regions of growing populations steadily increased their average annual temperature by up to 2.5 degrees Celsius as populations grew to 10 million people.

However, the maximum temperatures decreased as populations greew, while minimum temperatures dramatically increased by 5.1 degrees Celsius. Averaging hides these impactful contrasting dynamics. 

Tis is just one reason why when evaluating any changes in California, the effect of its dramatically rising population must be considered

 a

California's state climatologist, James Goodridge, also recognized the population effects. He measured temperatures in counties with over 1 million people, with counties below a hundred thousand,  and counties in between. 

Th highly populated counties showed a warming trend, similar to what's expected from CO2 warming theories, but more rural country counties with populations, less than a hundred thousand people exhibited no significant warming trend. Instead, temperatures oscillated as would be expected from the effects of El Ninos in the Pacific decadal oscillation.

Now, despite weather stations near the ignition sites of major California fires that showed cooling maximum temperature trends since 1930s, Gutierrez argued the average warming trend was "increasing fire risk by drying fuels and making them more flammable and prone to ignition".  Gutierrez simply failed to do her homework 

Maximum temperatures from Ukiah, near the ignition site of California's third largest wildfire, the Mendocino complex fire, had been cooling since the 1920s. Still she argued when a rancher's spike struck a rock causing a spark that ignited surrounding grasses, the grasses had been readily ignited due to the average warming trend. 

She also seems ignorant of the fact that ALL fire experts classify dead grasses as one- hour lag fuels meaning grasses become highly flammable in just one hour on a typical warm dry summer California day. Any climate trend warming or cooling, is irrelevant.

In the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite shows a similar maximum temperature cooling trend, where California's seventh largest fire, the Rimm fire, was ignited. It was ignited by an escaped campfire near Yosemite 

Nor is there any support for using average summer temperatures in the criteria for red flag warnings issued by the National Weather Service. 

The primary criteria are 

1) relative humidity of 15% are lower and winds gusting to 25 miles per hour. And 

2) widely scattered thunder showers 

The contributing factors to those primary criteria are 

higher than normal, maximum temperatures, 

Thunderstorms generating lightning that naturally ignite fires; and cold fronts that typically promote thunderstorms in high winds.

Low humidity is a function of drought, usually associated with La Nina

Droughts also cause low fuel moisture, as well as minimizing available moisture to condense into dew during the nighttime that would help suppress fire activity. 

And finally, they look at the Energy Release Component, which refers to the amount of flammable fuels in the region that typically accumulate due to fire suppression, 

Low humidity is the primary risk factor, which is why the Western USA experiences more fires than the east,  simply because the west is naturally drier 

During the winter, most of the west and the east experience high relative humidity represented by the dark green. The cold air is holding as much water vapor as possible. So the atmosphere generates no drying effect.

As the summer approaches, temperatures warm across the country, so the air can hold much more water, but the transport of water from the ocean to the land differs across the country.

The Atlantic pressure system pumps almost enough moisture into the eastern USA to maximize the amount of moisture the warmer air can hold, and maintaining a fairly high level of relative humidity plus no drying effect.

But the Pacific pressure system blocks most of the transportation of moisture. So the region's warming air now receives much less moisture than it can hold, reducing relative humidity and exerting a strong drying effect; and this is illustrated by the brown and yellow colors. The lower the relative humidity, the higher the fire risk.

Now we can see this dynamic as local weather stations in the west at Yosemite national park as summer. Temperatures rise as the amount of moisture reaching Yosemite drops, creating the summer drought and the dry fire weather.

In the east at Shenandoah national park, the summer temperature similarly rises, but the amount of moisture also rises creating higher relative humidity and less of a drying effect and thus reduces fire risk in the east.

Now the transport of moisture to the Western USA is modulated strongly by El Nino and La Nina cycles and the Pacific Decadal oscillation between 1980 and 1999. The Pacific decadal oscillation was mostly in the positive phase, promoting more El Ninos in a warmer, warmer wetter, California. After 1999, the Pacific decatal oscillation switch into the negative phase, promoting more Latinas in a stronger blocking high pressure system causing drier conditions that are more conducive to bigger fires.

But Gutierrez did not account for this natural effect, 

Gutierrez's results in Table 2 provide the crux of her argument. Average summer temperatures in the Sierra Nevada are modeled and based on rising CO2. The model predicts temperatures will steadily rise every decade. I've added a few Fahrenheit temperatures in blue for those who are more familiar with that scale. Accordingly her model suggested the number of fires will increase in lockstep with model temperatures.

But in reality, the number of observed fires has varied decreasing in the 1990s, rising in the t200, and again, decreasing from 2011 to 2020.

Similarly, modeled results for the extent of burnt area rises in lockstep with model temperatures. But in reality, there was no change during the 1980s and 1990s, then there was a large jump in burnt area from 2000 to 2020.

And that increase is due to the drying effect that one would expect from the switch to the negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation. There are many factors other than summer temperature that affect the number of fires and the extent of burnt area.

Valid science requires factors must be accounted for and removed before examining any correlation with summer temperatures. Not doing so, corrupts the scientific method.

However, it does allow fitting modeled results to a climate change narrative. 

Now good science demands of research, and must also account for changes in human caused ignitions before correlating summer temperatures with the increase ignitions.

But again, Gutierrez failed to do so. Now lightning causes the majority of fires at high elevations in the Sierra Nevada, despite temperatures between 20,000 and 50,000 degrees Celsius. Lightning rarely ignites struck trees, even though it can split the tree trunks. Lightning scars are often seen on living trees in the Sierra.Nevada 

Lightning typically starts a fire by igniting dry ground fuels at the bottom of the tree is lightening passes to the ground.

Now studies such as Balch 2017 show that during the peak lightening season from June to September human ignitions still account for a greater proportion of wildfire ignitions. The 600 to 800 degree heat from a single match also provides enough heat to ignite fine fuels, even when fine fuels are only partially dried. Balch's data also contradicts Gutierrez's narrative that warm summers are required for more ignitions.

The greatest number of fires are ignited by humans during the cooler months in the Sierra Nevada, such as around lake Tahoe, March temperatures are seven degrees Celsius cooler than Gutierrez's average summer temperature.

Furthermore, there's no apparent climate change trend in natural lightning strikes and this is seen in the medium blue data series here 

 Now increased human ignitions are another impact of California's growing population. As people increasingly moved into the Wildlands, the electrical grid follows and the accidental sparking increases.

 The deadliest California fire, the Camp fire, and the second largest 2021 Dixie fire were both ignited by an electrical spark 

More people promotes more camping in the beautiful Sierra Nevada, but results in more escaped campfires. California's seventh biggest fire, the Rimm fire ,was ignited by an escaped campfire. 

And humanity always has a small percentage of bad people. So a growing population generates more bad people. Gary Maynard, a professor, was just arrested for lighting four fires, adding to the Dixie fire. Fire officials estimate that 20% of all California fires are lit by arsons. 

Now Gutierrez also failed to account for other purposefully human ignited fires, and how they have contributed to the changes in the extent of burnt areas.

To reverse the problems caused by fire suppression, Sequoia National Park, and Yosemite  began igniting prescribed burns by 1970. However, those prescribed burns would not add to the trend of increased burned areas. Out of fear of reducing National Forest timber harvest, the National Forest managers more slowly adopted prescribed burns. Sequoia, Stanislaus, Sierra Inyo, and Plumas national forest only began igniting prescribed burns during the last two decades. And that would indeed add to the observed trend of increased burnt areas. 

What's more difficult to measure is the 1970 switch from fire suppression to a "Let it Burn" policy, that also increased the burnt area relative to the mid 20th century. Now calling their policy "Let it Burn suggested to nearby communities ,that their fire managers were not doing their jobs. So it is now called Wildfire For Resource Benefits or WFRB.

The policy is limited.

Any unnaturally ignited fires were still required to be immediately put out. Similarly WFRB policies could not let natural fires burn, wherever human populations were threatened. The greenish colored areas are where WFRB Let it Burn policies can be enacted. And those areas are unpopulated areas, mostly in the Sierra Nevada. 

Lastly, fire suppression initiated decades ago set the stage for larger and more intense fires today.

Fire suppression allowed ground fuels to accumulate which more readily carries fires across the land. Additionally, fire suppression allows more ladder fuels, comprised of larger shrubs and younger trees to accumulate. Ladder fuels carry fuels from the ground into the forest canopy. And canopy fires create more embers that are carried by the winds. Firefighters had great trouble containing the huge 2021 Dixie fire because the burning embers would travel past their fire lines and start spot fires up to four miles away.

So I advise everyone to ignore Gutierrez's and the media's alarmism. 

The average temperature they used was a bad statistic. 

More fires can be ignited even in cooler temperatures. 

We can reduce fires ignited by electrical ignitions. 

We can reduce burnt area extent with better fuel management. 

And we can only accept that natural Le Ninos and La Ninas and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, all control the humidity extremes that lead to fires, 

But we can adapt 

And natural wildfires can be beneficial when intelligently managed 

Up next, maybe: An analysis of dubious climate change attribution's of floods and droughts.

And until then, as always embraced renowned scientists, Thomas Hartley's advice that skepticism is our highest of duties and blind faith, the one unpardonable sin.