Sensational Findings Published in Nature Blow Politicised Wildfire Climate Scam Out of the Water

Sensational new findings published in Nature Communications effectively blow the politicised wildfire climate change scam out of the water. Far from human-caused climate change making wildfires worse across the United States and Canada, it was found that recent fires occurred at a rate of only 23% of that expected from a review of the previous historical record going back to the 17th century. The researchers note that a current “widespread fire deficit” persists across a range of forest types and the areas burned in the recent past “are not unprecedented” when considering the multi-century perspective.

Needless to say, there has been no mention of these finding in narrative-driven mainstream media. In fact one Nature pre-publication peer-reviewer commented on the clear danger the paper presented to this important climate scares promoting the Net Zero fantasy. “I see this paper as potentially being used by deniers of climate change impacts,” the reviewer notes. “Consider if possible some rephrasing to put even more emphasis on impact rather than on burned area,” is the suggestion. In other words, concentrate on the emotional impact of individual fires, allowing legacy media, aided by junk computer modelled attribution studies, to concentrate on speculation and fearmongering rather than the facts. Another clear example of what might be termed Ultra Processed News, designed to make the individual consumer sick with worry and induce mass climate psychosis.

A group of 19 scientists led by Sean Parks from the USDA Forest Service used accurate data from the North American tree-ring fire-scar network (NAFSN) to gain precise annual data on the areas burnt. Interestingly, it was found that recent ‘record’ fire years such as 2020 burned 6% of NAFSN sites and this compared with the 29% recorded in 1748. “Overall, contemporary fires (1984-2022) burned NAFSN sites less frequently than fires during the historical reference period (pre-1880), indicating that a substantial fire deficit persists and is still accumulating across many forests and woodlands across the United States and Canada,” it was noted.

In a conclusion that should (but it won’t) destroy the non-stop mainstream wildfire fearmongering, the scientists found that based on the fire scar record, the NAFSN sites would have been expected to burn 4,346 times from 1984-2022, yet they burnt only 989 times, a figure that is just 23% of what would have been expected under the historical fire regime. While these factual findings are dramatic, they should not come as a great surprise. Much to the chagrin of climate activists and the attribution artists, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has detected no human involvement in fire weather activity to date and expects none going forward to 2100.

In a recent article for the BBC on the Los Angeles fires, Matt McGrath ignored the evidence showing that they were made worse by local Democrat eco-mismanagement and pointed out the conclusion that a warmer world increased the chances of devastating wildfires occurring. The inevitable Net Zero plug followed: “As more fossil fuels continue to be burnt, those chances will continue to rise.” In the world of Ultra Processed News, the actual facts are often missing from the pre-determined narrative. Chief climate bunkum writer at the Guardian Damian Carrington might also care to read Parks et al. before he repeats a recent claim that “globally, scientists agree that climate change is increasing the global risk of wildfires starting and spreading”.

Back to the facts. The prevalence of non-fire years was found to occur “significantly more often” in the contemporary period than in the historic record as shown across all NAFSN sites. In fact this might be an underestimate given the relatively low sample size in the first few decades of the historical period. Current fire occurrence is still far below the historical levels despite large and ‘record-breaking’ recent fire years, such as 2020 in the western US. “Individual  years with particularly widespread fire during the 1984-2022 period were not unprecedented in comparison with the active fire regimes of the historical period across most of the study region,” state the researchers. Areas burned by wildfires during the last few decades “remain relatively low”, they note.

The graph below shows that US wildfires were much worse in the past and its veracity is confirmed by Parks et al. Dramatic improvements are shown since the end of the 1920s. But in 2021, at the height of the Biden Green Mania, the chart was withdrawn by the National Interagency Fire Centre and replaced with information from the conveniently low point of 1983. Excuses were made that the past data were unreliable.

The replacement of course meant that trusted messengers could report that wildfires had been increasing in the US, creating the obligatory ‘record’ years. The American meteorologist and founder of the climate site Watts Up With That? Anthony Watts was less than impressed. “This wholesale erasure of important public data stinks, but in today’s narrative control culture that wants to rid us of anything that might be inconvenient or doesn’t fit the ‘woke’ narrative, it isn’t surprising,” he observes.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.