MIST Professor LeRoy Westerling interviewed by various media sources on the complexity, climate change and management science problems underlying new regimes of fire activity in California and abroad:
“We can no longer use the observed past as a guide. There’s no stable system that generates a measurable probability of events to use the past record to plan for the future...Now we have to use physics and complex interactions to project how things could change.” - Dr. Westerling quoted in "The Only Thing Fire Scientists Are Sure Of: This Will Get Worse", Wired Magazine (Aug. 1, 2018)
"Forest area burned every year could more than double by the end of the century." - exerpt from "Climate change will be deadlier, more destructive and costlier for California than previously believed, state warns", LA Times (Aug. 27, 2018)
"California is 'spending millions and millions of dollars on this while the federal government is sitting on its hands,' Professor Westerling said. 'And all that money is being raised because we’re putting a price on carbon.' " - Dr. Westerling quoted in "Trump Inaccurately Claims California Is Wasting Water as Fires Burn", New York Times (Aug. 6, 2018)
Other news articles:
- "Climate And Wildfire Science Specialist Weighs In On Worsening Conditions In California" - NPR
- "Fire Scientists Are Sure of Only One Thing: This Will Get Worse" - MotherJones
- "Climate Change Is Making California's Wildfires Worse. So Are Humans" - Weather.com
- "California wildfires made worse by hot, dry conditions, not water policy" - Politifact.com
- "Trump tweet blaming water diversion for fires baffles experts" - SF Chronicle
- "Trump wrongly blames California's worsening wildfires on water diversions" - MorningStar
- "Factcheck: How global warming has increased US wildfires" - www.carbonbrief.org