4 ms·

People also sometimes cherry-pick or carve up data so that they can find a "surprising" result, to use one of ~pg's favorite adjectives. Your coworker had the

People also sometimes cherry-pick or carve up data so that they can find a "surprising" result, to use one of ~pg's favorite adjectives. Your coworker had the impression that wildfires are becoming larger and more damaging, and that climate change is a principal cause of this, due to widespread coverage to that effect (examples: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]). (Which I suppose was your point.) And many of those journalists are repeating each other, but eventually you find that a lot of those statements originate from the National Interagency Fire Center [7]. There, the raw numbers pretty clearly show an upward overall trend from, oh, about 1953 or so. Before 1953, the numbers look a lot different, and if someone were to just casually plug all those values into a graph, they could make the point that wildfires aren't getting worse after all. That person would be completely ignoring the massive increase in wildfire suppression efforts over that same period, of course, but they wouldn't want that to get in the way of their surprising finding. Further investigation into the subject would start to reveal all kinds of neat subtleties that would be missed from a quick glance at numbers, both from non-climate-related factors like increased habitation in the wildland-urban interface areas [8], as well as climate-related factors like the massive number of dead trees in western forests as a result of increased bark beetle activity [9] [10]. And then someone might begin to be in a position to have a more interesting discussion on the subject. :-) [1]: https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2018-08-01/wildfires-are-getting-worse-and-more-costly-every-year https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2018-08-01/wi... [2]: http://www.climatecentral.org/western-wildfire-trends http://www.climatecentral.org/western-wildfire-trends [3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/14/wildfires-have-gotten-bigger-recent-years-trend-is-likely-continue/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/14/wildfires... [4]: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/31/634369281/wildfires-could-be-the-new-norm https://www.npr.org/2018/07/31/634369281/wildfires-could-be-... [5]: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661096/california-wildfires-2018-mendocino-carr-ferguson-climate https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661096/california-wildfires-2... [6]: https://theconversation.com/wildfires-in-west-have-gotten-bigger-more-frequent-and-longer-since-the-1980s-42993 https://theconversation.com/wildfires-in-west-have-gotten-bi... [7]: https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html [8]: https://www.wildfirex.com/2013/07/25/population-climbs-in-wildland-urban-interface/ https://www.wildfirex.com/2013/07/25/population-climbs-in-wi... [9]: https://www.fs.fed.us/research/invasive-species/insects/bark-beetle.php https://www.fs.fed.us/research/invasive-species/insects/bark... [10]: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-sierra-dead-trees-20170128-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-sierra-dead-tr...

mbostleman 8y ago
I also used the NIFC data. I mis-spoke on a couple of points. First, I only used data from 1983 and later (not the 1960s as I said, and certainly not prior to the 1950s as you assert that some people do) because their footnote said that the sources for data prior to 1983 are not known or can't be confirmed. Second, I graphed the data since 1983 and there was somewhat of a trend upwards (not no trend like I said). But it didn't look significant to me. Especially not in climate terms. And especially given that realiable data only covers 35 years. And especially given that the numbers swing wildly with how we manage fires. That is, a trend in either direction could easily be created by increasing or decreasing budgets to keep them from starting and/or fighting them, like the swings you reference prior to the 1950s. But in any case, as I said, I not saying that wildland fires are not somehow affected by climate change. Only that people tend to accept narratives that are repeated over and over without critically questioning them.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  > Only that people tend to accept narratives that are repeated over and over without critically questioning them. Sure, but the challenge is that critically questioning a common narrative takes significantly more effort than a quick review of a single dataset, especially when that narrative is coming from a fairly large body of professional researchers in multiple fields. This is a big problem right now in the politics surrounding several different fields. A lot of interested laymen now have the tools to do some quick analysis on datasets, and then they draw conclusions from that that are contrary to the accepted science in that field. It's especially common in climate science because it's always been such a politically charged topic. People accepting common narratives is essentially "epistemic learned helplessness" (http://web.archive.org/web/20130111103623/http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html http://web.archive.org/web/20130111103623/http://squid314.li..., one of my favorite essays), and that's a good thing. It's an immune response to bad ideas like being opposed to vaccination. There is certainly room for asking questions about accepted ideas. Any time something doesn't make sense in some subject, absolutely go searching for an answer. You may even get to be one of the fortunate and talented few who find a significant question or even a flaw in some field. But, there's a fine line between asking questions, and drawing conclusions from a brief review and then indicting other people for not "critically" examining the subject.

mbostleman 8y ago

I also used the NIFC data. I mis-spoke on a couple of points. First, I only used data from 1983 and later (not the 1960s as I said, and certainly not prior to the 1950s as you assert that some people do) because their footnote said that the sources for data prior to 1983 are not known or can't be confirmed. Second, I graphed the data since 1983 and there was somewhat of a trend upwards (not no trend like I said). But it didn't look significant to me. Especially not in climate terms. And especially given that realiable data only covers 35 years. And especially given that the numbers swing wildly with how we manage fires. That is, a trend in either direction could easily be created by increasing or decreasing budgets to keep them from starting and/or fighting them, like the swings you reference prior to the 1950s. But in any case, as I said, I not saying that wildland fires are not somehow affected by climate change. Only that people tend to accept narratives that are repeated over and over without critically questioning them.

thaumaturgy 8y ago
> Only that people tend to accept narratives that are repeated over and over without critically questioning them. Sure, but the challenge is that critically questioning a common narrative takes significantly more effort than a quick review of a single dataset, especially when that narrative is coming from a fairly large body of professional researchers in multiple fields. This is a big problem right now in the politics surrounding several different fields. A lot of interested laymen now have the tools to do some quick analysis on datasets, and then they draw conclusions from that that are contrary to the accepted science in that field. It's especially common in climate science because it's always been such a politically charged topic. People accepting common narratives is essentially "epistemic learned helplessness" (http://web.archive.org/web/20130111103623/http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html http://web.archive.org/web/20130111103623/http://squid314.li..., one of my favorite essays), and that's a good thing. It's an immune response to bad ideas like being opposed to vaccination. There is certainly room for asking questions about accepted ideas. Any time something doesn't make sense in some subject, absolutely go searching for an answer. You may even get to be one of the fortunate and talented few who find a significant question or even a flaw in some field. But, there's a fine line between asking questions, and drawing conclusions from a brief review and then indicting other people for not "critically" examining the subject.