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<div><font face="Georgia" color="#1F1D1D">Los Angeles
Times</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia">October 24, 2015, 6:00 a.m.</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia"
color="#000000"
>http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-84806998/</font></div
>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia"><b>Was Gov. Jerry Brown wrong</b> to blame
this year's epic California wildfires on climate change?<b> An Oct. 18
Times article said he was.</b></font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><b><br></b></font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><b>Since then, several
experts have written to say the article was wrong</b>.</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia Bold" color="#000000">Max Moritz, UC
Berkeley:</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">It's splitting hairs,
as scientists often will, to note that we may not know conclusively
whether climate change has caused this particular drought and these
specific wildfires.</font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">As a wildfire
scientist, I find it troubling that this nuance became front-page news
because it implies more uncertainty about climate change than there
really is among experts.</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia Bold" color="#000000">Climate Resolve
executive director Jonathan Parfrey bluntly assesses the
article:</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">The Times really blew
it in this piece.</font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">For example, the
recent UC Irvine wildfire study was wildly misinterpreted. The Times
failed to note the study's most likely outcome for the period of
2040-60: The area to be burned by Santa Ana-wind-induced fires will
increase by 64%, and acres consumed by summer fires will increase by
77%.</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia Bold" color="#000000">Alex Hall, director of
the UCLA Center for Climate Change Solutions, clarifies what we do and
don't know:</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">The article misleads
readers by implying that science is in on this, and any link between
fires and climate change has been disproved. In fact, a
detection-and-attribution study - an analysis of the probability
that the current fire season in California would play out as it has,
if climate change were not in the picture - has not been
done.</font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br>
Even if the link has not been definitively proved, the scientific
works referenced in the article provide plenty of reason to suspect
climate change is playing some role in the severity of this fire
season. Climatologist Park Williams' study shows that human-caused
warming is contributing to drier conditions, which would make fuels
more susceptible to burning. The study I co-wrote with UC Irvine and
UC Davis colleagues shows that heat is an important determinant of how
much area is burned by fire - particularly in those fires, like the
ones we have been experiencing all summer, not driven by Santa Ana
winds. So the warming climate we're already experiencing should
increase the area burned.</font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">The Times should take
care to more accurately characterize scientific evidence in the
future.</font></div>
<div><br></div>
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<div><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-1" color="#000000">"Our
results are quite striking. First, temporal increases of climate
change-associated mortality do not occur only in regions with temporal
water deficit increases, but also in areas without temporal water
deficit increases. .... our results call for more studies
to examine the impacts of recent climate changes on forest dynamics
beyond those regions with temporal water deficit
increases."</font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-1"
color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-1" color="#000000">Yong Luo and
Han Y. H. Chen. Climate change-associated tree mortality increases
without decreasing water availability.<i> Ecology Letters,</i> (2015)
doi: 10.1111/ele.12500</font></div>
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<div><font face="Geneva" size="-2" color="#000000">"Given their
relatively young age and favorable competitive status in these
forests, these sugar maples should be experiencing the best growth
rates of their lives."<br>
<br>
"The last few decades have brought warmer and wetter conditions
to the Adirondacks, which are typically good for plant growth,"
said Dr. Colin Beier, an associate professor of ecology at ESF who
supervised Bishop's thesis research. Meanwhile, there have been big
strides in reducing acid rain, which is especially damaging to sugar
maple.</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-2" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-2" color="#000000">"Given these
changes, we would expect these trees to be thriving, but they are
not."<br>
<br>
Journal article here: (Open access)<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="-2" color="#000000"><b>Regional growth
decline of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and its potential causes<br>
</b>Daniel A. Bishop, Colin M. Beier, Neil Pederson, Gregory B.
Lawrence, John C. Stella, Timothy J. Sullivan</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" size="-2"
color="#000000"><i>Ecosphere </i> Volume 6, Issue 10 (October
2015)<br>
doi:<u> http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/ES15-00260.1<br>
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/ES15-00260.1</u></font></div
>
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<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" color="#000000">"A surprising
result is the high proportion of species responding to recent,
relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6
C)."</font><br>
<font face="Bookman Old Style" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" color="#000000">Camille Parmesan.
"Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate
Change."<i> Annual Review of Ecol. Evol. & Systematics </i>
2006. 37:637-69</font><br>
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