Re: The unspoken truth about wildfires

On 8/2/2026 1:05 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
> On Sun, 2 Aug 2026 12:57:40 -0400, Wilson <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>> On 8/2/2026 12:31 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2 Aug 2026 12:21:43 -0400, Wilson <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 7/31/2026 6:34 PM, dart200 wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> the freaking article suggest climate change is not a cause of wildfire
>>>>> implying it's largely a problem of mismanagement and suppression...
>>>>>
>>>>> completely ignoring that boreal forests, where the largest increase in
>>>>> risk is seen, are largely not managed anyways due to not only the sheer
>>>>> size but also the fact that managing fuel costs ~10x that of temperate
>>>>> forest. normal controlled burns aren't an option cause the risks are
>>>>> just different.
 >>>>
>>>> I think the expectation is a warming climate will be dryer and that will
>>>> increase wildfires.
>>>>
>>>> Satellite data only goes back to the 1980s. But there's solid scientific
>>>> evidence based on fire scar date from tree rings on old growth trees and
>>>> studies of sediment data that shows reconstructed wildfire history over
>>>> thousands of years.
>>>>
>>>> That evidence indicates that during the 20th century in North America
>>>> there's been fewer acres burned than in previous periods. They're
>>>> calling it a "wildfire drought".
>>>>
>>>> https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11811286/
>>>> https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1112839109
>>>> https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3295264/
>>>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388852965
>>>
>>> Strange how you can come up with results that show the exact opposite
>>> of accepted research.
>>
>> That was literally accepted research.
> 
> I'm sure you would claim that.  However, the accepted research I know
> about does say the opposite.

"What "accepted research" actually means.

Peer-reviewed and published in established journals (PNAS, Nature 
Communications, Ecosphere, Quaternary Research, etc.).

Based on transparent, replicable methods (sedimentary charcoal 
accumulation rates, tree-ring fire scars, pollen, and cross-validation 
against independent records).

Cited and built upon by subsequent studies rather than ignored or retracted.

Consistent with multiple independent lines of evidence.

The key long-term studies meet all of those standards. Marlon et al. 
(2012) in PNAS synthesized 69 charcoal records covering the past 3,000 
years across the western United States and found a slight overall 
decline in biomass burning, with the lowest levels in the Little Ice Age 
and the 20th century, and a clear "fire deficit" after the late 1800s.

That paper has been cited hundreds of times and is routinely referenced 
in later work. The North American tree-ring fire-scar network (NAFSN) 
papers (Margolis et al. 2022 and the follow-on Parks et al. 2025) 
compile thousands of sites and show that, despite recent increases 
relative to the mid-20th century, many forests are still burning less 
frequently than their multi-century historical averages. These are not 
fringe claims; they are mainstream findings in the fire-history literature.

Common objections and why they don’t make the work "unaccepted"

Critics sometimes claim the records are too local, the charcoal signal 
is noisy, or the conclusions conflict with recent satellite data showing 
more acres burned since the 1980s. Those are legitimate points for 
scientific debate, and researchers openly discuss the limitations 
(spatial coverage gaps, the difference between frequency/extent versus 
severity, the influence of human land use, etc.). But methodological 
caveats and ongoing refinement are normal in every observational 
science. They do not render the body of work illegitimate.

Modern instrumental records (NIFC, satellite burned-area products) begin 
only in the 1980s and capture a period of recovery from decades of 
aggressive suppression plus a warmer, drier climate. Paleorecords place 
that recent rise in a longer context: many western forests experienced 
far more frequent low- to mixed-severity fire for centuries before 
organized suppression, and the 20th-century lull is the anomaly relative 
to the longer baseline. Both timescales are real; they answer different 
questions."