Canada: supposed safe haven from climate change.
Climate Nearing “Point of No Return”
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker2
- Start date
Canada: supposed safe haven from climate change.
For some fun (lol, lmao) I did some statistic work on the data Gergar posted and found some interesting results.
So I averaged the years by blocks of factors of 42 (the number of years in the graph's data), and then tried to find the worst contiguous block that doesn't include 2023. First we can see that just making whatever the bottom most block that goes up to 2024 is worse than any block that doesn't include 2023. Second, we see that 1995 is the next largest burn and thus every block that doesn't include 2023 includes it, but going from 3 to 6 years we stretch into the future. 6 to 7 pulls back because 1989 was pretty big too and it tilts things that direction, but going to 14 years it pushes back into the future, and when we climb to 21 years we actually ditch 1989 because despite being nearly 6 million hectares (pretty sure it's measuring in hectares), the future just gets so much worse that it makes more sense to go that direction. So the overall trend is of course that wildfires are getting worse as time goes on.
Though I suspect someone will be annoyed at 2023 being there and completely dominating all statistics (and wanting to ignore that 1995 is doing the same thing), so for funsies I made a second chart where I limited any year that was over the yearly average of 2,350,103 to that average.
And boy howdy does that make it worse. Pretty obvious to say, years that beat that average are more common in recent years than past years, the trend will be to push that average up.
So I averaged the years by blocks of factors of 42 (the number of years in the graph's data), and then tried to find the worst contiguous block that doesn't include 2023. First we can see that just making whatever the bottom most block that goes up to 2024 is worse than any block that doesn't include 2023. Second, we see that 1995 is the next largest burn and thus every block that doesn't include 2023 includes it, but going from 3 to 6 years we stretch into the future. 6 to 7 pulls back because 1989 was pretty big too and it tilts things that direction, but going to 14 years it pushes back into the future, and when we climb to 21 years we actually ditch 1989 because despite being nearly 6 million hectares (pretty sure it's measuring in hectares), the future just gets so much worse that it makes more sense to go that direction. So the overall trend is of course that wildfires are getting worse as time goes on.
Though I suspect someone will be annoyed at 2023 being there and completely dominating all statistics (and wanting to ignore that 1995 is doing the same thing), so for funsies I made a second chart where I limited any year that was over the yearly average of 2,350,103 to that average.
And boy howdy does that make it worse. Pretty obvious to say, years that beat that average are more common in recent years than past years, the trend will be to push that average up.
a) You didn't count basically the first half of the 80s. Your nonprofit source (not an insult against them or their work) did not spring into existence and suddenly match the full government statistics. Their graph is misleading because it looks like there used to be much less fire when they just weren't measuring all of it.CIFFC
ciffc.net
You didn't count 2023.
b) You're not establishing statistical trends, or finding causes and effects, your brain went no further than "fire hot".
2023s fires were because of drought. Global warming is projected to lead to more precipitation in Canada.
Like your source is misleading by cutting off 2023?
Neither are you, of course-- your brain went no further than 'bigger red lines over here', ignoring averages.
This is a simplification. It can increase precipitation in some localised contexts. Overall it is forecast to lead to warmer, drier climate, including in Canada. There is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change increases the risk of extreme weather events including wildfires.
That is incorrect. A warmer world is wetter. Less water is captured as ice, more moisture can be held in the air to eventually precipitate.
You misunderstand the relationship between dryness and heat. Deserts aren't dry because they are hot. Deserts get super hot because there's little moisture. Heating up a wet environment does not make it dryer.
What happens overall is relatively unimportant, it's what it does at a local level. Climate change is expected to exacerbate both dry and wet conditions: this means more fires in dry areas and more floods in wet areas.
You can offer amateur speculation all you like, but climate scientists have been exceptionally clear about the increased dangers of drought and wildfire.
The Water Cycle and Climate Change | Center for Science Education
Water moves from place to place through the water cycle, which is changing as climate changes. Learn how the water cycle is changing as global temperatures rise.
scied.ucar.edu
Climate change and droughts: What’s the connection? » Yale Climate Connections
As average temperatures continue to climb, drought has become a permanent part of our vocabulary.
yaleclimateconnections.org
In a Warmer World, Expect the Wet to Get Wetter, and the Dry, Drier
As the world warms due to human-induced climate change, many scientists have been projecting that global rainfall patterns will shift. In the latest such study, two leading researchers map out how seasonal shifts may affect water resources across the planet.
news.climate.columbia.edu
And in Canada? Very high temperatures in 2023 coincided with... drought and the worst wildfires on record.
It varies for a variety of reasons--by season (time) and by geography (space). All four dimensions. That is why forest fires are a thing to begin with. Flooding is seasonal and its effects are very local so exacerbating the tendency to flood is not likely to make forest fires much less common. Certainly not in a way that would overpower other effects.
If we can say of a warmer world:
Less water is captured as ice, more moisture can be held in the air to eventually precipitate
Then we must also be able to say of a colder world:
Less water is captured as vapor, more moisture can be held in glaciers to eventually melt
They're both wetter, imagine that. Increase temperature, wetter. Decrease temperature, wetter. Every time the global temperature changes it's like we created water from nothing. But that is nonsense.
What is actually the case is that warmer temperatures mean all of these: less ice, faster evaporation, more capacity of the atmosphere to hold water vapor before precipitation, and more severe precipitations when they do occur-- which is not necessarily in the same place that the evaporation occurred. Less land ice means more water in the ocean as well-- which is not terrifically helpful for reducing forest fires unless that sea level rise puts the forest under water. Hotter temperatures locally tend to mean more fires because what tends to matter is not eventual precipitation but the immediate rate of evaporation.
But then again, water is a combustion product, so more fires means a wetter environment... on average. But as you should be able to see by now, the average is not what matters so much.
Depends on the forest and the season, doesn't it?
The other two are better off left alone, anyone with brains can tell they have no idea what they're talking about. On the other hand, I think you are just playing devil's advocate.
Fucking lol. You're confidently contradicting the vast majority of climatologists and meteorologists on the planet, and-- as usual-- you've provided nothing but amateur speculation to substantiate it. Every zero-expertise online commentator thinks they know better than the researchers and scientists begging us to take the climate crisis seriously; its just such brain-melting, unfounded arrogance.
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I want you to imagine for a second that you were arguing with Phoenix, and he said something like this to you:
And then the evidence to support that exceptional clarity is:
How would you respond to such a claim? Is there any response you can think of more productive than ignoring it?
That isn't difficult so far, because this is already quite a similar experience.
Of course, that wasn't the end of the evidence provided. You were given three far more exhaustive links, and simply reposted a few non-committal lines from one of them when it was speaking generally.
For instance, the two other quotes in the same post are far more definite in their statements, but you just ignored them.
Now imagine Phoenix posted contradicting sources, and this was his response to you pointing out problems with the very first source. How would you respond to his indignance?
I'm sure you think this is really quite cutting, but it's kind of obvious to everyone here it's just an attempt at deflection. I've provided some pretty credible sources-- something Phoenix conspicuously fails to do. And you've provided fuck all. The sole equivalence here is yourself and Phoenix, the similar unwarranted faith you have in your amateur musing, and the similar levels of exhaustion anyone with half a clue experiences when interacting with you.
In a sense, that is true. I don't care to argue with you about something you don't care to think about seriously. I would much rather you have a moment of serious introspection. One of these days I'm going to ask you why you're even arguing and it's going to click.