“possibly by as soon as 2050”

Monkeys may fly out of his @$$ by 2050.

Global warming will cause more wildfires at Yellowstone National Park. The combination of the wildfires and rising temperature will fundamentally change the ecosystem at Yellowstone, possibly by as soon as 2050, according to a new study led by Professor Anthony Westerling of the University of California, Merced.

The study claims that by 2050, wildfires will burn up 400 square miles of land per year. By 2075, it’s expected to burn up 1,200 square miles per year. The entire area of Yellowstone National Park is under 3,500 square miles.  Furthermore, the study claims “”years with no large fires – very common in the recent past – become extremely rare by 2050 and are all but eliminated after 2050.””

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=245014

Apparently the author willfully ignored Yellowstone’s long history of major fires, which I have been documenting here. His wording implies that he knows that the “recent past” had anomalously few fires – which means they are on a  downwards trend.

Anyone with a scary story qualifies as a global warming  expert. After all, Pikas may mate with Grizzly Bears if CO2 goes over 450 ppm.

About Tony Heller

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10 Responses to “possibly by as soon as 2050”

  1. We are looking at an entirely fire-based ecology, with small fire-based societies living on the fringes, adapted eating fire, planting fire, growing fire. In the far enough future, they may even have automobiles that run on fire, and electricity made from fire.

  2. boballab says:

    Oh dear God the stupidity of the base Assumptions in that “study” are so bad it is a disservice to even call it Junk Science.

    1. Precipitation has more to do with if you even have a forest fire than temperature does.

    The summers of 1982-1987 were wetter than average, which may have contributed to the relatively low fire activity in those years.

    No one anticipated that 1988 would be radically different. In April and May, Yellowstone received higher-than normal rainfall. But by June, the greater Yellowstone area was experiencing a severe drought. Forest fuels grew progressively drier, and the early summer thunderstorms produced lightning without rain.

    2. You can’t compare what happened from between 1972-1992 and 1992 to today fire wise in Yellowstone because they used two different fire management systems.

    In the first sixteen years of Yellowstone’s natural fire policy (1972-1987), 235 fires were allowed to burn 33,759 acres. Only 15 of those fires were larger than 100 acres, and all of the fires were extinguished naturally. Public response to the fires was good, and the program was considered a success.

    [SNIP]

    In 1992, Yellowstone National Park again had a wildland fire management plan, but with stricter guidelines under which naturally occurring fires may be allowed to burn.

    3. Many of the plants in Yellowstone are fire adapted and roughly 80% of the trees that make up the forests require fire to promote a healthy life cycle.

    Many of Yellowstone’s plant species are fire-adapted. Some (not all) of the lodgepole pines (Pinus contorta), which make up nearly 80% of the park’s extensive forests, have cones that are serotinous sealed by resin until the intense heat of fire cracks the bonds and releases the seeds inside. Fires may stimulate regeneration of sagebrush, aspen, and willows, but the interactions between these plants and fire is complicated by other influences such as grazing levels and climate. Though above-ground parts of grasses and forbs are consumed by flames, the below-ground root systems typically remain unharmed, and for a few years after fire these plants commonly increase in productivity.

    [SNIP]

    The effects on many plants and animals are still being studied, although in the short-term, most wildlife populations showed no effect or rebounded quickly from the fiery summer. In the several years following 1988, ample precipitation combined with the short-term effects of ash and nutrient influx to make for spectacular displays of wildflowers in burned areas. And, where serotinous lodgepole pines were burned, seed densities ranged from 50,000 to 1 million per acre, beginning a new cycle of forest growth under the blackened canopy above.

    http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/wildlandfire.htm

    Maybe the Park Service shouldn’t have hidden this information in plain site on the Yellowstone webpage. Those above points do not even take into account the advances in firefighting techniques and technology that will take place between now and 2050.

  3. Blair Ivey says:

    Anyone else notice how these climate calamities are being pushed further into the future, when almost no one who reached their majority prior to the founding of the Church of Global Warmism (1987) will be alive?

  4. Andy WeissDC says:

    Again, note the cherry picked citation of the years 1972-1999. That was the only significant warming period since the 1930’s, much of which being recovery back to normal from cooling that took place between the late 1950’s and early 1970’s.

  5. Paul H says:

    Good point Andy.

    Precipitation trends show a rising trend in Wyoming with the last decade much wetter.

    http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl

    O/T There was an interesting programme on last nite about the building of the Olympic stadia in London. Unfortunately it had the usual green guff inserted. One architect said he was building in much better drainage as “Climate Change would bring more rain”. Obviously nobody had told him that ” most favoured climate change scenarios envisage a continuing decline in summer rainfall in south-east England.”

    http://www.groundwateruk.org/Groundwater-drought-in-the-UK.aspx

  6. Kaboom says:

    Wouldn’t insanely high CO2 levels like 400ppm act as a fire suppressant?

    • My SWAG would be that well above 10,000 ppm of CO2 (with a concomitant reduction in O2) would be needed to show much of an effect. But I’m not at all certain of that, feel free to conduct some experiments. (another SWAG here is that increases in N2 partial pressure would function the same, so far as fire goes, which might make the experiment easier to set up)

    • Justa Joe says:

      We’re supposedly already at about 385 PPM right now. So that would mean CO2 constitutes .000385 of the atmosphere. I wouldn’t call that insanely high for CO2.

  7. gator69 says:

    And of course all of this hyperstupidity is based upon models, the tool of choice amongst hucksters.

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