Wrong, LA Times, There is No Evidence ‘Climate Change Boosts Risk of Explosive Wildfire Growth in California’
By Anthony Watts -September 6, 20230
An article in The Los Angeles Times (LA Times) published on September 4, 2023 makes the claim that a study by a Berkeley think tank proves “Climate change has ratcheted up the risk of explosive wildfire growth in California by 25%.” This is false. The study ignores other more important factors, and real-world data shows the moisture in the regions of California most affected by wildfires has actually increased, rather than decreased as the study claims.
The LA Times cites a Nature study titled “Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California.” In the abstract of the paper the authors make an important admission: “Some portion of the change in wildfire behavior is attributable to anthropogenic climate warming, but formally quantifying this contribution is difficult because of numerous confounding factors and because wildfires are below the grid scale of global climate models.”
They also say: “We find that the influence of anthropogenic warming on the risk of extreme daily wildfire growth varies appreciably on a fire-by-fire and day-by-day basis, depending on whether or not climate warming pushes conditions over certain thresholds of aridity, such as 1.5 kPa of vapor-pressure deficit and 10% dead fuel moisture.”
https://climaterealism.com/2023/09/wrong-la-times-there-is-no-evidence-climate-change-boosts-risk-of-explosive-wildfire-growth-in-california/
