My appearance of Fox News Friday night has generated quite a bit of interest – Watch.
![](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-61.png?resize=68%2C68&ssl=1)
Fox News
Heartland Institution senior fellow Anthony Watts breaks down the science behind the Canadian wildfires on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’
BACKGROUND:
It has happened before “climate change” was even known:
May 19, 1780 – In the midst of the Revolutionary War, darkness descends on New England at midday. Many people think Judgment Day is at hand. It will be remembered as New England’s Dark Day. Diaries of the preceding days mention smoky air and a red sun at morning and evening.
![](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-66.png?resize=720%2C433&ssl=1)
https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0519new-england-dark-day/
The 1825 Dee, or Great Miramichi Fire, or Great Fire of Miramichi, as it came to be known, was a massive forest fire complex that devastated forests and communities throughout much of northern New Brunswick in October 1825. It ranks among the three largest forest fires ever recorded in North America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1825_Miramichi_fire#:~:text=The%201825%20Dee%2C%20or%20Great,ever%20recorded%20in%20North%20America.
Wildfires were actually much worse in the past.
This graphic, using data from the National Interagency Fire Center – NIFC, shows that in the 1920’s and 1930’s, wildfire acreage burned was far greater than today.
![](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-65.png?resize=720%2C405&ssl=1)
Source: https://climateataglance.com/climate-at-a-glance-u-s-wildfires/
![](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-64.png?resize=720%2C315&ssl=1)
Figure. Graph combining data for Federal lands showing acres harvested vs. acres burned, in millions of acres. Data from U.S. Forest Service and the National Interagency Fire Center. Graph by Anthony Watts.
Satellite Data shows that globally, wildfires are decreasing.
NASA story with animated graphic: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/90493/researchers-detect-a-global-drop-in-fires
Temperatures in the United States are virtually unchanged from 2005, when a new state-of-the-art climate monitoring system called the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) was put in place by NOAA. However, this data is never reported to the news media on NOAA’s climate reports for the United States.
![](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-63.png?resize=720%2C320&ssl=1)
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/national-temperature-index/time-series/anom-tavg/1/0
50% slash in solar-energy production due to smoke
So almost five minutes of sanity on one news outlet, FOX News, isn’t going to make much of a dent on the 24/7/365 propaganda blitz from CNN, NPR, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Not to mention The NY Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, National Geographic and lots of others. It’s going to take the collapse of the economy before the obvious finally brings ordinary people around to understanding what’s going on. By then, I won’t be here, and it will be too late for those like my children, grand children and their descendants to correct the damage.
Who knows ?
“One spark can start a forest fire ….”
😉
Hope springs eternal. Fifteen years ago I hoped to see the Climate Change” monster slain before I croak. Now I know I won’t, and its demise when it happens will be ugly.
I remember reading or hearing that FBI(?) doesn’t spend much time teaching agents to recognize the various types counterfeit money.
They teach them to recognize the genuine. Then the counterfeit will stand out no matter what form it takes.
Physical money seems likely to disappear. Attrition.
The monster is now shielding behind the phalanx of climate change.
The burning of the White House by the British in 1812 will soon be at least partly ascribed to climate change.
On second thoughts, it might not be soon. Maybe it will be the last claim, but it will happen.
An excellent appearance by Antony: short and very much to the point.
To be fair, Fox does have quite a lot of climate sceptical reports.
Chris
I’m watching Fox&Friends Weekend right now and the hosts just got through ridiculing the idea that the Canadian forest fires were caused by human-caused climate change.
They spend a lot of time ridiculing the Green New Deal.
And they somewhat regularly tap very knowledgeable people from our side – Steve Milloy, Marc Morano, Joe Bastardi. I sure hope Anthony can be regularly tapped for all the sources of info he has on the way the Clima-Change™ “science” is massively disputed with real science facts and historical news reports that the mainstream news media seeks to bury.
Had a friend, God rest his soul, who was one of the most logical and intelligent persons I have known – except for AGW/CC. His information Achilles heel was National Geographic. He refused to believe that NatGeo would or could report anything incorrect.
I cancelled my subscription to National Geographic many years ago specifically because of how they mishandled the human-caused climate change narrative, substituting speculation and assumptions for facts. And they do the same thing to this very day. They still can’t prove that CO2 is doing anything they claim it is doing to the atmosphere, but they still make the claims.
The National Geograhpic has turned into a propaganda machine when it comes to human-caused climate change.
I don’t like paying for propaganda.
What if the propaganda (seems) free? Like a web page?
Is the popularity of an opinion proportional to the life of a publication surviving on untruthful publication? Sociological equation-writing is so tempting – e.g. what proportions of true or false and popular or unpopular drive magazine circulation?
Furthermore, do magazines even circulate? I like paper books but the printing press might have become anachronistic this decade.
Early 2000’s ….maybe 2002 or 2003, we had smoke in Philadelphia from wild fires in Quebec. Similar dry spell and weather conditions with Omega pattern jets.
There was no deluge of crazy in the media… it hardly made the news and there is not one historical word about it in the internet that I could find. The current episode of smoke was a little worse than in the episode in the early 2000’s…but still no big deal. The hospitals did not fill up.
During the worst day of smoke in PA last week…. my wife and I worked all day long in our garden and orchard and then cooked a meal in the chimenea. No ill effects. No panic. The sky did not fall.
Nicely succinct rebuttal of the nonsense from Anthony Watts.
The NASA Earth Observatory site shows the smoke originating from fires in a relatively sparsely populated ‘hunting and fishing reserve’ area of Quebec.
The UAH global temperature map shows this area has warmed about 0.6C in the past forty years when an impending ice age was all the rage, 1978 being the year of the long remembered Brutal Winter in the NE of US.
Are the idiots claiming if that area were 0.6C cooler the fires would not have broken out⸮
Of course the idiots are! They have no idea what 0.6C looks like or even means, much less the “catastrophic” ~0.15°C per decade really means. Makes it easier for them to sustain the terror they feel inside, and the panic makes them easier to control and be useful idiots.
Ever since the woman in Alberta pleaded guilty to starting 32 fires, a couple of years ago and those fires had been blamed on ‘climate’, Canadians have reason to be suspicious about so many simultaneously started fires recently in Quebec or anywhere else.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/wildfire-investigation-arson-charges-alberta-1.6053436
“woman … pleaded guilty to starting 32 fires … and those fires had been blamed on ‘climate’”
Maybe the climate made her do it?
Here’s an analysis worth considering:
https://makismd.substack.com/p/canadian-fires-are-being-set-deliberately/comments
Hi Anthony. I was surprised and happy to see you on with Laura Ingraham today. Glad this post appeared here at WUWT to draw a different audience to it. In addition to combating the wildfire nonsense, Laura also prompted you for the problems with NOAA’s surface stations. Yay, Laura Ingraham!!!!
With luck, Fox will fly you out to NYC to be on the Gutfeld! show. That would be fun.
Regards,
Bob
Many thanks to Anthony for the huge role he is playing in the ongoing climate saga. Very glad he mentioned the USCRN. While the plot shows no obvious trend, sure would be good to see a superimposed regression line. Whether positive or negative, it will not be very significant.
Last time I checked-up on the Spotted Owl (Kmart Sign Owl) they missed half the owls in the first count.
Just need to place a few Spotted Owls in the trees in areas where they want to build Wind Farms and some Fire Salamanders where they want to build Solar. That’ll stop them for sure.
I’m not so sure of that- the solar “farm” built next to my ‘hood had numerous “rare and endangered species” according to the state of Woke-achusetts. If I had attempted a timber harvest on that land- it would have been stoped cold and forbidden. When the solar “farm” was in the planning stages I contacted the state’s Natural Heritage and Endangered Speces Program to notify them of the rare species. They basicly told me to get lost- because pushing solar “farms” was state policy. Imagine, clearing 18 acres to put up 14,000 solar panels is fine but cutting a few trees is verboten for a timber harvest under the direction of a licensed forester.
Great talking points, but it would have been improved by showing the chart of wildfires over the years while talking about it.
Yes, the wildfire chart is a very good visual. It’s clear to anyone looking at it that forest fires were more frequent in the past than they are today.
As an engineer I love charts, but as an older human I’ve been trained not to trust them. The data that was data when I was a child stopped being data. Now charts show other things.
Today’s popular culture changes the meanings of words so often. By analogy to my disappearing-and-changing-data condition I wonder whether future adults will throw up their hands and complain that the words are just meaningless sounds.
Devil’s Avocado: “All is fair in Love and War”
Quote:“May 19, 1780 – In the midst of the Revolutionary War, darkness descends on New England
Who was occupying where when that ‘Natural Fire‘ broke out……..
….and not (simply) a precursor of how/when ‘gas’ was used in WW1?
Enough seriousness, here’s a bit of fun for us all, esp for AOC xx
Headline:“China is planting Fields of Stones stuck to Metal Bars
Da Toob
You’re even more inscrutable than usual today Peta. Do you need some sugar?
The Continental Army retreated from Québec in October 1776
you may by off on the revolutionary war but your reference to China s wholesale destruction of their particulate and chemical air quality ( real pollution not CO 2) has merit ; and the absurd lengths totalitarian and brainwashed population can descend to. I did nt have time to read everything but I’m sure someone will let me know if I missed something, thanks
Oh! I get it now Peta. The war reference to China’s industrialization at all costs.( Da Toob. Your to deep for many with your Koi( coy?) But I get it now. I think.
Shock , horror – Senior Canadian politician found to be a liar…..
Good on-air review by Anthony and Laura. I especially like the Spotted Owl chart as I grew up in the heart of Spotted Owl country, Douglas County, Oregon (No. 1 timber production in US), and spent a summer on a company fire-fighting crew. The spotted owl issue removed commercial logging on public lands and also removed the fire-fighting crews. Guess what? The cut to production ran the price of wood products up and the logging on private lands made a fortune.
That was probably the intent.
Brilliant — Well done Anthony.
Ditto x10
Yes, but Anthony forgot to plug his website. Would have been nice if he did because it might have brought even more traffic to it.
Will we have to wait till 2035 before USCRN is used for climatology, or until the start of the next decade ie 2041?
The USCRN is probably adjusted to match ClimDiv. If it’s so perfect and pristine, why would they keep around ClimDiv? We have no good surface temperature data anywhere in the world.
The uncertainty associated with even “pristine” measurement stations is so large as to preclude identifying differences in the hundredths digit. It even makes doing so in the tenths digit questionable. Too many in climate science conflate resolution with uncertainty and also believe that averaging readings from different devices at different locations can eliminate uncertainty. Both indicate a distinct lack of training in or understanding of metrology.
So much talk about heatwaves. Heatwaves and wildfires. Talk Talk. Unprecedented.
![comment image](https://www.geoffstuff.com/hotlats.jpg)
Here is a new graph for Australia.
The numbers in the blue dots are the median of the hottest 3-day heatwave temperature for each city.since public records began.
You can see that Darwin, closest to the Equator, does not have the hottest heatwave median. In fact, there is not much relation between how far south the city is and what its hotties are.
(Reason – the heatwaves form in central Australia, broadly close to Alice Springs, then move with weather systems to the coastal locations shown. Most usual trend for heatwaves in cities is S-E from Alice. How hot is gets at the coast depends on how fast the weather system moves, cooling as it goes, and how hot it started out in the centre and how closely its path matched the quickest line from centre to coast. And more factors.
Next, take a gander at how hot it gets. Not your 30 deg C that the tragic cricket Brits are talking about on their news. If I were a Brit, I would be doing a cancel culture on the world champion Test score in progress as I type. Except it is India vs Australia at The Oval in south London in the UK. Your turn next, Brits.
Try the 42 deg C for Adelaide and the 40 deg C for Melbourne. The hottest year is a degree or two above these medians that cover many years.Sydney and Melbourne data start in the 1850s and have hardly changed much at all over the many decades since. These heatwaves are NOT getting hotter by any significant measure..
Talk talk talk. All we get from so many “experts”who have failed to make the effort to look at the numbers.
Geoff S
Someone said “You can’t win an emotional argument with reason.” I’ve likely butchered the actual wording, but my paraphrasing is my takeaway and, I think quite true. My apologies to the author, whose name has been lost in my ancient mass of neurons.
On reflection, it occurs to me that emotions are easy, requiring no knowledge in their execution. We all are born with an emotional brain, right.
Reason is vastly more difficult, having to be built upon a basis of knowledge and deep understanding of its many dependencies.
Sadly, we have so bastardized our education system ( at least in the U.S. ), that we have now, at least two generations of people ill equipped for reason. The people who need to hear Anthony were all engaged with various social media cesspools at the time of this airing, and the people who will subsequently see it on the ‘tube’ are probably already well aware of his prodigious efforts.
You bring up an important point. The IPCC / Al Gore crowd likely knew early on in 1991 that their cherry-picked ‘science’ was no match for the full science facts assessments from skeptic climate scientists. So they had to find a way to appeal to the emotions of people to prompt the public to dismiss skeptics — “those guys are shills for the fossil fuel industry just like the ‘experts’ who said smoking wasn’t harmful who worked for Big Tobacco.” A totally baseless accusation, but nevertheless very effective, particularly when mainstream media news reporters never questioned an iota of the accusation or the sources of it. Much of the public accepts it because it feels like it might be true.
Imagine if someone very prominent dug into the way that false corruption accusation implodes. Gore, Oreskes, et al. would find it tough to dig their way out of being exposed as having committed one of the biggest acts of defamation in history. Then imagine the emotional outrage of center-left enviros who discover they were hoodwinked out of their donation money which was wasted on what turns out to be a non-problem.
I was watching The Ingram Angle Friday night and was surprised when Anthony’s smiling face came on. Well done. You stayed concise and pithy plus got to plug your paper.
Speaking of owls, the Climate Liars of the MSM, politicians, NGMs and “climate scientists” simply do not give a hoot about the truth. They know that people on the whole are pretty dumb, and incapable of figuring things out for themselves. So, they lie, and lie with impunity, knowing they will get away with it. And the giant echo chamber they dwell in makes it even easier.
Speaking of more owl interconnectedness, one of the lead lawyers in the spotted owl lawsuits was Vic Sher, who now heads the San Fransisco law firm that’s handling 16 of the “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits. I have a tag category for him at my GelbspanFiles blog where I prominently call out his questionable situations. Let’s politely say in one particular video presentation, he offered rather massive ‘untruths’ about particular alleged ‘evidence’ in his lawsuits.
Fun side note. The western spotted owl is likely doomed despite the old growth logging ban. The eastern barred owl has somehow managed to invade the entire spotted owl territory. They are bigger, have a wider range of prey and habitat preferences, and are outcompeting their spotted cousins. Barred owls increasing, spotted owls decreasing, across the entire spotted owl range. This according to California.
I just think the Barred Owls should mind their own business, and quit asking “Who cooks for you” and “Who cooks for you-all!”. It’s really annoying.
He reminded people to look at history.
He that the “data” is flawed at it’s source.
All in just a few minutes.
Great job!
20 – 30 fires started within minutes … this was a Terrorist attack.
https://twitter.com/markmaycot/status/1667451131490979845
I agree it was arson.
OK – may not have been a terrorist attack… could have been a very rare ‘perfect conditions’ for massive fire starting….
Good interview, Anthony. You got a lot of relevant information squeezed into a short time and came across as matter-of-fact.
Well done. Sharp interview and on point without any waffle.
It’s not clear to me why anyone would believe anything that Canadian Prime Minister Justatwit would say. He’s made an entire professional and political career out of serial lying about everything for the past two decades. He’s Prime Minister in name only, as all the real decision-making lies with the dismally stupid Kate Telford.
Few people understand how truly compromised the Canadian government is on environmental issues these days. The Minister of Environment and Global Warming is the former head of Greenpeace Quebec and convict Steven Guilbeault. The former Private Secretary of the Prime Minister, one Gerald Butts, was the former Canadian head of World Wildlife Fund.
Lots of people would like to be that stupid. Being at the top of any organization, especially a phony one, would take both talent and constant work. I bet they could talk their way into first class seats without buying a ticket.
The evidence it was arson is glaring.
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2023/06/12/alberta-investigating-175-suspicious-fires/
All the fires in Quebec started at the same time, on a clear morning with no lightning, and all near roads. And Trudeau claims this means the government needs more control? Or were they caused by government control, as my paranoia wonders.
We see the smoke but not the mirrors.
I’m often surprised to see people driving cars with windows open a tiny bit to let the driver flick cigarette ashes. People still smoke? Okay, I guess I eat chips and ice cream.
Story Tip
From the UK Telegraph today, my emphasis:
National Grid has asked for a coal power station to be warmed up as a heatwave is expected to boost demand for air conditioning across Britain.
The balance between supply and demand is tight after a fault at an interconnector between Britain and Norway, which has halved normal capacity from the station.
Meanwhile, wind power generation has slumped and many power plants have halted operations for summer maintenance, when demand is usually lower.
Uniper’s Ratcliffe coal power station could connect to the grid by 2.25pm if it is needed, according to National Grid.
It comes as Britain experiences temperatures hotter than Madrid, with amber heat warnings in place across the South East and other parts of the country.
The media story at the moment is that the country is going through a dramatic heat wave requiring everyone to take precautions against heat stroke, sun burn, dehydration etc. This for temperatures of 85F!
There has been an interesting simultaneous development in the BBC’s treatment of the weather, however. During the weather forecasts, the presenters have been raising the question of whether the current ‘heat wave’ is unusual, for June. They have shown the highs for the past five or six Junes, and said, what the numbers clearly show, that the present warm spell is in no way remarkable, just typical June weather.
Progress, perhaps, and a relief from the non-stop hysterical alarmism about every warm day.
This is one that always puzzles me. The link provided for the chart leads to the NOAA site where they publish USCRN data monthly and compare it directly to the Climate Division (ClimDiv) data that they use to produce the official US surface temperature record.
I don’t know how many times it has been pointed out here that the USCRN data actually has a warmer trend than the ClimDiv data over their joint period of record (from Jan 2005). As of May 2023, the trend in ClimDiv is +0.40F per decade and in the ‘state-of-the-art’ USCRN it’s +0.53F per decade. You can download the data from that link and verify this for yourself.
So two things: firstly, “virtually unchanged” is actually a warming trend of +0.53F per decade; perhaps not statistically significant but perfectly obvious once a linear trend line is added to the chart (see below). Secondly, if, for whatever bizarre reason, NOAA is trying to create the impression that the US is warming at a rate faster than it actually is, then it would make a lot more sense for them to report the USCRN data, rather than ClimDiv, which is warming at a slower rate.
Why don’t they do that?
Why don’t they do that?
My first assumption has to be someone paying their bills.
I’d research who pays ClimDiv’s salaries. Chart-making seems like salary expense.
So ClimDiv staff are being paid to adjust their data set to make it cooler than the ‘state-of-the art’ USCRN data?
Don’t conspiracy theories work better when they make at least a little sense?
I don’t know FinalNail. For some reason, people here really think that the USCRN is actually unique from the old dataset. If the dataset was really made up of perfect, pristine stations, they wouldn’t show the same trends as the ClimDiv. Therefore, the USCRN is a lie. They’re probably adjusting it to the old data. Maybe because they value the old dataset so much. I’m not sure. The point being stop referring to the USCRN; it is JUNK. Just like the other data.
We have no good surface temperature data. We only have UAH but even that has its limits being MSU technology.
How is it that climate change never seems to create these wildfires on private land? How does it know which forests to burn?
wildfires: The word definition/usage might contain the answer.
Do you have figures to back this assertion up? Also, you’d need to factor in the ratio between private and public land area vrs wildfires. Have you done that?
Did anything like this happen when Sherman marched to the sea ?
Here at my central Indiana home we had a slow soaker from about 09:30 through the rest of the day. We needed it. It had gotten dry enough that I have been holding off burning the sticks and cardboard in my fire pit. So everything got a good watering including the crops which are at that critical stage where a good rain can have a significant impact on yield. But we could use another inch or more of rain this week to get back up to where we should be this time of year. Just brought Buckley our new rescue in from doing his business and the deck is still wet with a bit of a breeze. Temp 56 deg. Wind is supposed to pick up today to 20 mph with gusts to 30.
Another side benefit of the rain is that it cleared the air of the smoke from the fires up in Canada and so today for the first time in a week or more there will be no air quality alert here. Humidity at 95% but the forecast high this mostly to partly cloudy day is only 66 deg. And so with the wind it is feeling quite cool for an early summer day.
We had couple of days of smoke from wild fires in Quebec in Philadelphia in 2002-3 (?). Same situation as the recently. There was dry spell in the North East which resulted fires in Canada and NJ and many other places, common during dry spells.
But now it is impossible to find anything about the East Coast smoke from the Quebec fires in early 2000’s and any other time because of the total saturation of the internet with stories about the recent fire and it’s impact with claims of climate change.
I cannot find any information of the frequency of wild fires in Quebec and their impact on the East coast. Probably because no one cared until now because of current propaganda impact of smoke on the East Coast.
So trudough says he wants to get more firefighters involved but refused to use some of his older and just retired Canadian fighters and asked for some to come from overseas, now that is true nationalism if I have ever seen it(sarc)This global 30% approved hack and Klausaferian is taking down his own country one dead tree at a time. This madness is in full bloom. I pay attention to the CC agenda and they have all hands on deck and must be stopped as they push the biggest lie ever told in human history
‘Green’ policies spark wildfires;
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/green-policies-spark-wildfires-newsom-s-shadow-campaign-and-other-commentary/ar-AA1cyV4I
Darren Evans, Professor of Ecology and Conservation at Newcastle University, said that climate models are predicting summers in the UK will “continue to become hotter, drier and more like those of southern Europe” which will mean that wildfires “may well increase in frequency here”.
Professor Evans added that the trend of increasing wildfires “recorded each year in the UK” is “linked to the changing climate and is likely to continue.”
You have been warned! The ‘models’ are predicting …..!