Climate change is causing devastating fires around the world, say top government officials, influential scientists, and the world’s largest newspapers.
Greece’s civil protection minister said climate change was causing the fires in Greece, Hawaii, and Canada. Climate change is increasing average temperatures that dry out wood and create fire weather. [emphasis, links added]
“The only way to prevent these events from becoming more frequent and more intense,” said climate scientist Michael Mann, “is to prevent the continued warming of the planet.”
And yet the amount of area burned annually by fire has declined over the last quarter-century. The area burned declined by an astonishing 25% between 2003 and 2019, according to NASA.
That trend has continued since, noted Bjorn Lomborg in the Wall Street Journal. Last year, there was a record-low area burned. There is little doubt about the trend because the emissions from wildfires have also declined globally since 2003.
What’s more, the best science does not attribute fires to climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), notes climate change and disasters expert Roger Pielke, Jr., “has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change.”
According to the IPCC, the most important factor in fire is not the weather but rather “human activities,” both land management and the starting of fires by humans.
Few leaders, experts, and journalists, including us at Public, doubt climate change has some influence. All else being equal, warmer weather will dry out wood fuel more.
The problem is that all else is never equal, and other factors matter much more, as fires in Greece, California, and Hawaii all show.
In a recent and comprehensive scientific review of the literature, eight scientists concluded that there was an increase in area burned in Greece.
But, they stressed, scientists “could not attribute a direct causal relationship to climate change, citing various factors such as changes in fire causes due to social, economic and land management changes, as well as fuel accumulation due to the abandonment of the countryside.”
In the most comprehensive scientific study of how to prevent uncontrollable forest fires in Greece, scientists emphasize the need for better forest management in the form of selective logging and prescribed burning to reduce wood fuel load.
Six scientists from around the world concluded that “since increasing fuel loads and continuity represent the main factor responsible for the recent catastrophic wind-driven fire events in Greece… our results can…reduce fire spread to the wildland-urban interface and protected areas.”
And putting out fires before they spread can also prevent uncontrollable forest fires.
On this account, the governments of Greece, Canada, and Hawaii all failed not only to prevent fires but also to properly respond to fires once they started.
All of this should be obvious to the government officials, climate scientists, and journalists who have spent all summer misattributing fires in Canada, Hawaii, and Europe to climate change.
It took me under 30 minutes to find and read the best-available free-to-read scientific papers on fires in Greece on Google Scholar. It was a simple task for Pielke to summarize the IPCC. And it wasn’t hard for Lomborg to update the NASA data.
Why, then, do governments, scientists, and journalists constantly get forest fires so wrong?
Michael Shellenberger is the best-selling author of “Apocalypse Never” and “San Fransicko“, Time Magazine’s “Hero of Environment”, Green Book Award Winner, and Founder of Environmental Progress.
Top image via YouTube/screencap
Read rest at Public
A simple answer: their reputations depend on the “climate crisis”, even when it does appear! Look at Mann’s book “The New Climate War” and then read my 1 star review on Amazon. He was totally deceived by preconceptions about wildfires, and put his ideas in a book, so that they are there for all time. More fool he, and all those who still consider him a leader in the “climate change” movement…
Ken, I did read through the reviews but couldn’t find yours. But glad you read it for the rest of us because I would not waste my time on anything regarding that fraud. After reading through all the ClimateGate emails when they came out I don’t understand how he and the rest of those fraudsters are still employed and not in jail.
The latest I read about Greece, authorities have taken over 80 individuals into custody, suspected of arson.
And clearly those 80 individuals were forced to start the fires due to climate change, right? The left will somehow make their actions being caused by that.
Nearly ALL the wildfires worldwide
have been arson
Most of the “matchers” go to the same church.
Here in Colorado where I live most are naturally caused due to the large number of thunderstorms with lightening strikes. Others have been caused by carelessness (fires not totally put out, one by sparks from bullets while target practicing). One of the most damaging one, destroying over a thousand homes in two cities, was started by a fire that was not totally put out and sparks from a downed power line during high winds.
Lightning. The wife and I were campground hosts at Diamond Lake Campground, Umpqua National Forrest, Oregon, back in the 1990’s. Watched a storm come up the Rogue River valley towards Crater Lake. Plenty of lightning. When the storm cleared we counted eleven (11) columns of smoke, spot fires, on National Park land. Helicopters with buckets brought in. Mostly one bucket per fire. Ten days later one of those flared up.
The firefighters had moved south following the storms. Several hundred were rushed back. Took four days to knock that one down. It was big enough that T-shirts were printed with with an illustration and the name of the fire.
Bullets don’t spark. That’s Hollywood stuff. Copper, lead, even brass do not spark on impact with rocks, dirt, or sand.
It looks neat in the movies where the sound of a ricochet has been used for decades to indicate someone getting hit (in reality, that’s a wet, deep, slapping sound).
There’s a reason people working in flammable gas environments use brass tools–they don’t make sparks if dropped. Even lead won’t, nor copper. The last rifles with steel jacked bullets in common use were the .30-40 Krag, back around the turn of the last century. Not particularly popular for hunting today.
“The ONLY way to prevent these events from becoming more frequent and more intense is to prevent the increased warming of the planet” How’s that working out? It’s the one thing we are least capable of accomplishing. There’s no profit for the Green Grifters in cutting fire breaks in the bush. Mann’s proclamation is evidence of a closed mind.