Right on cue, CBS news 60 minutes is expected link the recent California fires to “global warming”. Never mind that the fire was caused by arson, or that the area hadn’t burned in 40-60 years, leading up to a collection of dry dead underbrush which is part of the natural fire cycle. Never mind that La Nina made for a dry couple of years exacerbating the problem. Never mind that we get fires in California about this time every year. No, its the “Age of Megafires”:
THE AGE OF MEGAFIRES – Global warming is increasing the intensity and number of forest fires across the American West. Scott Pelley goes to the fire line to report. David Gelber and Joel Bach are the producers. Watch a preview http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5285410n
UPDATE: WUWT reader Jason writes to tell us that this story is a rerun, and originally aired in 2007. See it here. I’ll bet the intro will mention the California fires though. They may have even “freshened up” the report a bit for the current situation.
I wonder if CBS borrowed the title from the Christian Science Monitor 2007 report?
Here is a top 20 report from CDF, note that they poo-poo 1932. Note also that there were quite a number of 100,00+ acre fires more than 10 years ago, directly contradicting the interview in the CBS trailer.
NYT was saying it is all getting worse back in 1996. Curiously though, you won’t find a single mention of “global warming” or “climate change” in that story. It was all about forest management issues:
But the recent methods used to control the growth of Western forests has also been blamed. In view of this summer’s debacle, debate is intensifying on how to better manage these forests.
Loggers correlate today’s wildfires with a Federally mandated cut in timber harvests from national forests, from a peak of 12 billion board feet a year in the 1980’s to about 4 billion this year.
…
But after World War II, a Smokey the Bear ethic took hold in the West, and total fire suppression became a national goal. Without regular low-level fires, Western forests grew dense, and massive amounts of fuel built up.
Today, when a Western forest ignites, it often explodes with a force unknown in earlier times. Racing from tree crown to tree crown, fires last longer and travel farther.
Scott Pelley is the same reporter that went to Antarctic in 2007 at the height of the melt season to tell us that “Antarctica is Melting”. They called that one the “The Age of Warming” Of course Scott never told his viewers that it was the peak melt season or that Antarctic ice is above normal.
And finally, never mind that 100 years ago, we didn’t have CNN or 60 minutes or “Action News” to regularly scare us to death with dramatic visual linkages. Back then, fire were just another part of the natural landscape.
From my perspective , we live in the “Age of MegaFUD“
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ratings. its all for ratings.
What the heck?!?! They ran that same story in 2007!
Proof: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3389657n&tag=contentMain;contentBody
I predict that there won’t be another “megafire” in that area of California for at least 50 years.
Sigh , I wish anyone who think fires in California are a result of global warming would read John McPhee’s The Control of Nature . He discusses the natural volitility of the brush , notably chapparel in SoCal .
60 minutes has absolutely no credibility anyway if your a sentient being and have watched this tripe alarmism in the past. Here is just a brief rundown of “news shows” I recall before completely and forever turning them off.
1. Sudden acceleration of cars. Spawned many lawsuits and cost Audi $10 billion and led to other lawsuits against american car makers. Much later it was concluded that these were driver error, not sudden unbidden acceleration.
2. Exploding gas tanks on chevy trucks. They were rightfully sued for putting igniters in the fuel spouts to insure an explosion for the cameras because the trucks just wouldn’t explode on cue otherwise. CBS lost.
3. Alar on apples. Apple growers were nearly bankrupted in many parts of the country from completely phoney assertions about the imagined diseases from the use of Alar. I suspect CBS ran breathless “news” alarmism stories about DDT in the 60s.
If it’s alarmist and the gullible will watch ,and boost ratings, 60 Minutes will say anything. Global Warming seems made to order for CBS, one of the truest and greediest corporate evil doers I’ve ever come across.
They are shameless.
REPLY: NBC Dateline had the truck gas tank scam story, not CBS
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/11/us/gm-suspends-ads-on-nbc-news-despite-apology-for-truck-report.html
– Anthony
Anyone who pays any attention to 60 Minutes gets exactly what he/she deserves.
I gave up totally after the Illinois Power nuclear “hit job”. It was different from blowing up a pick up truck with explosives, but no more useful.
And right on schedule – that being the one dictated by a cold PDO and a fuzzy El Nino – the state of Washington is cloud covered with severe outbreaks of rain.
Labor Day weekend, County Fair, Ellensburg Rodeo, and all outdoor activities are soggy. Sorry about that; let’s blame global warming, or climate change, or weather, or an act of God. Doesn’t really matter — it is wet!
This is funny.
Riaño, D., J.A. Moreno Ruiz, D. Isidoro, and S.L. Ustin. 2007. Global spatial patterns and temporal trends of burned area between 1981 and 2000 using NOAA-NASA Pathfinder. Global Change Biology, 13, 40–50.
Found increases in burned area increasing in the western United States, southern Europe, and interior Eurasia, but decreasing burned area in Central America and much of Southeast Asia. “There was also no significant upward or downward global trend in the burned area for any individual month.”
Now, this is a short period and I’d bet if we had data back to the beginning of the century there would be no trends anywhere (there’s good reason to believe that the upward trend in the Western US is part of natural cyclic variation) But how can a trend which doesn’t occur globally be attributed to global warming?
Anthony,
Perhaps the press would be interested in this new theory as to the cause of climate change:
Just as plausible as man’s CO2.
Hope it gives you a good laugh !
Sorry Anthony about referencing CBS as responsible instead of NBC. After awhile all the trumped up and phoney “news” outlets just seem to blend together.
LloydG (15:33:18) :
Alphabet soup?
Pasco wa, and Yakima Wa had record rainfall-and may have record cold.Bend Redmond area of Or.-Freeze advisory.Arson isn’t a by-product of Global Warming.
Some of the biggest, deadliest, fire is human caused..
Like the Twin Towers?
timetochooseagain (15:28:28) : changes in burn rates
The western US seems to have a lot of arson. The current California fire is one such, but in the Ellensburg region of central Washington State a few years ago an unhappy fellow set about a dozen fires before he was caught. He worked on road construction projects and on his way home after work he would set a fire. Take out the acres burned from nut-cases such as this man and re-run the numbers.
In equatorial and tropical areas there seems to be socio-economic changes resulting in less burning of forests.
These issues require more than a sound-bite from the MSM so don’t expect the actual reasons to displace global warming on the evening news.
Alar on apples was a Fenton Communications project.
Follow the FUD.
“The age of Megafires”
Sounds like the History Channel.
Just watched.
Boycott
Lets try again. Boycott: Plavix, Minwax, GM, and Flomax
In Arizona a few years back, we had an out of work “fireman” start what became the largest recorded fire in AZ. He was just looking (making) for work. We had another large fire started by a female who got lost and decided to send a smoke signal by starting a fire.
OK , I just watched it . I lived in Ketchum for nearly 25 years and still have a residence there . “60 Minutes”‘s reprort is BS . No time to comment further , will be back .
Have a look at this google map picture from northern Canada. All the brown-yellow areas are fire burns, some newer, some decades old. Now those would have been mega-fires.
http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=59.78958,-108.808594&spn=5.232219,14.084473&t=h&z=6
San Diego has experienced two “megafires” in the last 6 years. Both were caused by dry windy weather combined with dense brush that hadn’t burned in over 20 years. The massive loss of houses was caused by San Diego’s growth into rural areas, canyons and mesas surrounded by highly flamable brush. The solution is controlled growth and strict guidelines for new communities built in fire prone areas as well as controlled burns.
It may well be the era of “megafires” but of course it has nothing to do with global warming or climate change. It’s similar to the changes in Florida that have resulted in higher monetary damage from hurricanes…more people living in areas that historically are hit by storms.
You put it right, “Rubbish”, in this case recycled “Rubbish”.
He is one off the most biased reporters i have ever heard of. If you want to report you should always show to sides of the coin. This guy should be fired and laughed at.
John F. Hultquist (16:03:42) : And we could complicate it more with talking about fire suppression policies and forest (mis)management. The reasons for these things are complex. So yeah, the media doesn’t bother to delve into them.