Critique of the PBS Fire Wars special. 
05/08/02

I watched the pbs NOVA Fire Wars and was impressed by the coverage of fire fighting crews. The animations and explanations of the Mann Gulch and Storm King Mountain tragedies were chilling.

The general impression conveyed by the program seemed to be that the year 2000 fire season was a warning of the disastrous fire seasons to come. The implication was that the 2000 experience was unprecedented and was just the start of a cataclysmic cycle of wildland fire.

I was interested in the past history of wildland fires to see just how bad the 2000 season was compared to past years and also to find out how bad the 2001 season had been in comparison. To my surprise the 2000 season, although high was not unprecedentedly higher than other event in history. Also to my surprise and contrary to the prediction made by the program, the 2001 season was significantly lower in terms of acres burned. Although one season post 2000 is not an indicator of long term trends there was no qualification in the program's message. The repeated message was that it was almost certain that 2000 was just the start of a long period of serious and devastating fire. As 2001 showed, mother nature is not as predictable as the producers of pbs and former Interior Sec Babbitt would have us believe.

I've attached an excel worksheet with information taken from the nifc web site that provides fires and acres involved back to 1960. A look at the graphs gives a very different impression than that conveyed by pbs. The regression trend line for acres burned over the 40 year period is almost perfectly flat, i.e. there is no trend of dramatic increase in wildland fire in terms of acres affected and the trend for number of fires is actually in decline.

In my opinion, the program would have been better served to concentrate more on the fire fighters including the Mann Gulch and Storm King Mtn tragedies and the no burn policies affects on forests. The global warming projections are way over the top and not supported by conclusive evidence of actual warming much less from the affects of forest fires. Only the projections of possible warming based upon computer models support the potential of warming. (How such projections of a 2 to 4 degree rise in temperature can be so conclusive when local forecasters can't predict temperatures 24 hours in advance with any such precision is beyond me.) 

Sincerely
Phaedrus