NO Record Fires In The Amazon, But Rhetoric Off The Charts

The modest and predictable facts of the slowly changing natural world are increasingly dwarfed by the scale of deceitful climate hysteria from posing politicians, as we again heard regarding the wholly delusional claims regarding the rate of change and the multiplying human casualties of climate change from a 16-year-old climate ‘expert’ at the UN.

But the most overtly deceitful and hypocritical attack this year has been on the right-wing President of Brazil by sanctimonious Western politicians.

He is trying to develop his country to the developed standards already enjoyed by these Western nations, through similar means to those they used centuries ago, the clearing of forests to grow the food the increasing city populations need.

Using the same method to first clear those fields and prepare existing fields for the next crop. Slash and burn. Agricultural development.

And it’s not a calamity either. None of the claims made regarding the Amazon fires were remotely true, yet are still being repeated as if facts. They are false. The facts are below.

The satellite forest fire charting service will be useful to all those who prefer the truth to the posturing deceit of French President Macron and the sensationalist mass media.

We can hope that the use of satellite data will eventually end the climate change prediction racket, as people increasingly check the reality for themselves.

Is There “A Record Level of Fires”? No. The premise for “action”, the claim about the “exceptional” and “record” number of fires, is wholly false in fact, whether we consider Brazil alone, or the Amazon Forest overall. The detailed satellite data is publicly available to check yourself, by region.

The fires were at an unexceptional level for this time of year, as the data also shows. Do it yourself. Click on the colored box to highlight the graph for the year. The satellite source data information is also provided. Dataset information here.

When the fire season starts in Australia and the USA, this site will be useful to check the facts as they are reported, so the truth of ABC and CNN reports can be checked in near real-time. Does one wonder if they will check the quickly available facts before publishing hearsay, again?

It should also be noted that fires are set every year on cleared land after crops have been harvested, to kill pests and disease before the next crop is sown. A cheap, effective and traditional alternative to pesticides.

Some increase in regular fires must happen as agriculture in Brazil develops, and many fires will be both deliberate and controlled, some less than controlled, but many will not be clearing new forest.

Whatever the detail, the macro-level reality is more complex than Macron’s posturing nonsense of burning “the lungs of the planet’. The next clear deceit, false on the well-known facts of environmental science.

The Lungs of The Planet: The lungs of the planet are the oceans. The largest amount of photosynthesis by far happens at the ocean’s surface, responsible for between 50 and 80 percent of oxygen production from CO2, from phytoplankton. Oceans cover two-thirds of the Earth’s surface and not going anywhere.

As for forests, Siberia has larger forests, perhaps less active, and there are many others globally, such as the Congo, that are expanding with the increasing CO2, and some catch fire in the Summer, when they get dry. Naturally.

Also, while growing forests sequester CO2, established forests include established trees, new growth and decaying dead trees, so are now thought to be more roughly carbon neutral. So, the Amazon is nowhere near the “lungs of the planet.”

Clearing, growing, and harvesting is also repeating new growth on an annual basis. Just not as forest. Forests re-generating after natural fires are also strong CO2 sinks. The fire itself is a natural part of the Forest life-cycle, that humans have learned to manage for their own benefit.

Science is necessarily unsure of the detail, but there are some basics that journalists, and the reader, can validate in a few minutes from multiple sources, if interested in comparing the facts with hearsay from sensationalist media, politicians, and extremists.

In addition to the oceans, the Earth’s land-masses are also greening in many places that are not the Amazon, in a Gaia-like response to the atmosphere’s increasing CO2.

As an example of a developed country, the UK has three times the trees it did in 1919, as wood burning ended, artificial materials were developed and conservation was improved – by a prosperous economy fueled by cheap abundant energy.

Global greening has increased by about 30 percent since satellite monitoring started, as the richness in CO2 increases towards the much higher levels than the photosynthesis process evolved in – nearer to 0.4 percent of the atmosphere than the marginal Ice Age level of 0.04 percent we now have.

In the extreme case, if the Amazon forest disappears altogether, other forests in many other wildernesses will green up and take the CO2 on offer, naturally, as we know is already happening.

Perhaps these posturing leaders of countries that became developed by clearing and burning their own forests for agriculture, to feed their growing populations in industrialized cities, should check these hard facts before they speak, butt out of Brazil’s business, and fix their own problems?

Better still, start by offering help with unwanted fires with some serious fossil-fuel-powered and CO2 emitting fire-fighting equipment, as they belatedly offered?

Brian R. Catt is a chartered engineer and physicist with 17 years research and development experience followed by an MBA and 30 years in hi-tech business, developing and delivering new products to market. Since retirement he has taken a ten-year interest in renewable energy, then in their justifying claim that CO2 = climate change. He recently published two papers on SSRN here and here that attempt to clearly quantify most of the basic energy and climate issues arising.