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Comment by cpncrunch | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't help climate change awareness by pushing shoddy science like this. Author says "in the 1950s, the state’s fire season lasted about four months; today, it is effectively year round, and the acreage burned during the most severe seasons (1950 versus 2020) has increased eightfold (to say nothing of lives and property lost)." but there is no reference for that.

Here are stats of wildfire activity from 1987, which shows the number of fires is dropping, and acreage burned is about the same (it varies a lot):

https://34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.az...

Esstimates show that fire acreage has reduced from 4.5 million acres a year pre gold rush to less than half of that figure now:

https://archive.is/U0NhA

It's counter-productive to use fake science to push climate change awareness, as it will have the opposite of the intended effect, and will just allow people to ignore it.

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That first link you gave shows a lot of variation, but doesn't give any info to compare to 1950s because it only goes to 1987, as you said. So we can't use that to make any conclusions about now versus 1950s.

I think we also have to consider the intensity of fires. Supposedly, fires are hotter now because there's a lot more accumulated fuel since there are no longer so many smaller fires. In any case, I don't see any information you presented that leads to your conclusions.

:In any case, I don't see any information you presented that leads to your conclusions

Its in the second link and i summarised it. Acres burned has actually reduced. If you read that second link it gives 1950s data. Acres burned reduced in 1950s and then increased, but is still lower than pre goldrush. Looks like the author cherrypicked the 1950s.

...and yet you're cherry picking information from the article, the main point being that global warming was a well known phenomena in the 1950's!

I just don't get it - this is an existential threat, and people are still in denial.

I was actually going by the picture and the very first sentence: "A wildfire tore through Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Saturday, May 7, 2016...Earth’s weather, now, not in the future—and it’s full of fire".

I read the article to see what it said about wildfires and climate change, as there has been a lot of invalid hyperbole about that very subject recently (including a recent Guardian opinion piece which incorrectly stated that Canada's wildfires have increased, when the Canadian Wildfire Database actually shows the opposite).

Not unexpectedly, this article also misrepresents climate change as increasing wildfires.

It's just very irritating all these terrible arguments that are doing so much to justify climate denialism even though they are attempting to do the opposite.

Here is the Guardian article I'm referring to which first got my ire up about this subject:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/20/canada...

and here is the data:

https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha/nfdb

What the heck do we need to do to get climate change activists to take climate change science seriously?

@cpncrunch - for some reason it's not letting me respond directly to your comment.

The link you have provided seems to show a decrease in total fires but some increase in actual area burned.

It's natural for media to exaggerate somewhat.

There's been many reports of an increase of the wildfire season in California, though it's not necessarily all driven by global warming.

I think HN does that deliberately to slow down arguments.

>The link you have provided seems to show a decrease in total fires but some increase in actual area burned.

There seem to be two aspects to area burned: many years it is very low, and then every few years there is a very large burn. Those very large burns were bigger in the 80s than in the past 10 years. You could look at the average, but that probably isn't going to show anything useful (which is probably why they haven't put it on the graph).

Both the Mercury News article and this Canadian Natural Resources document say that the main reason for the changes is due to human behaviour rather than climate: factors such as chopping down burned trees instead of leaving them, putting out every fire that is found, more people going into the wilderness, etc.

If someone is arguing that climate change is causing drier areas which results in more wildfires or larger wildfires, it's a poor argument if the data doesn't actually show that there are more wildfires or larger "big burns" now than in the 80s (or pre-gold rush).

Unfortunately it is associated with one half of the political spectrum and as such roughly half of people are going to deny it.

wouldn't call it "shoddy" without proof. The numbers that you link don't come close to cover the 50ies. Yet, albeit showing a declining numbers of fires, do show an excessive growth of affected area; if I would dwell in California I would be deeply worried.

The mercury news link i gave does give 1950s data. Sorry i didnt clarify. See my other comment.

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