The Maui Fires & Climate Change - No Heated Debate At Emily's Place, So I Thought I'd Start One Here

Emily Atkin writes Heated Substack which features a rather fetching angry flame emoticon:

It’s kind of an angry-woke take on the non existent ‘climate crisis’ and who’s really to blame for this non existent breakdown of our once fine and dandy global weather and climate machine. In keeping with the angry theme, Emily recently posted this:

The real story behind ABC's Hawaii headline change

OK, that’s not really really angry, otherwise she would have told ABC News to fuck all the way off and then fuck off some more . . . . .

But it’s still fairly angry.

I was intrigued to know why she was so narked and hoped to comment, but alas paid subscribers only may leave comments, so I’m commenting here on my own Substack which does not restrict replies.

She must have influence this woman, because three top climate scientists took the time to email her with their views on this gross miscarriage of climate justice. Also, ABC eventually changed their offending headline just to please Emily it would seem and maybe those three scientists who were attracted to her angry campaign:

In sum, the scientists explained that the headline was technically incorrect. Climate change absolutely can be partially blamed for the severity of the Maui disaster because climate change worsens wildfires, and climate change plays a role in literally all weather events. We just don’t yet know how much blame, because we don’t yet have attribution studies that can tell us that sort of thing.

That is a false statement and moreover, it is not even a fair summary of the views of the scientists concerned.

Regarding the falsity of the statement, it is either knowingly false or it is Idiocracy level stupid. Emily is basically saying:

‘Climate change absolutely can be partially blamed for the severity of the Maui disaster because climate change has got extreme weather, which wildfires crave’.

The second statement is patently false as regards the recent prevailing drought conditions in Hawaii, which almost certainly have played a major role in these present wildfires plus past blazes which have occurred on the islands post 2000. Attribution studies have been performed (in 2022) and the conclusion was that the contribution from man-made climate change was insignificant compared to natural variability, as I outlined here:

“The empirical analysis raised at least as many questions as it answered, and the paper turned to climate model experiments to better understand what, if any, boundary forcings and associated large-scale climate drivers may have led to this prolonged period of dryness in Hawaii. They included several different ensemble AMIP simulations of the last decade (2010–19) in comparison with the late twentieth century, and a set of so-called event attribution simulations used to isolate the effect of long-term anthropogenic change forcing since the early twentieth century. Concerning decadal variability, four different models agree in revealing a forced signal of a weakened Aleutian low in the recent decade relative to the late twentieth century. However, neither of the model ensemble means yield reduced rainfall near and over the Hawaiian Islands. The absence of a signal and the large spread among members of the model simulations—each subjected to identical decadal boundary forcing variations—indicated that the recent decadal manifestation of Hawaiian drought was best reconcilable with internal atmospheric variability. These model results also support an argument that the anomalous circulation pattern in the North Pacific during the recent decade (the weakened Aleutian low) was unlikely responsible for the drought.

Additional model experiments explored how climate change since the early twentieth century may have affected Hawaiian rainfall in the early twenty-first century. Two different assumptions on the externally forced pattern of SST change, each derived from observed trends since 1900, were employed to address the sensitivity of Hawaiian region rainfall to plausible anthropogenic forcing.

Our results indicate that the direction in which climate change may have contributed to the twenty-first-century low wintertime Hawaiian rainfall depends on the assumption on how external radiative forcing acted to change sea surface temperatures, especially over the equatorial Pacific. It is beyond the scope of this study to determine which, if any, of these two patterns of long-term SST change is the more plausible fingerprint of global warming to date. Instead, it is perhaps more constructive to recognize that, for all the model precipitation change signals described above, their magnitudes are considerably less than their simulated internal variability of climate on centennial time scales (see also Quan et al. 2018). Recall that each ensemble member in our atmospheric model experiments experiences identical ocean boundary forcing and atmospheric chemical composition change, and as such the spread in histograms (e.g., Fig. 13) arises purely from internal atmospheric variability. It is perhaps surprising to see that atmospheric fluctuations alone, unconstrained by boundary forcing changes, could yield centennial-scale Hawaiian rainfall changes on the order of 20%. It is thus entirely possible to reconcile the observed severity of the recent Hawaiian decadal rainfall deficits with unforced internal variability alone.”

“Although the 2007–2014 drought was unprecedented over the past century (Figures 2and 6), detecting an anthropogenic signal at small spatial scales such as that of the Hawaiian Islands is difficult, and at this time, evidence indicates that rainfall changes in Hawaii are still predominantly driven by large-scale modes of natural variability.”

Minus drought, minus the weather conditions at the time, minus the proliferation of non-native, highly flammable grasses, minus the actual source of ignition, minus the contribution from incompetence and criminal negligence on the part of the authorities, all you’ve got left is a very modest long term rise in temperature since about 1900. It ain’t much. If some climate scientists can perform an attribution study based on that alone and conclude that climate change played a significant role in the Maui wildfires, then they’re better off reading tea leaves and chicken entrails in my opinion.

Andrew Dessler looks like he’s got a headscarf and a crystal ball. He’s sure that the role of climate change is not minimal because ‘no analysis supports that conclusion.’

So it's not unreasonable to say that the fires cannot be entirely blamed on climate change, but it's also not particularly useful. The real question is what role climate change is playing, and the article seems to be minimizing the role of climate change, a choice that's not supported by any analysis.

Except the two peer-reviewed studies published in 2022 which do tend to support the conclusion that the role of climate change is minimal. But he’s only a climate scientist at Texas A & M University, so you wouldn’t expect him to be aware of the scientific literature.

Kate Marvel seems to be a bit more on the ball but she also appears somewhat confused, admitting that there is no clear signal of climate change which has emerged from the loud noise of natural variability, but then seeming to suggest that this does not mean that climate change is not to blame for Maui drought conditions. She states:

I actually think there’s a lot of good nuance in this article, but I have a BIIIIIIG problem with this statement: 

“Anthropogenic climate change is not to blame for Maui's drought conditions either.”

 What this means is that the “signal” of external influence on the climate hasn’t unambiguously emerged from the “noise” of internal variability. The Hawaiian islands experience drought naturally. But Hawaii has experienced a decrease in precipitation since the 1980s, and projections indicate that the wet windward sides of the islands will get rainier while the dry leeward sides will get drier.

Beyond that, warmer air drives more evaporation and dries the surface, and we know the Hawaiian islands have gotten warmer. I’d think of it like this: suppose someone gets accused of a crime and is generally really shady and has a history of bad behavior. It’s perfectly possible that there won’t be enough evidence to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt. But this doesn’t automatically mean he’s completely innocent.  

Eh? What’s she smoking? That makes no sense to me. There is no statistical signal of climate change which has emerged beyond the noise of natural variability, so it is basically impossible to apportion any significant blame for the drought conditions and subsequent Maui fires on climate change and it is correspondingly easy to explain virtually all of the observed changes in rainfall (including those occurring since the 1980s) on natural climate fluctuations. Why does she have a big problem with that?

Finally, Michael Mann is probably also smoking some of what Kate has got:

This is awful. cherry-picking various individuals and making blanket statement like this which are completely unsupportable:

This paragraph contains false statements (italicized) and mutually inconsistent statements (bold)

Although drought contributed to the severity of the fires, anthropogenic climate change is not to blame for Maui's drought conditions either. Drought is not uncommon in Hawaii, which is currently in its dry season. Parts of Maui, including much of the island's west coast, are currently under severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Parts of Maui  have been experiencing "SEVERE DROUGHT” for more than a month.

Sorry Mikey, but the current drought cannot be attributed to climate change, however SEVERE it may be, and despite the fact that it’s been continuing for ‘more than a month.’ It’s not worse than other droughts which have occurred post 2000 and the 21st century increase in severity and frequency of droughts in Hawaii can be entirely explained by natural variability. So it’s not awful and it’s not cherry-picking, it’s just the the facts, which you don’t like apparently. Stompy feet is not going to change them I’m afraid. But stompy feet got ABC’s headline changed, so there is that I suppose.