Sue Lani Madsen: Climate change too complex to blame on one cause

There is no simple cause and effect link between wildfires and climate change. That disconnect was on display in the dumbest question at the first Republican presidential debate.

“Do you believe human behavior is causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do.”

If human behavior causes climate change, then pray tell what was causing cycles of climate change for eons before humans multiplied across the face of the earth? What the questioner was attempting to get at is the hypothesis that humans control climate by turning CO2 production up and down.

Scientific hypotheses are a focus for questioning, not a matter of belief.

Climate is a complex system of inter-related factors adjusting in ways scientists don’t yet and may never fully understand. A May 2022 report from AP science writer Seth Borenstein stated the following:

“Scientists are noticing that in the past 25 years the world seems to be getting more La Niñas than it used to and that is just the opposite of what their best computer model simulations say should be happening with human-caused climate change.”

Models are best guesses to be tested, not facts. But the question wasn’t about science. It was about politics.

“Cause” is a word designed to drive panic, fear and guilt. None of those emotions is useful to problem solving and innovation, but they are useful weapons of political manipulation.

Does human behavior impact normal cycles of climate change? Yes, but not in isolation from constantly shifting environmental factors nor in a simple cause and effect. Two thousand years ago, extractive agricultural practices combined with political upheaval and a changing climate turned north Africa from the breadbasket of the Roman empire into a hurricane-generating Sahara Desert. Human activity is more complex than a single factor.

Over 100 years ago, another scientific model for climate was sold as a simple raise-your-hand belief. Samuel H. Aughey developed the theory that turning over the sod in the Great American Desert attracted moisture. “Rain follows the plow” conveniently supported the political narrative of westward expansion, and was popularized by journalists like Charles Dana Wilber, author of “The Great Valleys and Prairies of Nebraska and the Northwest.”

To put it in modern terms, Aughey’s work was like Michael Mann’s now discredited climate hockey stick and Wilber’s book politicizing science to support territorial expansion was akin to Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth.”

Embraced by the expanding intercontinental railroads, “rain follows the plow” was an opportunity to make a buck attracting farmers to what is now flyover country. Extractive agricultural practices, aggressive planting to meet demand driven by a world war, and the return of normal drought marched North America right into the Dust Bowl. Heat wave records from 1936-1937 still stand today across the heartland.

Conserving soil and water was the first lesson from the Dust Bowl and the federal Soil Conservation Service (now Natural Resource Conservation Service) was created to attempt to prevent a repeat. But the second lesson is to beware politicians speaking with shallow certainty about complex scientific issues.

When Gov. Jay Inslee visits Spokane and blames “the beast of climate change” for wildfires, it’s a political statement designed to create an emotional reaction. It would be equally manipulative to blame Inslee’s housing and mental health policies for the West Hills fire on Aug. 3. Although the woman charged in the case has undoubtedly been affected by those policies, the cause was arson.

U.S. Forest Service data for the period 2000-2017 concluded nearly 85% of wildfires in the U.S. are caused by human activity, from arson, accidents and unattended campfires to energized power lines in severe windstorms.

By some measurements, total acres burned globally have declined over the past 25 years, attributed to human uses expanding into formerly wild savannas and grasslands. At the same time, awareness has grown spectacularly now that everyone in the wildland/urban interface zone has a camera in their hand. And it’s a questionable metric anyway, since fire suppression technology has changed over the past 25 years with early use of water drops keeping some fires smaller. It’s another overly simplified data point in a complex system.

There’s complexity on all three sides of the fire triangle. Mainstream reporting on wildfires always manages to include a nod to the left’s favorite scapegoat. Like the dumb question asked of the Republican presidential candidates, there is an assumption in that “everyone knows” climate change is the root of all evil.

Changes in land use and not climate were behind the disaster in Lahaina, Hawaii, according to University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences Professor Cliff Mass in a recent interview on KTTH radio.

Formerly irrigated sugar cane fields had been supplanted by dry grasslands. He described the combination of an abundance of dry grasses from a wet winter and an accelerating downslope windstorm exploding a small fire into the inferno. Mass says the fires “had nothing to do with climate change, like zero.”

Wildfires will continue to exist even if the climate stops changing and average temperatures are magically frozen in time. Unlike climate, our land use and landscape management decisions are totally in our control.