Argus -Dispatch Fans Flames of Global Warming Hysteria

We had almost come to the point of suggesting that the Argus-Dispatch (A-D) was marginally better than the Times-Democrat  QC Times for general news fairness and objectivity when we were confronted with this bogus headline. They have managed to fail us again.

At left is a clip from what appeared on our doorstep Monday.  The front page Associated Press story swallowed a press release from the usual global warming alarmist types, and reported on it as if it were unassailable. The A-D swallowed the AP wire story with no attempt at adding anything. And this is what passes for informed, skeptical, objective journalism.

We suspect nether the AP writer or anyone at the A-D actually read the report the headline and narrative is based on.  They parroted the political correct gospel.  You can read the AP/Argus-Dispatch story here.  As card carrying deniers of any serious anthropomorphic effect on climate change (whatever there is we welcome) we checked a little further to see if there was maybe more to the story.

The balancing information we offer was obtained initially through Watts Up With That?, founded and edited by Anthony Watts, billed as “the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change.”  Anytime a story appears that fans the flames of man made global warming hysteria, check Watts’ site for clarity.

An analysis  by Larry Hamlin, a contributing essayist to the site, of the actual report the AP story is based on, and its out of context alarmism, provides supporting links, data and graphs.  Hamlin emphasizes:

Nowhere in the report do the authors specifically articulate that “man made climate change is to blame” for the studies findings. . . .

While this wildfire study was limited to large wildfires in the western U.S. region Dr. John Christy provided testimony to Congress in December 2013 addressing wildfire data from the National Interagency Fire Center for the entire country showing no increasing nationwide wildfire trends since 1986 . . .

Hamlin provided some of the charts used in that testimony including the one we have appended below:

Delving further into Christy’s testimony we note this statement:

Wildfires are a natural consequence of the United States’ climate variability and a feature to which many components of the natural ecosystem have found ways of advantage taking. Nowadays, however, our fire suppression activities that allow excessive build up a fuel combined with the careless or premeditated human character of some folks, gives greater opportunity for wildfires to be started and to destroy. The current year or has included the rimfire in the Central Sierra Nevada and California, but, on the whole, the year is well below average as shown in the graphic (above).

Data from the National Interagency Fire Center. JR Christy, December 11, 2013 testimony before the Committee on Science Space and Technology

So while it can be acknowledged that the number of large wildfires have gone up, the number of wildfires has decreased substantially.  The reasons for both are no doubt varied. Implying wild fires are currently on the rise because of man-made global warming, which global warming alarmists grudgingly refer to as “in pause” and which has certainly not met their computer predictions, which have been off by a factor of two or three, seems preposterous. If “global warming” effects were as definitive and bad as alarmists are trying to imply, would there not be more wildfires not the downtrend we see in the chart?

Hamlin’s article concludes:

The climate fear propaganda media have again misled the public with unwarranted alarmist headlines alleging claims which do not reflect what this study of large western U.S. wildfires actually presented. The alarmist media twisted and misrepresented the studies information in an effort to  try and frighten the public into supporting its scientifically unsupported climate fear political ideology.

Paraphrasing a commenter to the Hamlin article,  if  the data shows that global warming may have increased .8 of degree over several decades, that would not seem to cause spontaneous combustion.    R Mall

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