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> can be largely attributed to the increase in droughts in some areas Among many other possible explanations. Look, you wanted to show the author wrong, for w

by inimino 10y ago

> can be largely attributed to the increase in droughts in some areas Among many other possible explanations. Look, you wanted to show the author wrong, for whatever reasons, and you went looking for something and went with the first thing you found. Now, rather than admitting there was nothing there, you really want to argue about the causes of wildfires? Your point was not a good one. Just admit it.

lisper 10y ago
> Among many other possible explanations. Like what? > you wanted to show the author wrong No, absolutely not. I would like nothing better than for the author to be right, and for climate change to not be causing any serious problems. But I'm pretty sure that there is actually a lot of evidence that climate change is causing serious problems. The only reason I'm harping on this one dataset is, as I said, I'm on a slow internet connection and so I can't do any comprehensive research at the moment. I'm going the best I can with what I've got.
- gizmo686 10y ago
  >> Among many other possible explanations. > Like what? Now you are just being deliberately obtuse. You already responed to my comment where I provide an alternative explanation of changes in fire policy, and you agknowledge that "the situation with respect to fire is very complicated". > I would like nothing better than for the author to be right, and for climate change to not be causing any serious problems. The author never made such a claim, going so far as to state: "I believe climate change is real and that human emissions of greenhouse gases risk justifying action, including a carbon tax."
  - lisper 10y ago
    > Now you are just being deliberately obtuse. Sorry, I'm juggling a lot of threads here. > The author never made such a claim The author claimed that there is "scant evidence" that climate change is causing extreme weather events, including drought. Being a resident of California, which is in the middle of its worst drought in history, that claim seems improbable to me. (Note carefully: the claim that I find highly improbable is not that climate change is not causing extreme weather events, but that there is "scant evidence" that climate change is causing extreme weather events.) I first tried looking up actual drought data, but it's all hiding behind high-bandwidth visualizations which I cannot currently access. So I went with what I could find. [UPDATE:] Found this: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES2010.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES201... So I think it is fair to say that the evidence that climate change is causing increased severity of drought may be debatable, but it is not scant.
- inimino 10y ago
  > and for climate change to not be causing any serious problems. ... which is not even remotely what the author said. We are in "Did you read the article?" territory here. > I'm going the best I can with what I've got. What that means is that you've picked your conclusion, you scrounged some premises, and constructed an argument to fit. It seems you're approaching this in a high school debate-team, rhetorical, "but what about" style and not actually honestly looking for facts.
  - lisper 10y ago
    > ... which is not even remotely what the author said The author said that there was "scant evidence" that climate change is causing extreme climate events. That is what I dispute. I believe the evidence is not scant. In fact, I'm pretty sure the evidence is quite plentiful, but I cannot demonstrate that at the moment because of resource constraints (very low bandwidth internet). But you could go look up the drought data and prove me wrong, at least about that. (But then we would still have to talk about the author's very misleading claim about hurricanes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13099156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13099156) [UPDATE:] Found some accessible drought data: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES2010.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES201...
- DrScump 10y ago
  Like what? Increased rainfall generally correlates to more thunderstorms and thereby more lightning-induced wildfires, for just one example.
- nkurz 10y ago
  >>> The increase in wildfires can be largely attributed >>> to the increase in droughts in some areas. > >> Among many other possible explanations. > > Like what? Drought certainly plays a role, but I think a changing strategy of fire suppression will make it difficult to prove causation from the statistics. A gigantic confounding factor is that the approach to handling forest fires changed dramatically in the timeframe you refer to, with a shift from "put it out immediately" to "let it burn", then a backlash leading to somewhere in the middle: Until around 1970, federal land managers remained obsessed with controlling large fires. But during the 1960s, scientific research increasingly demonstrated the positive role fire played in forest ecology. This led in the early 1970s to a radical change in Forest Service policy—to let fires burn when and where appropriate. From this the "let-burn" policy evolved, though it suffered a setback in the wake of the 1988 Yellowstone fires. Since around 1990, fire suppression efforts and policy have had to take into account exurban sprawl in what is called the wildland-urban interface. http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/Fire/Suppression/Suppression.aspx http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/Fire/Suppression/... Of course this doesn't mean that drought has not caused more fires, but it's going to make "total acres burned per year" very hard to use as evidence. Pielke has written about fire in other places: "Influence of Location, Population, and Climate on Building Damage and Fatalities due to Australian Bushfire: 1925–2009" http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2010.41.pdf http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/20... I only skimmed it quickly, but it seems to claim that once you've normalize for development, the severity of bush fires in Australia has not changed significantly over the century. Given the difficulty of separating policy from climate, I'm not sure I'd ever take it as firm proof, but it probably gives more insight into Pielke's thought process.
- inimino 10y ago
  > > you wanted to show the author wrong > No, absolutely not. I would like nothing better than for the author to be right I think we are basically done here, but I just want to point out this rhetorical trick. You demonstrate motivated reasoning pretty clearly throughout this thread, which is why I called out that you started with your conclusion and then looked for facts and arguments to fit (debate-team style). When I point that out here, you dodge with "I would like nothing better than for the author to be right", which neatly deflects the point. My criticism is not that you would prefer the author is wrong, but that you clearly started from a conclusion that he is wrong. That is why it didn't really matter to you what particular evidence you had, you just went with it. So pointing out that you would prefer if the author was right (misrepresentation aside) sounds like you are addressing my criticism, without actually doing so.
  - lisper 10y ago
    > you clearly started from a conclusion that he is wrong I started with a strong Bayesian prior that he is wrong, yes. But it is important to not to lose sight of what is actually in dispute here. We are not arguing about whether climate change is actually increasing extreme weather events, we are arguing over whether the evidence for this is "scant". To dispute that claim, it suffices to show that evidence exists. Which it does: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES2010.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES201...
    - inimino 10y ago
      This is not about your prior. This is about whether you are arguing fairly and interpreting the data impartially. You are not. You read the article, concluded the author was wrong, and posted anecdotes and a link about wildfires. After it was pointed out that the author said nothing about wildfires, you suggested that wildfires are caused by droughts, while admitting that the rain is moving around. Why not admit that your point about wildfires was simply off the mark? After I pointed out that wildfires can be caused by other things than droughts, you asked for me to name them, while admitting elsewhere that the wildfire issue is complicated. Why not simply admit that obviously there are many causes of wildfires? After I pointed out that you misrepresented what the author said as "not causing any serious problems" then you switched to whether or not the evidence is scant. Why not just admit that you misstated the author's position? After admitting that "scant" means something more like "insufficient" rather than "nonexistent", you are now saying that to dispute the claim requires only that some evidence exists. Why not simply admit that the issue is more complicated than it seemed to you at first glance and that you may have jumped the gun? > But it is important to not to lose sight of what is actually in dispute here. Indeed. Note that I am not responding at all to the drought data you found. I am simply pointing out the unreasonable way you are arguing.

by inimino 10y ago

lisper 10y ago

> Among many other possible explanations. Like what? > you wanted to show the author wrong No, absolutely not. I would like nothing better than for the author to be right, and for climate change to not be causing any serious problems. But I'm pretty sure that there is actually a lot of evidence that climate change is causing serious problems. The only reason I'm harping on this one dataset is, as I said, I'm on a slow internet connection and so I can't do any comprehensive research at the moment. I'm going the best I can with what I've got.

gizmo686 10y ago
>> Among many other possible explanations. > Like what? Now you are just being deliberately obtuse. You already responed to my comment where I provide an alternative explanation of changes in fire policy, and you agknowledge that "the situation with respect to fire is very complicated". > I would like nothing better than for the author to be right, and for climate change to not be causing any serious problems. The author never made such a claim, going so far as to state: "I believe climate change is real and that human emissions of greenhouse gases risk justifying action, including a carbon tax."
- lisper 10y ago
  > Now you are just being deliberately obtuse. Sorry, I'm juggling a lot of threads here. > The author never made such a claim The author claimed that there is "scant evidence" that climate change is causing extreme weather events, including drought. Being a resident of California, which is in the middle of its worst drought in history, that claim seems improbable to me. (Note carefully: the claim that I find highly improbable is not that climate change is not causing extreme weather events, but that there is "scant evidence" that climate change is causing extreme weather events.) I first tried looking up actual drought data, but it's all hiding behind high-bandwidth visualizations which I cannot currently access. So I went with what I could find. [UPDATE:] Found this: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES2010.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES201... So I think it is fair to say that the evidence that climate change is causing increased severity of drought may be debatable, but it is not scant.
inimino 10y ago
> and for climate change to not be causing any serious problems. ... which is not even remotely what the author said. We are in "Did you read the article?" territory here. > I'm going the best I can with what I've got. What that means is that you've picked your conclusion, you scrounged some premises, and constructed an argument to fit. It seems you're approaching this in a high school debate-team, rhetorical, "but what about" style and not actually honestly looking for facts.
- lisper 10y ago
  > ... which is not even remotely what the author said The author said that there was "scant evidence" that climate change is causing extreme climate events. That is what I dispute. I believe the evidence is not scant. In fact, I'm pretty sure the evidence is quite plentiful, but I cannot demonstrate that at the moment because of resource constraints (very low bandwidth internet). But you could go look up the drought data and prove me wrong, at least about that. (But then we would still have to talk about the author's very misleading claim about hurricanes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13099156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13099156) [UPDATE:] Found some accessible drought data: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES2010.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES201...
DrScump 10y ago
Like what? Increased rainfall generally correlates to more thunderstorms and thereby more lightning-induced wildfires, for just one example.
nkurz 10y ago
>>> The increase in wildfires can be largely attributed >>> to the increase in droughts in some areas. > >> Among many other possible explanations. > > Like what? Drought certainly plays a role, but I think a changing strategy of fire suppression will make it difficult to prove causation from the statistics. A gigantic confounding factor is that the approach to handling forest fires changed dramatically in the timeframe you refer to, with a shift from "put it out immediately" to "let it burn", then a backlash leading to somewhere in the middle: Until around 1970, federal land managers remained obsessed with controlling large fires. But during the 1960s, scientific research increasingly demonstrated the positive role fire played in forest ecology. This led in the early 1970s to a radical change in Forest Service policy—to let fires burn when and where appropriate. From this the "let-burn" policy evolved, though it suffered a setback in the wake of the 1988 Yellowstone fires. Since around 1990, fire suppression efforts and policy have had to take into account exurban sprawl in what is called the wildland-urban interface. http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/Fire/Suppression/Suppression.aspx http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/Fire/Suppression/... Of course this doesn't mean that drought has not caused more fires, but it's going to make "total acres burned per year" very hard to use as evidence. Pielke has written about fire in other places: "Influence of Location, Population, and Climate on Building Damage and Fatalities due to Australian Bushfire: 1925–2009" http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2010.41.pdf http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/20... I only skimmed it quickly, but it seems to claim that once you've normalize for development, the severity of bush fires in Australia has not changed significantly over the century. Given the difficulty of separating policy from climate, I'm not sure I'd ever take it as firm proof, but it probably gives more insight into Pielke's thought process.
inimino 10y ago
> > you wanted to show the author wrong > No, absolutely not. I would like nothing better than for the author to be right I think we are basically done here, but I just want to point out this rhetorical trick. You demonstrate motivated reasoning pretty clearly throughout this thread, which is why I called out that you started with your conclusion and then looked for facts and arguments to fit (debate-team style). When I point that out here, you dodge with "I would like nothing better than for the author to be right", which neatly deflects the point. My criticism is not that you would prefer the author is wrong, but that you clearly started from a conclusion that he is wrong. That is why it didn't really matter to you what particular evidence you had, you just went with it. So pointing out that you would prefer if the author was right (misrepresentation aside) sounds like you are addressing my criticism, without actually doing so.
- lisper 10y ago
  > you clearly started from a conclusion that he is wrong I started with a strong Bayesian prior that he is wrong, yes. But it is important to not to lose sight of what is actually in dispute here. We are not arguing about whether climate change is actually increasing extreme weather events, we are arguing over whether the evidence for this is "scant". To dispute that claim, it suffices to show that evidence exists. Which it does: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES2010.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES201...
  - inimino 10y ago
    This is not about your prior. This is about whether you are arguing fairly and interpreting the data impartially. You are not. You read the article, concluded the author was wrong, and posted anecdotes and a link about wildfires. After it was pointed out that the author said nothing about wildfires, you suggested that wildfires are caused by droughts, while admitting that the rain is moving around. Why not admit that your point about wildfires was simply off the mark? After I pointed out that wildfires can be caused by other things than droughts, you asked for me to name them, while admitting elsewhere that the wildfire issue is complicated. Why not simply admit that obviously there are many causes of wildfires? After I pointed out that you misrepresented what the author said as "not causing any serious problems" then you switched to whether or not the evidence is scant. Why not just admit that you misstated the author's position? After admitting that "scant" means something more like "insufficient" rather than "nonexistent", you are now saying that to dispute the claim requires only that some evidence exists. Why not simply admit that the issue is more complicated than it seemed to you at first glance and that you may have jumped the gun? > But it is important to not to lose sight of what is actually in dispute here. Indeed. Note that I am not responding at all to the drought data you found. I am simply pointing out the unreasonable way you are arguing.