Global Fire Data shows this year is unequivocally a low fire season in the Amazon. But social media tears and outrage is running at 1000% driven by old photos and fake facts of the Amazon producing “20% of our planet’s oxygen”.
And the media experts reported the house was on fire in the lungs of the world, or something to that effect. They didn’t check the data, didn’t ask hard questions.
Based on hyperbolic twitter pics French leader Macron is threatening to cancel a foreign trade deal. The hype serves the purpose of attacking the right wing Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro in the lead up to a G7 summit this week…
Who’s feeding the twitter flames?
The photo he used? It’s a stock photo from Loren McIntyre, a photographer who died in 2003. h/t @Desesquerdizada
Funding cuts have created plenty of enemies
Many people have a reason to want Bolsonaro to look bad: In May Bolsonaro withdrew an offer to host a United Nations Latin America and Caribbean climate week. In the same week, the president fired self-confessed “militant environmentalist” Alfredo Sirkis, then-leader of The Brazil Forum for Climate Change. He also declared a 30 percent funding cut to maintenance costs of Brazil’s state-owned universities. Three weeks ago, Brazil’s INPE Space director was sacked. The INPE have been the source of the dire data used in some media stories. But Bolsonaro said the data was “not consistent with reality”, accused the head of the INPE of “lies” and working for an NGO.
On the 13th August Germany announced plans to withdraw some €35 million due to the country’s lack of commitment to curbing deforestation . On August 15, Norway suspended donations too.
Thanks to Robert Walker at Science 2.0 for the statistics via Climate Depot.
The tally of fire counts here is up to data for August 22, 2019. Emissions are preliminary estimates based on fire counts, but the graph shows just how ordinary, normal and boring 2019 is expected to be when the final numbers are done.
Amazon fires, emissions, graph, record years. (Click to enlarge) | Source: globalfiredata.org
The actual fire counts for the whole Amazon Region as listed up to Aug 22nd:
The monthly fire count total. (Click to enlarge) | Source: globalfiredata.org
Spot the coincidence
The twitter firestorm is amplified just when the UN and big-government fans could use a negotiation weapon.
What is the outside world doing?
The UN secretary general and many world leaders and celebrities have expressed concern. The Amazon will be high on the agenda for G7 leaders at a summit in France this weekend. They are likely to make a strong statement condemning the recent increase in deforestation and urge Brazil to restore the Amazon protections that previously made the country a global environmental leader.
Where was the mainstream media?
Some journalists appear to be running off the twitter feed. But others seem to be carefully crafting their stories to highlight irrelevant, cherry-picked half truths. Notice how many tell us that this year in XXX (sub part of the Amazon) things are “twice as bad as last year” as if history starts in 2018, and as if the low fire statistics from the rest of Amazon don’t matter? Which news outlets are telling the whole truth and nothing but…
International leaders are transparently exploiting the hype:
“France and Ireland say they will not ratify a huge trade deal with South American nations unless Brazil does more to fight fires in the Amazon. French leader Emmanuel Macron said President Jair Bolsonaro had lied to him about his stance on climate change.” — BBC News, 6 hours ago.
Right at the end of one BBC news article the last line hints that the whole event is unwarranted. Why is this just an “add on”?
“US space agency Nasa, meanwhile, has said that overall fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average compared to the past 15 years.”
Remember when it comes to climate change, NASA are the definitive last word, but when it comes to Amazon fires, they’re just a casual addendum. “No comment”.
Jonathon Watts at The Guardian carefully words the panic. It’s almost as if he is aware of what is going on but not happy to make it too clear. With headlines like these, anyone would think the readers of The Guardian are 14 year old girls.
Does this happen every year?
Yes, but some areas have suffered far more than usual. In the worst-affected Brazilian state of Amazonas, the peak day this month was 700% higher than the average for the same date over the past 15 years. In other states, the amount of ash and other particulates in August has hit the highest level since 2010.
Is the entire forest ablaze?
No. Satellite monitoring experts say the images of an entire forest ablaze are exaggerated. A great deal of misinformation has been spread by social media, including the use of striking images from previous years’ burning seasons.
The Amazon makes 20% 6% of the worlds oxygen:
The hype is so over the top even Michael Mann is watering it down. This might be the first time Michael Mann is on the same side as skeptics?
Do we need to worry about oxygen?
No. Although some reports have claimed the Amazon produces 20% of the world’s oxygen, it is not clear where this figure originated. The true figure is likely to be no more than 6%, according to climate scientists such as Michael Mann and Jonathan Foley. Even if it were accurate, the crops being planted in the cleared forest areas would also produce oxygen – quite likely at higher levels. So although the burning of the rainforest is worrying for many reasons, there is no need to worry about an oxygen shortage.
As it happens, most of the worlds oxygen comes from phytoplankton.
Right wing leaders might cause fires, left wing leaders go unnamed
Buried in a Guardian story is the admission that there are also huge fires in Bolivia which has a “leftwing populist president.” The Guardian writer uses that to claim this is not a political witchhunt, yet with no one hounding the Bolivian leader, this appears to be exactly what it is.
Is this the fault of the Brazilian president?
Jair Bolsonaro has made things a lot worse by weakening the environment agency, attacking conservation NGOs and promoting the opening of the Amazon to mining, farming and logging. The far-right leader has dismissed satellite data on deforestation and fired the head of the space agency. But it is not solely his fault. The agricultural lobby is powerful in Brazil and it has steadily eroded the protection system that was so successful from 2005-2014. Deforestation crept up in the past five years under the previous presidents Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer. The rate has accelerated rapidly in the first eight months of Bolsonaro’s rule. But this is not just about him, politics or Brazil. There are also huge fires in Bolivia, which has a leftwing populist president.
Just asking the question “is it his fault” feeds the idea that it is. It’s almost like it was written by a green marketing company — speaking of — in the last paragraphs Watts uses the fake news and hyperbole from green NGO groups to… urge political activism, and raise funds for the same hyperventilating NGO’s:
What can individuals do?
The most important actions are political and collective. Join a party or campaign group that makes the Amazon a priority. Through these groups, urge your elected representatives to block trade deals with countries that destroy their forests and to provide more support for countries that expand tree cover.
Apart from this, donate to organisations that support the forest, forest dwellers and biodiversity, including Instituto Socioambiental, Amazon Watch, WWF, Greenpeace, Imazon, International Rivers and Friends of the Earth.
Meanwhile, the Australian ABC, paid 3 million dollars a day — copies preachy wisdom straight off The Conversation site. Thus does a PhD student’s analysis get fed through to our national news service: Amazon rainforest fire: Five things you need to know. None of those five things include the G7, the fake stats or the fake photos. No questions are asked or even allowed at the ABC. What job exactly is the ABC supposed to do?
Thank you to all the people who help through the Paypal Tipjar and other ways to keep the blog going.
Excellent work Jo. I’ve been waiting for some clarity on this canard.
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Serp and Jo, the Ch 9 news last night showed images of the Amazon jungle, aka the world’s lungs, ablaze. The only problem was the images were not of rain forest anywhere let alone the Amazon jungle. The were of sparse scrubland similar to much of Oz.
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zoom.earth/#view=-3.14,-59.75,5z/date=2019-08-25,pm
Satellite image. There is a fire but it is NOT HUGE. In Oz we have seen BIG fires. Satellites cannot lie.
10
Macron is an appointee. Fillon (raw onion, Grange Hermitage?) was removed, Le Pen was set up to be knocked over. The bloke is as “elected” as Gillard and Turnbull, and, like Gillard and Turnbull, he was spontaneously detested despite shameless media spruiking and cover-ups. I dunno. There’s just something about globo appointees the punters don’t go for.
Nope. This is about Bolsonaro, for better or worse, not playing the game.
The most fires right now are in Angola and Congo, by far, but Macron won’t be worried about those “lungs”. With fire a regular event in the Amazon he and the celebritariat have got plenty of old photos and stock footage to trot out. Hell, why not use some fresh Angola footage for the Amazon? Nobody checks, right? And it’s all in Portuguese.)
As we know, there are fires Macron really likes and fires he doesn’t like. (Throw another shrimp on the cathedral, Manu?)
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Turncoat is ex employee of sacks of gold bank…..
Macron is ex employee of Rothschilds bank….
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Actually, Turnbull is not a “turncoat”.
At every point in his slimy political career, he was loyal to the Goldman-Sack leftist creed.
He was an “operative” for the global agenda and did a pretty good job at getting rid of conservatism from the Liberal Party.
Not sure yet, that Morrison isn’t one of the same.
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“Not sure yet, that Morrison isn’t one of the same.”
Oh, he’s one and the same……just got a different “coat”..
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OriginalAntisemite,
That old trope again.
00
“France and Ireland say they will not ratify a huge trade deal with South American nations unless Brazil does more to fight fires in the Amazon.”
China should easily fill that hole for commercial and strategic reasons.
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When I was at uni we called that imperialism and colonialism, and protested it!
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Anomalous cold front blamed for blanketing Sao Paulo.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/darkness-blanketed-sao-paulo-midday-monday-and-shed-light-on-widespread-environmental-issues/70009133
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“Three weeks ago, Brazil’s IPNE Space director was sacked. The INPE have been the source of the dire data used in some media stories.”
IPNE or INPE, which is it?
Where do I send my proof reading invoice? 😉
[Thanks for your help. – jo]
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And “But Bolsonaro said the data was “not consistent with reality”,”
Feel free to delete these comments after editing the text. 🙂
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You don’t (or File 13, the Circular File, if you really have to put it somewhere) :-).
You do it out of the goodness of your heart, same as the rest of us do.
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Has anyone seen the faked NASA images ?.
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I’d like to contribute to the crisis but my garden hose only goes as far as the front gate !
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What happened to it?
Was it shortened by a scrub/bush fire?
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Very important OT , Tim Ball has won his case with Michael Mann .
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Oops! I hit the red button. Sorry mate.
Great news! Let’s hope this helps Mark Steyn!
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Emannuel Macron who is encouraging world leaders to suspend a trade deal with Brazil yet refuses to negotiate with Britain over an EU trade deal can go whistle.
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Of of course it’s just bullsh#t propaganda
But this is WAR !
Anything & everything just HAS to be used
To WIN the WAR !
As for the Australian Brainwashing Corporation ?
Just a very willing accomplice !
Now we know,
‘Nuff said .
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Now we know, ’nuff said…
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/amazon-rainforest-on-fire-2019/
“True – A portion of the Amazon was on fire in August 2019”.
“False – Viral photographs supposedly showing the fire are actually several years old”. No, I’m shocked!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2007/oct/24/1
2007 Grauniad* article with pics of fires 1988/89 onwards (looks just like last week).
Hey, what’s 30 years between
friendsshysters – it’s only a ‘climate cycle’.120
Extinction Rebellion (and rest of The Greens) are going to have to seriously consider two strong new protests which will give them a good new opportunity for gluing themselves to stationary objects, like Amazonian trees (and feeding the Jaguars) … 😛
They need to:
1: Raise awareness of Brazil’s forest mismanagement: government at all levels is not doing enough to reduce the forest’s fuel load (like California doesn’t )
2: Raise awareness of the dangers of electrical storms and lightning, working towards an early lightning ban
They could then glue themselves to trees; faster growing, the better …
(That would then continue to raise awareness of their stupidity)
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They lie. So what? Business as usual.
Off topic: Obama just bought a beachfront property in Martha’s Vineyard. A brave guy, no fear of a sea level rise. (He probably got it cheap because of a fear of a sea level rise).
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Strangely, all the other sources, like the smithsonian have the opposite view, why should this one be credible? Of course, climate depot is unimpeachable /sarc off
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Truth and fact never did enter into your brain-washing, did it PF. !
You have nothing except baseless, empty blethering.
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So you can’t find anything wrong then, Peter?
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Just saying that in the world we live in, any one source should not be taken on trust. In this case it is hard to square the data from climate depot with data reported by science daily and new scientist. That being said, there is also some agreement between all three, in for example, the number fires reported. But the size of the fires is reportedly much higher in NS, Smithsonian, and Science Daily.
So if I accept the vale’s for the number of fires form climate deport and the other 3, then no -I can find nothing wrong. However if I add the size of the fires, a different picture emerges.
Mind you, for the last 3 weeks, the area where I live has been blanketed by a peat fire, which, in the drought, is proving impossible to extinguish. The area burnt so far is only a few hectares, but the smoke covers the entire river catchment. According to the logic displayed in#11 then, the elderly should ignore the medical advice as the fire is only a minuscule part of said catchment
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Peter Fitzroy You are living in
An area of smokey emergency.
Best to evacuate mate
At least until it rains next week
When an East coast low
Wanders by.
🙂
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“I can find nothing wrong. “
So, just another ZERO-evidence post of mindless blathering.
A normal PF comment, in other words.
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I am perplexed that you continue uncritically to espouse the view that New Scientist is an authoritative source Peter Fitzroy.
I recall that in the 1980s it was a responsible organ but for at least the last twenty years it has been a blatant AGW propagandist in lockstep with all the other “science” magazines on the shelves of our fast dwindling number of newsagents.
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“a blatant AGW propagandist”
That is why PF uses it.
He is either totally gullible…
… or he knows that its a load of anti-science BS, and is just doing it as a form of low-level deceitful trolling/attention-seeking.
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Peter, the Global Fire Data site has extraordinary detail. It slices the Amazon into many areas and has monthly data on every area separately. It updates on a daily basis and it’s all reported “live” or close to it.
Meanwhile NASA also agrees with them.
Feel free to explain why INPE — the outlier — should be right. Otherwise I’ll assume they are skewing the data for financial benefit and in protest at funding cuts. Corruption is everywhere in Brazil, which doesn’t mean Bolsonaro is right, but since we also know Macron/Merkel/BBC/etc are being deceitful to isolate him and find excuses to squash trade deals, I’m inclined to think the truth lies closer to Bolsonaro.
Why aren’t Macron et al protesting against the Bolivian fires? Leftist president.
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The BBC like the ABC is not renowned for pandering to climate change doubters, in fact it is renowned for not doing so. Hence this fact check from the BBC carries rather more weight than a fact check from. say, the Guardian. Here is what the BBC News said on August 23 2019
Our colleagues from BBC Reality Check spent most of the day on Friday getting to the bottom of this.
Professor Jon Lloyd from Imperial College London says although the Amazon produces a lot of oxygen during the day through photosynthesis, it absorbs about half of it back through the process of respiration to grow. Further oxygen is used up by the forest’s soil, animals and microbes — BBC News, Amazon fires: Ten of your questions answered
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“While the media has focused on Brazil, Bolivians are asking the world to notice their unfolding tragedy“.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/08/25/bolivias-wildfires-ignored-by-the-bbc/
Paul Homewood writes: 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!
As The Simpsons’ Groundskeeper Willy would mutter (re the French/Macron): Cheese-eating surrender monkeys!
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This whole story about the fires in the Amazon being a global catastrophe is weapons-grade bollocks.
According to most stories I have read in the MSM, there is (gasp!) about 1,400 square miles (most stories are American,hence square miles) of Amazonian rainforest that has burnt since January. The rainforest is estimated to cover 2,300,000 square miles. Therefore, the area lost to fires represents 0.0608696 % of the entire forest.
To illustrate it another way, draw a square 150 cm on each side. Now, draw another square inside it, 4 cm on each side and colour it red. That (roughly) shows the relative size of the area burnt to the whole Amazon Rainforest.
And all the talk about the Amazon Rainforest being the “lungs” of the planet? The Taiga (Boreal Forest) in Canada and Russia combined is three times the size of the Amazon Rainforest.
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Would be great to get some actual quoteable numbers on that. It’s an excellent line of reasoning…
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I can’t help with that, but this may be of interest.
Daily data from fire-prone USA states are available here:
National Fire Information Center (NIFC), Boise, Idaho
https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm
They don’t work on Sat/Sun, so the current numbers are for August 23rd – Friday. Lands with fire are about 73% of the 10 year average. At this time in 2015 the fire-land was almost twice that of now.
Year-to-date . . . Fires: 31,892 with Acres: 3,866,659
10 year average: Fires: 43,409 with Acres 5,331,818
For those that want hectares –> an acre is about 40% of a Ha.
1 hectare is 2.471 acres. There are 0.404685642 hectares per acre
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While you’re at it, some data on the incidence of forest fires in Canada during the Prohibition era (when the Demon Rum threatened all life on Earth) would be apropos. Because Canadian prohibition was not national but (as now) provincial, and always less shrilly fanatical than across the 54:40 or Fight line, those data could put the US forest fire figures in perspective. Bootleggers brewing moonshine in the woods could destroy evidence with a match at the approach of dry killers. The question is whether this was a significant or trivial driver of the huge areas set ablaze between 1919 and 1934. But no data means no comparisons…
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Taiga is the world’s largest land biome covering 17 million square kilometres (6.6 million square miles) or 11.5% of the Earth’s land area in Russia, Mongolia, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, United States, Canada, Scotland.
Area of the Amazon rain forest 5.5 million square kilometres
The Funny River Fire in Alaska began on May 19, 2014 and burned 193,597 acres (78,346 ha), mostly Black spruce taiga. A July 10 overflight found no sign of the fire continuing to burn. It had grown to 195,858 acres.
US Forest Service – http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/photos/AKKKS/2014-05-21-1432-Funny-River-Fire/picts/2014_05_28-01.41.17.653-CDT.jpeg
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Absolutely delightful eco-shredding article in Spiked by Brendan O’Neill that pops the pecksniffian balloon of the corporatist globalist Left and their Green Trojan horse — Why shouldn’t Brazilians burn down trees? The Western hysteria over the rainforest fires is riddled with colonial arrogance.
Meanwhile, NASA are milking it for all its worth, presenting images from their Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite of carbon monoxide even though they acknowledge the current below average fire incidence in Amazonia. NASA describes CO in its typically biased and twisted manner,
“Carbon monoxide is a pollutant that can be transported large distances and persist in the atmosphere for about one month. It plays a role in both air pollution and climate change.”
For example, no mention is made that CO exerts a useful role in atmospheric chemistry by ‘contributing to tropospheric ozone formation and interfering with methane destruction in the stratosphere’. A short book synopsis that includes ‘other trace gases’ may be found here regarding CO. Some useful information but light weight on quantitative data and replete with an abundance of could, may, possible, required of the globalist scientivism catastrophe narrative.
The natural concentration of carbon monoxide in air is around 0.2 parts per million (ppm).
9 ppm CO Max prolonged exposure (ASHRAE standard)
35 ppm CO Max exposure for 8 hour work day (OSHA)
800 ppm CO Death within 2 to 3 hours
12,800 ppm CO Death within 1 to 3 minutes
Australia has established “Carbon monoxide 9.0 ppm (parts per million) measured over an eight hour period” as part of National standards for criteria air pollutants 1 in Australia 2005
While most soils are net CO sinks, some, particularly in arid regions, are net CO producers. The mechanism for ‘natural’ CO production is unknown, but it is apparently abiotic, as sterilization often converts a soil from a net CO sink to a source. Compared to other trace gases, the biology of CO consumption is not very well understood.(Hungate & Koch 2015). CO is a byproduct of incomplete combustion (insufficient O2).
According to the WickedPedo, “52% of carbon monoxide emissions were created by mobile vehicles in the U.S.[21] … the reference link is broken
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A little internet research suggests that grassland would likely contribute more oxygen than rainforest or any mature forest. In any case the amazon likely produces very little of the atmospheric oxygen. Most comes from ocean plankton with only 15 to 25% coming from land plants. Worry about the health of our oceans. It is much more critical than any little increase in atmospheric temperature or a few wildfires.
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Senex, IF your original figures of 1,400 and 23,000,000 square miles are correct, the proportion is even less than you give, you are out by a factor of 10. It is 0.006% ie if you have a square 1m x 1m, the burned part is slightly less than 1cm square. So – are your original figures correct?
00
Our old friend Leonardo DiCaprio is going full retweet on Twitter https://mobile.twitter.com/leodicaprio
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24 Aug: Accuweather: 5 things the media won’t tell you about the Amazon fires
By Jesse Ferrell
But there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and there is some good news: It may not be as bad as some in the media are reporting. This is serious stuff! We need to stick to the science. Here are five things that the media (which rarely gets it right on science) aren’t telling you…
The Amazon region isn’t even seeing above-normal fire activity this year.
Yes, there are a lot of fires in South America, some of them in the Amazon rain forests, but how unusual is that? Unfortunately, it’s not unusual at all. The map below shows little change, and on Aug. 15, NASA wrote (LINK):
“As of August 16, 2019, satellite observations indicated that total fire activity in the Amazon basin was slightly below average in comparison to the past 15 years.”
UPDATE: NASA changed the text from the quote above from “slightly below” to “close to the” without explanation. See bottom of blog…READ ON
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/five-things-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-the-amazon-fires/520290
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First it was the boy who cried wolf (or penguin or polar bear or walrus),
now the shills are screaming FIRE! in the movie theatre…
and they wonder why we don’t believe them.
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24 Aug: Bloomberg: More Fires Now Burning in Angola, Congo Than Amazon: Maps
By Kevin Varley
Satellite data show 6,902 blazes in Angola in past 48 hours
Congo has over 3,000 fires, Brazil scorched by more than 2,000
Blazes burning in the Amazon have put heat on the environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro, but Brazil is actually third in the world in wildfires over the last 48 hours, according to MODIS satellite data analyzed by Weather Source…READ ON
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-23/more-fires-now-burning-in-angola-congo-than-amazon-maps?srnd=technology-vp
ignoring the propaganda, not the trade agreement will ensure more meat for the EU, etc. lol:
VIDEO: 2min35sec: 23 Aug: CNN: The Amazon is burning because the world eats so much meat
By Eliza Mackintosh; CNN’s Arnaud Siad contributed to this report from London.
The vast majority of the fires have been set by loggers and ranchers to clear land for cattle. The practice is on the rise, encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s populist pro-business president, who is backed by the country’s so-called “beef caucus.”…
While this may be business as usual for Brazil’s beef farmers, the rest of the world is looking on in horror…
The growth of Brazil’s beef industry has been driven in part by strong demand from Asia — mostly China and Hong Kong. These two markets alone accounted for nearly 44% of all beef exports from Brazil in 2018, according to the USDA.
And a trade deal struck in June between South America’s Mercosur bloc of countries and the European Union could open up even more markets for Brazil’s beef-packing industry.
Speaking after the agreement as announced, the head of Abiec, Antônio Camardelli, said the pact could help Brazil gain access to prospective new markets, like Indonesia and Thailand, while boosting sales with existing partners, ***like the EU. “A deal of this magnitude is like an invitation card for speaking with other countries and trade blocs,” Camardelli told Reuters in July…
Brazil’s space research center (INPE) said this week that the number of fires in Brazil is 80% higher than last year. More than half are in the Amazon region, spelling disaster for the local environment and ecology…
Beef is responsible for 41% of livestock greenhouse gas emissions, and that livestock accounts for 14.5% of total global emissions. And methane — the greenhouse gas cattle produce from both ends — is 25 times more potent that carbon dioxide.
An alarming report released last year by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, said changing our diets could contribute 20% of the effort needed to keep global temperatures from rising 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Namely, eating less meat.
Still, global consumption of beef and veal is set to rise in the next decade according to projections from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
A joint report predicted global production would increase 16% between 2017 and 2027 to meet demand.
The majority of that expansion will be in developing countries, like Brazil.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/23/americas/brazil-beef-amazon-rainforest-fire-intl/index.html
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should have typed NOTE..
ignoring the propaganda, NOTE the trade agreement
20
23 Aug: Newsbusters: ‘Good Riddance, Evil Sack of A**’: Celebs Gleefully Dance on David Koch’s Grave
By Gabriel Hays
Too bad the man was probably one of the left’s better friends across enemy lines for his support of abortion and same-sex marriage and opposition to President Trump in conservative circles…
Author of A Child’s First Book of Trump and Comedian Michael Ian Black: “Personally, I have a tear in my eye, although that might just be smoke irritation from the Amazon rainforest burning because of that fu**er’s climate denialism.” Remember kids, if you’re not posting pictures of yourself crying about the rainforest, can you even claim to be a compassionate person?…READ ON
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/gabriel-hays/2019/08/23/good-riddance-evil-sack-celebs-gleefully-dance-koch-bros-grave
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yesterday the ABC’s veteran Geraldine Doogue, played politics with her carefully-chosen guest, CAGW-invested Nobre, who didn’t hesitate to let her know Bolsonaro was the Trump of the Tropics. nudge nudge…
23 Aug: ABC Breakfast: Large swathes of the Amazon rainforest are burning
And that’s put about about three million species of plants and animals and one million indigenous people at risk.
Guest: Carlos Nobre, senior researcher, Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Sao Paolo
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/large-swathes-of-the-amazon-rainforest-are-burning/11440864
what Geraldine didn’t tell her listeners:
National Academy of Sciences: Carlos A. Nobre
He has been the chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP-2006-2011), member of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is a member of the UN Secretary-General Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) for Global Sustainability…
http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/20035943.htm
World Resources Institute: Carlos Nobre, Senior Fellow, WRI Brasil
Nobre is member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He is chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Scientific Committee, Director of the Center for Earth System Science and Senior Scientist at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) of Brazil, Executive Secretary of the Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede CLIMA), and Scientific Director of the National Institute for Climate Change Research. From 1991-2003, Mr. Nobre was Director of the Brazilian Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC-INPE) and, from 1996-2006, Program Scientist for the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA).
Mr. Nobre is a Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing Countries (TWAS), and Professor of Earth System Science at INPE’s doctoral program. His research interests include tropical meteorology, climate modeling, global environmental change, and biosphere-atmosphere interactions in Amazonia.
He currently works as the Director of CEMADEN, Brazil’s national natural disaster monitoring and alert agency (Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Destastres Naturais).
https://www.wri.org/profile/carlos-nobre
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If not one Amazon then it’s another. The news is all bad for poor Amazon. From what I hear though, I think maybe the wrong Amazon is burning.
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Like all red thumbs you can never tell what the click of a mouse really means. I keep wondering if this one is from someone who is or is not aware of the Department of Justice “review” of Amazon and/or the Department of Defense review under the new Secretary of Defense Mark Esper that might cost Amazon a multi billion contact that they may not have been awarded anyway.
The contenders were looking like Microsoft and Amazon with Oracle left out in the cold through the good intentions of an insider and I’m not sure either giant of the software world is suitably loyal to the united states to do the job. There are possibly too many links into foreign governments.
Hence my statement about the wrong Amazon burning. Study up on project JEDI if you’re interested in the details.
10
Thanks Joanne.
The Europeans have their knickers in a twist for something they did years ago, namely destroyed the forests.
Then they dug the peat and burned or otherwise used it.
Now they are shipping trees from other lands and burning those at UK’s Drax and saying this is enabling a zero-carbon, lower cost energy future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm#/media/File:Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg
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I live part-time in Brazil, where the Constitution was rewritten completely as soon as Atlas Shrugged was translated into Portuguese. The resulting rag copies Richard Nixon’s use of the income tax to subsidize entrenched looter parties at the expense of voters’ ability to repeal bad laws by casting libertarian spoiler votes. Both the Nixon anti-libertarian law and Brazil’s anti-libertarian Constitution enshrine political parties and anoint them with powers to rob at gunpoint. The result is the usual see-sawing between communism and fascism, bleached and Bowdlerized by thick layers of euphemism. Right now, christian nationalsocialism resembling what was popular in Europe in the 1930s is in the saddle. Efforts to spite the communists accidentally result in slight improvements here and there, but coercive altruism is by no stretch of the imagination being replaced by the laissez-faire freedom of trade and production urged in Ayn Rand’s novel.
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NASA Detects Drop in Global Fires
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-detects-drop-in-global-fires
“[Global Warming] has increased fire risk in many regions, but satellite burned area data show that human activity has effectively counterbalanced that climate risk, especially across the global tropics,” Morton said. “We’ve seen a substantial global decline over the satellite record, and the loss of fire has some really important implications for the Earth system.”
PS> Thanks to Jo Nova for maintaining this site.
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Amazon Jungle Once Home to Millions More Than Previously Thought –
Forget small nomadic tribes and pristine jungle: the southern Amazon was likely covered in a network of large villages and ceremonial centers before Columbus.
BEFORE SPANISH INVADERS conquered South America, sparse groups of nomadic people clustered around the Amazon River, leaving the surrounding rain forest pristine and untouched.
Or did they?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/amazon-jungle-ancient-population-satellite-computer-model/
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One of the problems with social media, which is getting more and more recognized, is that because people chose what news they hear, they tend of course to chose what they want to hear. This didn’t use to be so much the case, when someone watched the daily news there was a system of checking already in place, but with social media this is much watered down, so over time people can be largely ignornat of what is going on in the world, even when reported by reputable agencies, because people don’t actually read or hear stuff that doesn’t suit their interests in the first place.
For example, both the BBC and ABC have reported on the published papers which show many coral-based islands in the Pacific are actually growing in size under global warming and under a gradual sea level rise, probably because corals increase in size and eroded coralline sand also increases around islands the under a very gradual sea level rise. But despite actually reporting this, this news doesn’t actually get to most people, who tend to want to hear how these islands are getting ‘inundated’ under sea level rise, and to push their concerns about it. Anything with moralistic overtones which taps into emotion tends to make these kind of imbalanced perspectives worse.
https://www.bbc.com/news/10222679
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-03/pacific-islands-growing-not-sinking/851738.
If you report this to many people, their first reaction is that it must be fake and a fairytale, since it doesn’t accord with the emotionally based global warming news they normally hear.
This is an ongoing problem with the development of social media, which has been recognized widely-people ‘choosing’ what news they want to hear tends to mean they only ever hear what the want to hear, and which suits pre-determined prejudices. This is also the case with the Amazon fires above.
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Twitter pics? Why does that make me think of all the poor starving pollie bears?
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Disabling the sense of scarcity in humans by Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand of Economics since the steam engine – has played havoc with civilization.
Or, no human would have wasted finite, gold-grade, once-only fossil fuels – running all this non-sense, on and on and on!
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Neither of these statements can be true!
Consider that O2 which is produced by the trees in the Amazon and by phytoplankton comes from photosynthesis. CO2 to O2.
Yet CO2 is only 0.004% of the atmosphere compared to O2 at 19.8% of the atmosphere. Therefore any CO2 which is converted to oxygen is negligible compared to the amount which is already there. Even if all the CO2 dissolved in the oceans was also converted to oxygen, it would not make any difference to the atmospheric oxygen level.
How the current oxygen levels in our atmosphere arose is the concern of geological theories, not current levels of photosynthesis.
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There is an up coming story Peter
” The Phytoplankton is burning ”
🙂
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I Live in Paraguay, Its been bone dry for 3 months, before that we had flooding for 2 months totally normal event here every 10-20 years look it up, very similar to weather in Brazil and Bolivia. The amazons has regular fires every year anyway. As you note in your graphs abvove there is nothing spectacular this year
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it’s been a weird year in South America then, here in Chile we had a mild and very dry winter – I would say spring is already here in Santiago, pretty early – and a cool autumm, odd. Of course over the last week suddenly everyone went insane with this year’s drought, ignoring that the last three years were pretty normal in terms of rainfall and that before that, there were dry years too. I sometimes wonder if people forget that we’ve always been prone to droughts, that’s why we build dams and have strict water regulation…
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I was surprised to find that a couple of sources at least, including below from ecosystem ecologist and Professor of Ecosystem Science at Oxford University, claim that “the net contribution of the Amazon ECOSYSTEM (not just the plants alone) to the world’s oxygen is effectively zero.”
http://www.yadvindermalhi.org/blog/does-the-amazon-provide-20-of-our-oxygen
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Well, they have played the bleaching coral reefs to death – and this is far, FAR more dramatic-looking!
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Jo,
you should include this reference from Real Clear Energy
Climate Alarmists Foiled: No U.S. Warming Since 2005
By James Taylor
August 23, 2019
what stood out is highlighted below
When American climate alarmists claim to have witnessed the effects of global warming, they must be referring to a time beyond 14 years ago. That is because there has been no warming in the United States since at least 2005, according to updated data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In January 2005, NOAA began recording temperatures at its newly built U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). USCRN includes 114 pristinely maintained temperature stations spaced relatively uniformly across the lower 48 states. NOAA selected locations that were far away from urban and land-development impacts that might artificially taint temperature readings.
Prior to the USCRN going online, alarmists and skeptics sparred over the accuracy of reported temperature data. With most preexisting temperature stations located in or near urban settings that are subject to false temperature signals and create their own microclimates that change over time, government officials performed many often-controversial adjustments to the raw temperature data. Skeptics of an asserted climate crisis pointed out that most of the reported warming in the United States was non-existent in the raw temperature data, but was added to the record by government officials.
The USCRN has eliminated the need to rely on, and adjust the data from, outdated temperature stations. Strikingly, as shown in the graph below, USCRN temperature stations show no warming since 2005 when the network went online. If anything, U.S. temperatures are now slightly cooler than they were 14 years ago.
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That’s exactly the sort of weather station placement which has any chance of providing meaningful data; I’m pleased to see that it is being done.
Thanks for the links OldOzzie.
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Brazil’s space agency is monitoring this and report 85% increase in fire area… you might need to do some translating
http://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/portal
Bolivia burned 800000 hectares in 10 days in August- the equivalent of 2 years of fire area
https://www.paginasiete.bo/sociedad/2019/8/23/incendios-se-extienden-cerca-de-800-mil-ha-en-la-chiquitania-228448.html
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NASA didn’t get the memo to be hysterical.
“Many people use fire to maintain farmland and pastures or to clear land for other purposes. Typically, activity peaks in early September and mostly stops by November.
As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. “
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Hmmm.
Drax, UK, burning American forests good, saving planet.
Brazil burning American forests bad, wasting planet.
Even though it is done so that the ecologically right-on rich nations can burn the resulting eco-friendly, subsidised,palm oil and save the planet.
Duh!
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Thanks Jo, excellent job. From the beginning to me this sounded like they were trying to blame Bolsonaro for the fires (which, as you say, are not abnormal), literally like he paid people to go to the forest with flamethrowers. I despise the guy, but it’s so clear how they’re using this issue for political gains, I’m surprised people bought this story so quickly. Yesterday I was talking with my mom and she expressed her worries about this, and when I told her how exaggerated the claims are, she said “but I red it in all the big newspapers, why would they lie about it?”. My mom is very intelligent, but as you can see, people fall for these things easily
This is going to get worse though, as we approach COP25 in Santiago (where I live). They’re trying so hard to make everything climate-related look like the end of the world! Sadly, we’re having an extremely dry year in Central Chile, so I bet in a few weeks they’re goint to start using that fact as proof of how important the conference is…
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From last week, World Snow Overview 20 August:
“CHILE – There’s been a little fresh snow in Chile but it continues to be one of the worst seasons in recent years with mostly dry weather and temperatures often too warm for snow to fall anyway”. However, over the hills next-door:
“ARGENTINA – The excellent winter of 2019 continues in Argentina where the healthy bases were regularly topped up again through the past week… Cerro Castor (75/200cm) is posting the deepest base in the country still and has all of its terrain open“.
https://www.snow-forecast.com/overviews/tips_full
You win some, you lose some – Nature’s like that. Would love to come play in the Andes on a good year – you are directly east of us, same latitude – plus you make good red wine for those long, cold nights up in the snow. Sorry to hear those COP Clowns are coming to your town: maybe a blizzard will arrive the same time they do – Nature’s like that.
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Thanks, and yes, I know! People are going hysterical right now here, but they seem to forget that in 2016-2018 the rainfall and ski season were pretty good (the ski resorts closed in October, in late spring), and we had actual snow storms in Santiago itself, which is not a normal ocurrence. Plus the dams filled up all the way to Coquimbo, which is a semi-desertic region! If this dry year came after other 2 ones of grave drought I could buy the idea that we’re in the midst of desertification, but it isn’t the case! I’m glad to see at least our Argentinian brothers have had a good season…
Still, this year has been, honestly, pretty terrible – I don’t remember a drier year in Santiago – but as you said, we don’t know if maybe spring will bring rains again (I really hope it does), or what the next year will bring. People seem to forget that droughts are completely normal in Central Chile, and that’s why we have been building dams since the 60s, why we have strict water rights regulation, de-sal plants, etc. It would be pretty funny if a bring rainstorm falls during COP25, but I assure you they would still blame it on climate change, since rains during the summer here are extremely rare.
Lastly, yes, you should totally come to the Andes! Even in dry years, July is always snowy in the ski resorts near Santiago, and/or you could go to the ski resorts down south, like in Chillán or Osorno (they close later). The advantage of going to the Central Andes is that, in one day, you could easily go from the slopes to the wine valleys, or even to the beach, since the country is so narrow, and even in winter, the weather is pretty mild in the coast. Chile is great for tourism, since we have so many landscapes but aren’t as big as Australia or the US, and we’re also the safest country within Latin America.
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