Roy Spencer has joined the chorus of those denying the link between climate change and California’s wildfire crisis. But rather than share scientific insight, Spencer inflicts on us his brand of superficial, crude thinking through his inevitable confirmation bias, which, when examined closely, is an object lesson in how Roy Spencer got the label “climate denier.” The old-fashioned way: he earned it.
I took a look at relationships between California wildfire burned area, and the weather variables featured in the research on California wildfire from Williams et al.. Mine is a crude analysis compared to theirs, but yielded some interesting things.
We’ll start with total acres burned by wildfire in California since 1972 (the time span studied in Williams et al.).
Open Mind 