A major problem is that wetter effects get more extreme both ways. When it is dry, it is hotter and more likely to cause draught, but when it rains it rains more. But heavy rain tends to not stay in the ground (which only takes water on slowly) and instead just goes to the river and into the sea. So effectively for the plants the situations become more dry overall. Regional expections might exist though.
Climate Nearing “Point of No Return”
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker2
- Start date
What makes this particularly funny is how catastrophically scientifically illiterate your original argument about precipitation and wildfire even was.
Even before we get to the inability to provide anything to substantiate it, or the lazy dishonesty in dismissing the scientists telling you otherwise.
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I don't think what I'm saying is particularly controversial.
Rainforests tend to be wet. Dry forests tend to be dry. And then all the ranges in the middle. But nearly all forests go through patterns of drier and wetter weather. It is not hard to comprehend that if dry/hot spells are exacerbated by climate change, it makes fires more likely. This might be the case even when, overall, rainfall increases across the year on average for a forest, because it only needs one period of dry / hot weather somewhere in the year to make an area dangerously combustible. And this potentially affects a huge amount of forest, including ones that, in annual rainfall terms, we might consider relatively wet.
Let's read your second link of exceptional scientific clarity:
" Scientists have been cautious about linking human activities to global drought patterns "
I agree, what you're saying isn't controversial. Everything you are saying is measured and hypothetical. You're not saying that climate change is setting Canada on fire, as was suggested by the first comment I responded to. I don't believe you would be willing to make such a claim, I'm sure you could just as easily weigh the possibility that Canada becomes more temperate on average. Hence, the devil's advocate comment. I don't think you are defending the idea of climate change causing massive Canadian wildfires because that's your personal belief about current events, I think you're making good arguments for the possibility because the people who do actually believe that is the obvious truth are incapable of defending themselves.
This is an exceptional understatement. The last time global temperatures were as high as we are trending towards, Death Valley was underwater. There are doubtlessly places that would be less habitable with a different climate, but the opposite is certainly true. The people here trying to rationalize how everywhere in the whole world will be worse in the future aren't being reasonable, they're just catastrophizing.
Are you incapable of approaching a source honestly? This snip is so selective I can only conclude you didn't even bother to read through the piece.
Hell, even the tiny quotelet you posted was taken out of vital context. Firstly, in context of the piece, that line about global patterns comes after it states scientists are confident in attributing localised drought severity to Climate change.
Secondly, the section that follows the line you snipped:
You're quoting a journalist. I quoted the part where scientists at large are considered. And you're accusing me of illiteracy.
I notice we aren't talking about how tstorm posted information showing the average amount of forest being burned is increasing over time.
Yes, and you continue to display this spectacular illiteracy right here. We're both directly quoting a journalist, discussing what scientists have found. The third quote there is as explicit as possible that the conclusion is one that scientists have high confidence in.
^ directly concerns what the researchers found, not just the journalist.
^ directly concerns what scientists believe, not just the journalist.
....not to mention how the third link I provided, which you've so far ignored, is based entirely on research provided by named scientists. And how even the second link contains secondary links to scientific studies and models.
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this after implicitly dismissing the possibility of forests becoming dry.
Hey, remember how the US had a massive man-made ecological disaster in the form of the Dustbowl less than 100 years ago? That was sorta a big deal, and relatively recent, and local for a lot of Westerners. Would have thought it'd be more instructive.
Sure. Only, even assuming that it all nicely balances out, the world leans towards habitation of the more habitable parts. Suddenly shuffling around cities and farms would be a bother.
Here is the database that graph came from: http://nfdp.ccfm.org/en/data/fires.php
Here is the data in excel so I can put a trendline on it:
There is technically a positive slope, of a fraction of a percent, that would take centuries to notice a meaningful difference, if that were in fact the trend. The correlation, however, effectively rounds to zero. There is neither a perceivable trend nor a meaningful increase in that data.
And once you get into what they're actually saying, if you cared to, you might start to sound like Agema, with measured hypotheticals instead of "exceptional clarity". Wet might get wetter, dry might get dryer, the tropical rain belts might shift entirely, so some dry places north of the tropics might get wetter while rainforests in the southern hemisphere get dryer. Lots of possibilities, not all of them apocalyptic.
Now explain how this applies to Canadian wildfires. What of these claims would lead you to believe that the nation with more lakes than the entire rest of the world combined would be forced into perpetual inferno if it were a degree warmer?
You've explicitly dismissed any reality that doesn't diminish US hegemonic power. Your opinions and analysis are worthless.
Sure, but none of this is particularly sudden, is it? Anyone worrying about the imminent collapse of human civilization isn't thinking straight.
Bonus points if you correlate that to the fire cycle, how fire regimes are changing, in which ecological zones wildfires are occurring, and whether those zones are spreading -- or fire intervals are reducing. Numbers on a graph don't tell a tenth the story, here.
Interesting conjecture. Not supported by anything other than "I don't want to believe it", but interesting.
From the data provided previously in the thread. I already made a post showing the averages trending to increasing over time, and an alternate model to smooth out the giant spikes from extreme years.
But you know what? I'll humor you. Your latest model (now that you don't want to use the first one you used) uses data from the Canadian government, fair enough, a reasonable source. It claims to source it's data from https://www.ciffc.ca/publications/canada-reports , but what's odd is that it doesn't include 2022 or 2023 despite those reports being available. So I went and plugged those numbers into the graph.
I think it helps. It doesn't include the 80's, which by every account I can find were milder than the 90's and onward (almost like things are getting worse over time), but I think it still makes the point.
All anyone remembers about the Dust Bowl is that some grown man breastfeeds at the end of Grapes of Wrath. And we only remember that because Louis CK made a joke about it involving Anna Karenina.
I don't know if this is a grammatical mistake or what, but you cannot possibly mean that. But even were that-- or what you actually mean-- the case, the potential for plants to become more dry and flammable is pretty well understood and documented. As is, at least in general terms, the evil of the United States-- because that's the real topic of discussion, apparently.
Yet they are very clearly telling us what's most likely. What they have high confidence in. What they have found and what they believe based on the data. The quotes I gave you are in fact very very clear: "is contributing" and "high confidence", not just "maybes" and "might".
It's not just a bunch of hypotheticals on equal footing with the 'everything will be fine' hypothesis. That's either illiteracy, or intentional misrepresentation on your part.
"Perpetual inferno", ridiculous strawman. Grow up.
Look, you can offer amateur speculation all you like that the presence of a bunch of lakes will therefore mean wildfires won't increase. That's scientifically childish, but speculate away. Your amateur reckoning simply isn't as compelling as climateologists and meteorologists doing the research. And they have, including on Canada specifically.