Things that I find and strike me that others might find interesting and/or informative
Saturday, August 31, 2019
NASA: Global Wildfires Drop By 25% Since 2003 – Plus Study finds Earth’s tree cover increased by 7% since 1982
NASA: Global Wildfires Drop By 25% Since 2003 – Plus Study finds Earth’s tree cover increased by 7% since 1982
"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
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 1) NASA: Global Wildfires Drop By 25% Since 2003 NASA Earth Observatory, August 2019 2) Science Goes Up In Rain Forest Smoke Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor, 28 August 2019 3) Reality Check: Forests Make a Comeback American Institute for Economic Research, 26 August 2019 4) Matt Ridley: The Most Dangerous Thing About The Amazon Fires Is The Apocalyptic Rhetoric The Spectator, 31 August 2019 5) U.S. Democrats Are Getting More Concerned About Global Warming, Republicans Remain Cool Pew Research Center, 28 August 2019 6) Sanjeev Sabhlok: Climate Hysteria Is A Great Opportunity To Teach Children To Ask Questions Times of India, 25 August 2019 7) And Finally: The Doomsday Cult Of Pre-Modern Climate Hysteria The Sun, 28 August 2019 1) NASA: Global Wildfires Drop By 25% Since 2003 NASA Earth Observatory, August 2019 Since NASA satellites programme 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.
The control of fire is a goal that may well be as old as humanity, but the systematic monitoring of fire on a global scale is a much newer capability.
In the 1910s, the U.S. Forest Service began building fire lookout towers on
mountain peaks in order to detect distant fires. A few decades later,
fire-spotting airplanes flew onto the scene. Then in the early 1980s,
satellites began to map fires over large areas from the vantage point of
space.
Over time, researchers have built a rich and textured record of
Earth’s fire activity and are now able to analyze decadal trends. “The
pace of discovery has increased dramatically during the satellite era,”
said James Randerson,
a scientist at the University of California, Irvine. “Having
high-quality, daily observations of fires available on a global scale
has been critical.”
The animation above shows the locations of actively burning fires on a
monthly basis for nearly two decades. The maps are based on
observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. The colors are based on a count of
the number (not size) of fires observed within a 1,000-square-kilometer
area. White pixels show the high end of the count—as many as 30 fires in
a 1,000-square-kilometer area per day. Orange pixels show as many as 10
fires, while red areas show as few as 1 fire per day.
December 1, 2014 – August 31, 2015
The sequence highlights the rhythms—both natural and human-caused—in
global fire activity. Bands of fire sweep across Eurasia, North America,
and Southeast Asia as farmers clear and maintain fields in April and
May. Summer brings new activity in boreal and temperate forests in North
America and Eurasia due to lighting-triggered fires burning in remote
areas. In the tropical forests of South America and equatorial Asia,
fires flare up in August, September, and October as people make use of
the dry season to clear rainforest and savanna, as well as stop trees
and shrubs from encroaching on already cleared land. Few months pass in
Australia without large numbers of fires burning somewhere on the
continent’s vast grasslands, savannas, and tropical forests.
But it is Africa that is truly the fire continent. On an average day in August, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites
detect 10,000 actively burning fires around the world—and 70 percent
them happen in Africa. Huge numbers of blazes spring up in the northern
part of continent in December and January. A half year later, the
burning has shifted south. Indeed, global fire emissions typically peak
in August and September, coinciding with the main fire seasons of the
Southern Hemisphere, particularly Africa. (High activity in temperate
and boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere in the summer also
contribute.)
August 29, 2018 JPEG
The second animation underscores how much fire activity shifts
seasonally by highlighting burning activity during December 2014, April
2015, and August 2015. The satellite image above shows smoke rising from
the savanna of northern Zambia on August 29, 2018, around the time
global emissions reach their maximum.
Though Africa dominates in the sheer number of fires, fires seasons
there are pretty consistent from year-to-year. The most variable fire
seasons happen elsewhere, such as the tropical forests of South America
and equatorial Asia. In these areas, the severity of fire season is
often linked to cycles of El Niño and La Niña. The buildup of warm water in the eastern Pacific during an El Niño changes atmospheric patterns and reduces rainfallover many rainforests, allowing them to burn more easily and widely.
Despite the vast quantities of carbon released by fires in savannas,
grasslands, and boreal forests, research shows that fires in these
biomes do not generally add carbon to the atmosphere in the long term.
The regrowth of vegetation or the creation of charcoal typically recaptures all of the carbon within months or years. However, when fires permanently remove trees or burn through peat (a carbon-rich fuel that can take centuries to form), little carbon is recaptured and the atmosphere sees a net increase in CO2.
That is why outbreaks of fire in countries with large amounts of
peat, such as Indonesia, have an outsized effect on global climate.
Fires in equatorial Asia account for just 0.6 percent of global burned
area, yet the region accounts for 8 percent of carbon emissions and 23
percent of methane emissions. On October, 25, 2015, the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera aboard the DSCOVR satellite acquired an image (below) of heavy smoke over Indonesia; El Niño was particularly active at the time.
One of the most interesting things researchers have discovered since MODIS began collecting measurements, noted Randerson, is a decrease in
the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003
and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent. Full story 2) Science Goes Up In Rain Forest Smoke Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor, 28 August 2019 If journalists as well as politicians, celebrities,
presidents and the Pope can so easily slip into scientific myth and get
the facts so wrong what credibility do they have on other issues of
climate science?
The idea that the Amazon rain forest are the lungs of the world is so
embedded in our minds that few questioned its widespread use when news
about fires in the Amazon was reported this summer. The idea is
everywhere – so it’s obviously true. Trees absorb carbon dioxide (bad),
don’t they, and give off oxygen (good), and there are billions of trees
in the Amazon, so surely it makes sense.
Responding to the fires in the Amazon the Pope has said that the,
“Lungs of the forest are vital for the planet.” Emmanuel Macron tweeted,
“The Amazon rain forest – the lungs which produces 20% of the planet’s
oxygen – is on fire.” Leonardo DiCaprio has almost 3 million likes for
his Instagram posting saying, “The lungs of the Earth are in flames.”
Christiano Ronaldo tweeted that The Amazon Rainforest produces more than
20% of the world’s oxygen,” adding #prayforamazonia
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says “It’s the lungs of the Earth…which
provides 20% of our oxygen.” Barry Gardiner Shadow Minister for
International Climate Change tweeted he couldn’t agree with Macron more.
Lib Dem MEP’s say the lungs of our planet are literally burning. Even
Donald Tusk, the President of the European Commission tweeted of “…the
destruction of the green lungs of Planet Earth.”
The Rainforest Alliance say, “The lungs of the world are in flames.”
Friends of the Earth want a deal to stop the fires adding, “They need to
say ‘we won’t do a deal with you if you are effectively condoning
burning the lungs of the world’.” WWF says the Amazon is popularly known
as the lungs of the world. DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance has formed an
emergency Amazon Forest Fund with an initial commitment of $5 million to
focus critical resources on the key protections needed to maintain the
‘lungs of the planet.’
However, as the saying goes, it’s not that simple – things never are
in science. Check where the figure comes from (and it’s actually not
that straightforward to do) and you will find that it’s not that simple.
It’s actually wrong. Geology’s Gift
The Amazon rain forest is not the lungs of the world and they do not
produce 20% of the world’s oxygen as is so often said. The Amazon
rainforest is a vast, vital wonder, full of biodiversity and
photosynthesizing plants producing 9% of the world’s photosynthetic
output but, here is the key figure, 0% of its net output.
You could destroy all of the world’s forests and it would hardly
affect our oxygen supply. In fact you could destroy every living thing
on Earth and still not dent it because our atmosphere of 20.9% oxygen is
the gift of geologic time, slow to build up and we have enough to last
millions of years.
Yet this idea of the world’s lungs and of atmospheric oxygen needing
to be refreshed and replenished, ideas unsupported by science, is
everywhere.
Surely journalists would act differently from advocacy groups,
celebrities and politicians and check this fact before writing and
broadcasting about it. After all journalists, especially science and
environment journalists who are experts in their field, always check
figures and statistics? Oh no, they don’t. Just Google the phrase to see
how many time it is repeated, by the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, The
Australian, to name a few.
ITN in particular has risen above much of the other coverage with its
over-the-top reporting. They say the Amazon is burning on a scale never
seen before (nonsense). That the Amazon can never be replaced
(nonsense), and that Nature is being killed (Oh come off it)! Who spoke up?
If journalists as well as politicians, celebrities, presidents and
the Pope can so easily slip into such scientific myth and get the facts
so wrong what credibility do they have on other issues of climate
science? Where are their science advisors? Surely they should make this
mistake only once before being given proper advice. Or is it that if any
of them goes against the trend they fear the condemnation? This is not
the way to tackle the important environmental issues we face.
Look how much we had to go through for science to wrench our minds
free of what is “obviously true” and seek proof. Is climate science, or
at least the public side of it, immune from normal scientific standards?
And where are the high profile, “public” scientists setting the record
straight, highlighting that the Amazon rain forests are not the lungs of
the world?
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com 3) Reality Check: Forests Make a Comeback American Institute for Economic Research, 26 August 2019
Vincent Geloso
In the last week, there have been many reports about the fires in the Amazonian forests.
Many of these reports led news shows or were on the front pages of
leading newspapers. The Amazon forest, which produces about 20% of
earth’s oxygen and is the world’s largest rainforest, is often referred
to as “the planet’s lungs.” The nickname strikes the imagination and it
is frequently used in campaigns regarding the perils of deforestation.
As such, the news reports about the fire 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. To be sure, it is
nowhere near what it was at the beginning of the 19th century when the
world’s population was below 1 billion individuals (most of whom were abjectly poor).
Indeed, many forests on the planet were destroyed and cleared as
population grew in number and wealth. However, globally speaking, the
tree cover has begun to recover.
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%).
The transition also differs by region as some countries saw a recovery of forest much earlier. Many European
countries saw the beginning of this recovery in the early decades of
the twentieth century (and some began the transition much earlier). For the United States, there are
some studies placing the beginning of the recovery in the 1930s but
many states (especially in New England and the Middle Atlantic states)
saw their forest recoveries begin as early as 1907. To be sure, some regions on Earth are experiencing falls in forest cover. This is the case for Brazil and many other Latin American countries (not
all as Chile and Uruguay have already seen their forest recoveries
begin). Nevertheless, the global picture is one of optimism.
And there is cause for being optimistic that the trend will continue. Geographer Pierre Desrochers and economist Hiroko Shimizu noted
that nine-tenths of all the deforestation caused by humans took place
before 1950. The main reason for this was that forest-clearing was one
of the easiest channels by which to increase the food supply while also
providing energy.
However, as we are now vastly more productive in our agriculture, we
require less land to feed the same population. The effects of
productivity growth in agriculture are so strong that some agricultural
scientists are speaking of “peak farmland” – the idea that we will need less and less land to feed a growing population.
Moreover, as transports and communication technologies have also
improved, we have been able to concentrate production in the most
productive areas of the planet in ways that explain a sizable share of
total gains in productivity. As we grow more productive in farming,
mankind can now leave some acres to return to nature to be reforested.
With the prospect of new advances in bio-engineering, meat printing,
sky-farms and other innovations, this is a force for reforestation that
will only strengthen. Full post 4) Matt Ridley: The Most Dangerous Thing About The Amazon Fires Is The Apocalyptic Rhetoric The Spectator, 31 August 2019 Cristiano Ronaldo is a Portuguese expert on forests who also
plays football, so when he shared a picture online of a recent forest
fire in the Amazon, it went viral. Perhaps he was in a rush that day to
get out of the laboratory to football training, because it later
transpired that the photograph was actually taken in 2013, not this
year, and in southern Brazil, nowhere near the Amazon.
But at least his picture was only six years old. Emmanuel Macron,
another forest ecologist who moonlights as president of France, claimed
that ‘the Amazon rainforest — the lungs which produce 20 per cent of our
planet’s oxygen — is on fire!’ alongside a picture that was 20 years
old. A third bioscientist, who goes under the name of Madonna and sings,
capped both their achievements by sharing a 30-year-old picture. […]
Around the world, wild fires are generally declining, according to
Nasa. Deforestation, too, is happening less and less. The United
Nations’ ‘state of the world’s forests’report concluded last year that
‘the net loss of forest area continues to slow, from 0.18 per cent [a
year] in the 1990s to 0.08 per cent over the last five-year period’. A
study in Nature last year by scientists from the University of
Maryland concluded that even this is too pessimistic: ‘We show that —
contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally —
tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km2 (+7.1 per cent relative to the 1982 level).’
This net increase is driven by rapid reforestation in cool, rich
countries outweighing slower net deforestation in warm, poor countries.
But more and more nations are now reaching the sort of income levels at
which they stop deforesting and start reforesting. Bangladesh, for
example, has been increasing its forest cover for several years. Costa
Rica has doubled its tree cover in 40 years. Brazil is poised to join
the reforesters soon.
Possibly the biggest driver of this encouraging trend is the rising
productivity of agriculture. The more yields increase, the less land we
need to steal from nature to feed ourselves. Jesse Ausubel of
Rockefeller University has calculated that the world needs only 35 per
cent as much land to produce a given quantity of food as 50 years ago.
That has spared wild land on a massive scale.
Likewise, getting people on to fossil fuels and away from burning
wood for fuel spares trees. It is in the poorest countries, mainly in
Africa, that men and women still gather firewood for cooking and
bushmeat for food, instead of using electricity or gas and farmed meat.
The trouble with the apocalyptic rhetoric is that it can seem to
justify drastic but dangerous solutions. The obsession with climate
change has slowed the decline of deforestation. An estimated 700,000
hectares of forest has been felled in South-East Asia to grow palm oil
to add to supposedly green ‘bio-diesel’ fuel in Europe, while the world
is feeding 5 per cent of its grain crop to motor cars rather than
people, which means 5 per cent of cultivated land that could be released
for forest. Britain imports timber from wild forests in the Americas to
burn for electricity at Drax in North Yorkshire, depriving beetles and
woodpeckers of their lunch. Full post & comments 5) U.S. Democrats Are Getting More Concerned About Global Warming, Republicans Remain Cool Pew Research Center, 28 August 2019
Brian Kennedy and Med Hefferon The share of Americans calling global climate change a major threat to
the well-being of the United States has grown from 40% in 2013 to 57%
this year, Pew Research Center surveys have shown. But the rise in
concern has largely come from Democrats. Opinions among Republicans on
this issue remain largely unchanged.
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overall, 84% say
climate change is a major threat to the country’s well-being as of July
2019, up from 58% in a March 2013 survey. Views among Republicans and
Republican leaners have stayed about the same (27% in 2019 vs. 22% in
2013).
Nearly all liberal Democrats (94%, including independents who lean to
the party) consider climate change a major threat to the nation now, up
30 percentage points from 2013. Three-quarters of moderate/conservative
Democrats say the same, up from 54% in 2013.
By contrast, there has been no significant change among either
moderate or conservative Republicans on this issue. (While the share of
moderate/liberal Republicans who see climate change as a major threat is
up 9 percentage points since 2013, this change is not statistically
significant at the 95% confidence level.)
The partisan trend is similar on a related question. More Americans
said in January 2019 that dealing with global climate change should be a top priority for
Congress and the president (44%) than did so in early 2015 (34%). But
the increased interest in prioritizing climate policy stems from
Democrats, not Republicans.
Two-thirds of Democrats (67%), including 83% of liberal Democrats,
said this year that dealing with global climate change should be a top
priority for the president and Congress. This was up from 46% of
Democrats in 2015.
In contrast, about two-in-ten Republicans (21%) said this year that
climate change should be a top priority – a virtually identical share as
in 2015 (19%). Full story 6) Sanjeev Sabhlok: Climate Hysteria Is A Great Opportunity To Teach Children To Ask Questions Times of India, 25 August 2019 Only when our children have developed the strongest possible
level of scepticism, first introduced to the world by Charvaka and later
emulated by Socrates, can they be said to have been educated.
Most adults have little or no time to investigate the claims about
climate change. They either accept them, assuming that “authority
figures” have done their homework, or sit on the fence.
Some consider that only scientists are supposed to understand
science. But everyone has an equal place at the table of science and if
our questions are not answered or the evidence doesn’t stack up, we are
free to reject that “science”.
Climate alarm has long given up the pretence of any link to science.
Millions have been successfully “converted” – and they get duly worked
up if their belief is questioned: “have you been outside recently?”,
“erratic climate events are everywhere!”, “rainfall is getting less
every year!”, “flash floods, including in Rajasthan are clear proof!”.
Some of them have gone to the next stage and become missionaries.
They go about distributing their religious pamphlets in schools,
indoctrinating innocent lower-IQ children. Hopelessly confused children
like Greta Thunberg are being churned out as a result. At an age when
children like her should be learning to ask questions, they have become
the brainwashed front for the climate religion. … Sanjeev Sabhlok, Senior leader of India’s Liberal Party (SBP)
In my view, if anyone tells a child that climate change is man-made
just because someone says so (such as a missionary “scientist” but now
increasingly, “royals” and “celebrities”), that person has committed a
sin against the enlightenment, against human progress.
I would personally have been supportive of Greta Thunberg if she had
been a prodigally intelligent child who dazzled her teachers with
amazing questions, then found the answers and was now promoting a view
that she thoroughly understood. It would not matter to me that she had
come to the wrong conclusion. After all, no one can be right on
everything all the time. But she suffers, sadly, from mental issues and
speaks as a missionary – she cannot answer a single question about the
science.
We are very prone as a species to superstitions, panics, delusions,
manias and hysterias. We have gone through thousands of them (many still
underway), such as religion, alchemy, witchcraft, astrology,
phrenology, eugenics, the Y2K bug, the SARS panic, much of Ayurveda and
Chinese traditional medicine and all of homeopathy.
The climate hysteria will ultimately pass, but to avoid such
hysterias in the future we need to get our children to start thinking
and stop believing. Climate change is a superb topic for teachers and
students to explore.
I stumbled upon the ideas of Socrates and Voltaire when I was a child
and since the age of twelve, I have been a deep sceptic. “God” would
have to pass through a thousand hurdles if “He” came by and tried to
make me believe. For example, I recall being the only one staring into
the eyes of Sathya Sai Baba in Bangalore in 1981 when all others had
prostrated themselves before him. He obviously failed to pull a fast one
over me. Today, Michael Strong, author of The Habit of Thought, is one
of the few educationists who actively uses the Socratic method. Our
educationists must learn from him.
I believe that children from age 10 onwards should attend one class
each week only on questions. They should list various topics and then
ask as many questions as they can on that topic. As they grow older
their ability to ask questions will get deeper and more sophisticated.
The topic of climate change can lead to many questions. What is
climate? What factors impact the climate? (Answer: at least a few
hundred). How is the Earth’s temperature measured? (Long-term quality
thermometer measurements have only been available in a few European and
American sites, with most of them now contaminated by urbanisation. Let
children also ask about satellite measurements and about the only
reliable surface measurements – from the US Climate Reference Network.)
How is the sea level measured? (Let them ask whether the land itself
can sink – indeed it does: it is very common.) What is the proof of the
greenhouse gas effect? (Let them ask and find out that there is no
robust way to prove it in a laboratory.) How is CO2 measured?
What information is needed to confirm (or reject) the CO2 hypothesis?
What is the correlation between CO2 and temperature over the recent
past? (Answer: very little.) What is the correlation as we stretch out
to hundreds and then millions of years? (Answer: zero.) What climate
“model” predictions could prove the hypothesis? What would nullify it?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of temperature and CO2
estimates of the past? (Eg tree rings, ice core, marine sediments,
pollen. Tree ring data is a better measure of rainfall than of
temperature, ice cores show that CO2 increased when the Earth’s wobbles
first made it warmer – CO2 was thereafter ejected from the oceans.)
Are extreme events increasing? Let the children read IPCC’s reports
that say: “there is only low confidence regarding changes in global
tropical cyclone numbers over the last four decades”, there is “low
confidence that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency
and the magnitude of floods” and that there is a “decreasing trend in
the global number of tropical cyclones and globally accumulated cyclonic
energy”. Full post 7) And Finally: The Doomsday Cult Of Pre-Modern Climate Hysteria The Sun, 28 August 2019 Archaeologists believe the kids, born into the Chimú empire,
were sacrificed in a ritual to stop disasters linked to the El Niño
phenomenon. The mass grave contains the skeletons of 227 children Credit: AFP or licensors
EXPERTS believe they have found the burial site of the largest child sacrifice ritual ever recorded.
The skeletons of 227 kids, who were slaughtered at the same time,
have been uncovered in a mass grave on the north coast of Peru.
Archaeologists believe they have found the burial site of the largest child sacrifice ever recorded Credit: AFP or licensors
Archaeologists believe the kids, born into the Chimú empire,
were sacrificed in a ritual to stop disasters linked to the El Niño
phenomenon.
The youngsters, between the ages of four and 14, are understood to have been brutally killed up to 1,400 years ago.
Some still have skin, hair and were found to have been wearing silver earmuffs.
The religious leaders who carried out the killings were part of the Chimú empire, a powerful society that predated the Incas.
Archaeologists found the mass slaughter site in the Pampa La Cruz
sector in Huanchaco, a coastal municipality of Trujillo, north of Lima. The youngsters, between the ages of four and 14, are understood to have died up to 1,400 years ago Credit: AFP or licensors Archaeologists found the mass slaughter site in the Pampa La Cruz sector in Huanchaco Credit: AFP or licensors
“We are the largest place where remains of sacrificed children have
been found. There is no other” in the world, archaeologist Feren
Castillo told AFP.
It is thought the youngsters were sacrificed to appease gods and stop bad weather.
“They were sacrificed to appease the El Niño phenomenon, we have
found more evidence of rainfall in the findings,” Mr Castillo added.
This weather phenomenon, which occurs when the Pacific Ocean becomes
very warm, can have disastrous impacts in Peru and other countries.
In 2017, El Niño triggered flooding and landslides that killed 162 and destroyed thousands of homes.
The Huanchaco child grave is not the first mass discovery of kids slaughtered in Pampa La Cruz.
In June 2018, remains of 56 children were discovered.
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