Environmental Talk

“I can tell by your game, you’re gonna start a flame . . . “

Is it me or is half the country on fire?

The wildfire control situation in this country is going almost as well as the war on drugs.

Since wildfires are generally considered to be bad things, and global warming is responsible for all the bad things that have occurred, are occurring or will occur, you knew it was only a matter of time before someone linked climate change to the latest headline stories about wildfires.

Let’s see if we can get at a few basic facts . . .

Dry conditions tend to exacerbate the effects of a wildfire. There are, however, other conditions that also affect the damage caused by wildfires including wind patterns and relative density of the areas being burned.

The western United States has seen an increase in the frequency of wildfires over the past 30 years at a time when global temperatures have been increasing steadily.

Those who would attribute the rise in wildfires to global warming take this as proof of the perils of a rising global temperature.

It all sounds reasonable in a simple, connect-the-dots kind of way.

One of the most sophisticated and comprehensive studies on the subject was the subject of a recent article in Global Change Biology. (I only buy it for the pictures, I don’t read the articles).

The study used satellite data from the NOAA and NASA to look at global wildfire data. Not to go all Tom Clancy on you, but here’s the basic methodology as described by the World Climate Report website:

They collected the 8 km resolution global satellite-based AVHRR (Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer) data from July 1981 to December 2000. They developed a computer algorithm that could spot pixels that had recently burned, and the algorithm could basically count the number of burned pixels, calculate total burn area, and determine percentage of burned area for any defined region of the world. The global and regional data were ultimately assembled on a monthly basis.

I know . . . I’m going to take time out for a beer right here.

Okay, I’m back.

The study concluded “… no significant upward or downward global trend was found in the burned area data.”

Interestingly, the study did confirm that the Western United States was one of the areas that had experienced an increase in activity.

There is something for everybody in this study, depending on which part of the report you want to cherry-pick your facts from . . . which means we’ve got lovely parting gifts for both the climate change Casandras and the global warming skeptics.

This is a common tactic you’ll see from both sides: taking localized data and interweaving it with global findings. In this case, it would appear that we would need to refer to the phenomenon as American warming, not global warming, if we wanted to keep things consistent. Not that consistency’s ever been a stumbling block in the whole climate change rugby scrum.

As a last word on the subject, I’ve done a study that will be appearing in an upcoming peer-reviewed edition of TV Guide. Without going into a lot of scientific detail (mostly because there was none), my research shows that the number of Wildfire episodes on ABC-Family has gone up dramatically in the last two years and closely mirrors the global temperature trend of my apartment.

There’s already quite a buzz with people talking about stuff like Nobel Science prizes and such, but really, it’s my love of science (or is that mixology?) that keeps me going.

Global warming causes Wildfire

global warming, climate change, wildfires, Wildfire, ABC Family, World Climate Report, Global Change Biology, NOAA, NASA, TV Guide