Again - forest fires are not about summer heat but winter rains
Mediterranean chaparral goes up in flames and once again we’re told it’s all about climate change producing excessive summer heat:
French flee for their lives as ‘apocalyptic’ wildfires ravage homes
And:
As thousands of people are forced to flee their homes amid devastating wildfires in France, Spain and Scotland, the climate emergency seems closer to people’s lives than ever.
Despite this, governments around the world are seemingly rolling back their efforts to end the fossil fuel pollution that is driving the climate emergency.
Well, obviously, no one wants a good crisis to go to waste. But as we’ve noted before, a number of times, this is not correct. The cause of these fires is not summer heat nor is it our failure to abjure capitalism.
We are stout believers in something terribly unfashionable these days. We must identify the cause of a problem before there is any hope of being able to cure said problem.
These Mediterranean ecologies are built to burn. That’s just a part of their lifecycle. That they do burn should therefore not be a surprise to anyone. Summer temperatures make little to no difference. For such ecologies are not - even a bit, let alone notably - more flammable at 45 oC than 35 oC. The entire cycle is winter rains produce plant growth. When those rains stop, in spring, so does the growth and after seeding everything dies back. This thus produces the fireload which is ready to go up by June and July. This is just what the ecology does.
How much winter rain there is determines how much fireload there is to go up. Last winter was very wet thus there’s lots of fireload. So, more fires, bigger fires, over wider areas. And yes, you can indeed match off wet winters with fiery summers and vice versa, dry with non-fiery.
To the extent that climate change is driving these fires it is whatever the effects global heating has on winter rains that matters.
The other influence is that vast expanses of these Latin countries are emptying out. What were, until very recently, peasant smallholdings are being abandoned. The young have moved into the cities and the old have withered by their vines. People simply will not try to live on an acre of scrub and a few goats. Therefore the fireloads are not being cleared. Attempts at rewilding - attempts which do not reintroduce large numbers of herbivores - compound this.
We’re afraid that’s it. We’ve an ecology built to burn. We’ve stopped grazing and clearing large parts of it - for good reason, we’ve all got too rich to be peasants any more. Hot summers are not the cause of these fires even as wet winters might well be making them worse.
As we insist, it’s necessary to identify the cause(s) of a problem before attempting to solve it. As it’s not summer heat causing this one then reducing summer heat isn’t going to solve it.
Insisting that people don’t abandon - or even rewild - land and thereby refuse to clear the brush might work. But that would be an unfashionable solution, wouldn’t it?
Tim Worstall