Philosoraptor: Is Climate Change Causing CA Wildfires?

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Seems like the most likely answer is probably not...and that's what this post argues.

Anonymous said...: Although maybe there is credible reason to believe California's housing market is to blame (at least for some of them). Where is all the talk about the depredations of untrammeled capitalist excess?; 10:17 PM
c0vek said...: eh, at least the Skirball fire was set by a human (homeless person trying to cook outside). can't blame climate change for that... or can we? :P; 12:19 PM
Pete Mack said...: It's usually impossible to say if any one storm (or fire) is made worse by climate change, though on average, if the sea temperature is higher than average, you can legitimately expect hurricanes to be worse (and blizzards to be milder, with some caveats.)

The only way to make explicit claims is to look for cases where temperatures are at a record high, and are significantly higher than records from (say) 1970 and earlier. Added to the observation that record lows are much more uncommon nowadays than record highs, and you can make conditional claims about storm/wildfire/etc strength being affected by global warming. (Conditional means there is always some probability that such a storm, and such conditions might have occurred before good recordskeeping--or just by an unlikely combination of factors.); 1:54 AM