Climate Depot’s Marc Morano disagreed, arguing that climate change “cannot be blamed for California’s electricity woes, despite claims to the contrary.”
“The main culprit in California’s new blackout economy is mismanagement of water, forests and electrical lines,” he said. “If California had been more proactive in scaling back tree and brush growth near electrical lines, mass-scale electrical blackouts would not be necessary.”
Michael Shellenberger: "Against the picture painted by celebrities and the mainstream media that fires around the world are caused by economic growth, the truth is the opposite: the amount of land being burned is declining thanks to development, including urbanization. That's because the amount of land being converted into ranches and farms has been going down, not up, and because more of it is being done with machines than with fire. For the last 35 years, the world has been re-foresting, meaning new tree growth has exceeded deforestation. The area of the Earth covered with forest has increased by an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined.
Less land is being converted into agriculture globally in part because farmers are growing more food on less land. Much of the re-forestation is occurring in deserts and tundra that had been barren, thanks to human-led reforestation initiatives, such as in China and Africa, and because of global warming. Warmer temperatures are what have allowed forests to grow in tundra.
"The wealthy countries hold big speeches on the need to avoid deforestation but they already deforested everything. "Few countries have the moral authority to talk about deforestation with Brazil." - Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva (2007)
"Since NASA satellites program MODIS began collecting measurements there has been a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent." --NASA Earth Observatory, August 2019
"News reports about the Amazon fires strike a fear that one of the last great forests is disappearing. That’s completely untrue. Forests are making a comeback! More precisely, the tree cover of the planet is increasing. Since 1982, a recent peer-reviewed paper in Nature suggests, the planet’s tree cover increased by 2.24 million km2 (an increase of roughly 7%)." --Vincent Geloso, American Institute for Economic Research, 26 August 2019
Brendan O’Neill: 'We’re being lied to about the rainforest. The fires are not out of control. This is not ecocide. The Amazon is not the lungs of the world. And there are more trees on Earth today than there were 35 years ago. Don’t believe the greens'
NASA: Amazon Is Burning At ‘Below Average’ Rates
Update: NASA: Uptick in Amazon Fire Activity in 2019 - August 19, 2019: "With the fire season in the Amazon approaching its midpoint, scientists using NASA satellites to track fire activity have confirmed an increase in the number and intensity of fires in the Brazilian Amazon in 2019, making it the most active fire year in that region since 2010."
Amazon rainforest fires at record high levels? ‘This is a blatant lie’ – Fires ‘nowhere close to a record so far in 2019’ -"The NY Times claims 2019 fires are way up, over 2018. That is correct. What they don’t say, is that about 1/2 the years BEFORE 2019 are higher, and about 1/2 are lower. Cherry picking of the first order."
Bolivia’s Wildfires Ignored By The BBC – The Reason? ‘Evo Morales is a socialist, unlike Brazil’s Bolsonaro’ - Of course, Evo Morales is a socialist, unlike Brazil’s Bolsonaro. But I am sure that had nothing to do with the BBC’s lack of interest in this story!
The fires are mainly in agricultural areas as farmers prepare their land for planting. The land was cleared in the past.
an informative article and very informative map by NYT on Amazon fires. Map shows that fires in previously cleared land. Nothing new. Furore is yet another fraud by enviro activists. https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1165341025151389702 …
So why are there so many fires? “Natural fires in the Amazon are rare, and the majority of these fires were set by farmers preparing Amazon-adjacent farmland for next year’s crops and pasture,” soberly explains The New York Times. “Much of the land that is burning was not old-growth rain forest, but land that had already been cleared of trees and set for agricultural use.”
It is routine for farmers and ranchers in tropical areas burn their fields to control pests and weeds and to encourage new growth in pastures. What about deforestation trends? Since the right-wing nationalist Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s president, rainforest deforestation rates have increased a bit, but they are still way below their earlier highs:
"The left is doing its level best to blame Brazil's bush fires on Brazil's conservative, Trump-like president, Jair Bolsonaro, and get him thrown out of office...Socialist President Evo Morales has openly encouraged what's known, at least in Venezuela, as "conuco" agriculture, telling subsistance farmers it's fine to set of fires to gather charcoal to sell for fuel or clear the land of brush for planting, and now he's refusing international firefighting help."
"Now Bolivia is robbing them of their rimshot argument. No more Sting and the rainforest man for their "narrative" now. What appears to be a far more desperate and mismanaged situation is going on Bolivia, and we don't see any eurochicken clucking about the "lungs of the world" or sanctioning the socialist hellhole. The European Union and much of the G-7 are focused exclusively on Brazil and putting the screws to Bolsonaro blaming him for a broader temporary weather phenomenon. It's starting to look political and it would be a welcome thing if President Trump sticks up for the man among the clucker. Bolivia makes their hypocrisy show."
