By Jim Steele

Egregious cherry-picking by alarmist climate scientists attempts to delude the public that a slight increase in wildfire burnt acres can be blamed on rising CO2. First, they dishonestly ignore the scientific evidence that far worse fires happened before the 1930s when CO2 and global temperatures were much lower than today (Graphic A).

Nonetheless, Daniel Swain, click-bait media’s go to “scientist”, myopically sees every negative environmental change as a function of rising CO2 due to his tutelage under alarmists Michael Mann and Noah Diffenbaugh. So, unsurprisingly, Swain falsely pontificates, “Recent work points toward anthropogenic climate change rapidly altering Western United States (WUS) fire regimes to produce overall more extreme wildfires.”

Sadly, Swain is just a useful idiot of the World Economic Forum (https://x.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1814681971664052663/photo/1…)

Evidence that heat waves have no significant effect on grassland flammability, but Swain argues, “Any significant heat wave “has been made substantially more likely and warmer than it otherwise would have been as a result of human-caused climate change.” Read: Science of Heat Waves Reveals Blaming CO2 is a Scam! https://x.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1799125891731329105…

To push the climate crisis-wildfire connection, dishonest scientists cherry-pick wildfires in California and western USA as proof of a climate crisis, despite the fact that the western USA is naturally drier than the eastern USA (Graphic B) and more prone to more frequent and more widespread fires. People outside the western USA, and southern Europe’s similar climate, are surprised to learn that hardly any rain falls during the summer in California’s Mediterranean climate (Graphic C) resulting in the dryness that supports more fires.

Dishonest scientists, pushing climate change, ignore the effects of natural climates on fire prone vegetation. As seen in California, grasslands (brown color, Graphic D) are the most fire prone vegetation during California’s natural summer drought, and dead grasses and shrubs account for the fastest spreading and most extensive wildfires, (i.e. Park Fire). Forested areas rarely experience wildfires (Graphic E), except when dead grasses and shrubs provide a path for fires into the forest and provide a source of sufficient heat.

Between the lower elevation grasslands and higher elevation forests, grasses carry fire into the open Oak woodlands (dark green, Graphic F) and into the chapparal/shrublands (Graphic G). The current Park Fire has rapidly spread though such grasslands and to date has become California’s 7th biggest fire.

For California, and most of the western USA, annual grasses die by early summer and naturally become highly flammable from June through September, as their fuel moisture content drops below 10%. Summer heat waves do not increase grass flammability further to any significant degree.

Interestingly, the western US has increased the biomass of highly flammable invasive, annual grasses during wet El Nino years. Non-native grasses, like cheatgrass, have invaded increasingly larger expanses of habitat (Graphic H), with cheat grasses (not CO2) accounting for much of the greater burnt areas from wildfires (compare graphics B an H).

Finally in contrast to Swain’s alarmist rants that “Butte County (i.e. Park Fire) has become a “poster child” over the past decade for what can happen when a warming climate triggers extreme summers and winters”, Swain ignored the evidence that northern California’s maximum temperatures were warmer in the 1930s (Graphic I).

Thus Swain’s and other alarmists’ bogus argument that heat waves are made worse due to CO2, and have caused more wildfires is not supported by science. Regions experiencing heat waves have also experienced cooling trends, which falsifies alarmists’ claims that global warming has made heat waves worse! (Read: Science of Heat Waves Reveals Blaming CO2 is a Scam! https://x.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1799125891731329105…)