{"id":304390,"date":"2024-02-26T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T08:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=304390"},"modified":"2024-02-26T09:00:26","modified_gmt":"2024-02-26T08:00:26","slug":"after-all-the-media-hype-wildfires-across-southern-europe-were-completely-normal-in-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=304390","title":{"rendered":"After All the Media Hype, Wildfires Across Southern Europe Were Completely Normal in 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0CHRIS MORRISON<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Writing in the Daily Telegraph<\/em> last July, Suzanne Moore reported<\/a> that the \u201cworld is on fire \u2013 and we can\u2019t ignore it any longer\u201d. She was noting the usual outbreaks of summer wildfires in southern Europe and suggested a retreat by cautious holiday makers in Rhodes away from one conflagration was \u201cwhat climate refugees look like\u201d. The Guardian<\/em> was in similar hysterical mode<\/a> observing that the lesson from Greece was \u201cthe climate crisis is coming for us all\u201d. Such was the level of Thermogeddon interest last summer it is curious that final figures for areas burnt during the year are missing from mainstream media. In the five largest southern European countries for which the EU provides separate data \u2013 Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece \u2013 2023 was only the 20th highest in the modern satellite burnt acreage record going back to 1980.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is perhaps not surprising. Fire \u2018weather\u2019 is a potent tool in stoking up general climate anxiety and helps promote the need for a collectivist Net Zero political solution. The Guardian<\/em> used video footage of tourists moving away from one wildfire last year to claim \u201csurvival mode\u201d could easily pass for a \u201cTV climate crisis awareness raising campaign\u201d. An Agence France-Presse<\/em> report in the Guardian<\/em> quoted EU spokesman Balazs Ujvari as stating that fires are getting more severe. \u201cIf you look at the figures every year in the past years, we are seeing trends which are not necessarily favourable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at some of the figures, starting first with the graph below\u00a0compiled<\/a>\u00a0by the investigative climate writer Paul Homewood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As noted, the five major countries of southern Europe show many years since 1980 when wildfires consumed more hectares of land. Last year was an average period, easily beaten by 2017 and dwarfed by 1985. In fact the graph above from EU data shows that wildfire acreage over these countries has actually declined over the last 43 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Economic damage can be considerable, although the trend on this front shows little overall change over the last two decades\u00a0across the EU<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like many natural events, wildfires cause lives to be lost. Using this tragic loss of life to whip up climate fear is deplorable, not least since many wildfires are deliberately or accidentally started by humans. Greece had a bad wildfire season last year with the BBC reporting that 79 arrests<\/a> had been made for arson. The BBC accepts that wildfires are common in Greece but \u201cscientists say\u201d there is a link between extreme weather events and climate change. Stefan Doerr of the Centre for Wildlife Research at Swansea University notes that arson \u201ccan more easily turn into fast-moving wildfires\u201d. Arsonists, it seems, just love climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the climate scientist Patrick Brown admitted that he had written a paper published in Nature <\/em>that focused exclusively on how climate change had affected extreme wildfire behaviour and ignored other key factors<\/a>. In particular he downplayed the information that 80% of wildfires are lit by humans. He laid out his whistle-blowing claims in an article titled: \u2018I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published\u2019. He knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change because it would dilute the message journals like Nature<\/em> want to tell, he observed, adding: \u201cTo put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public  about the dangers of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wildfires are an easy propaganda win for climate alarmists. People die, property is destroyed and the published images are spectacular. But fires are a vital part of nature, always have been. They help clear away the debris that accumulates naturally in forests and scrub land and provide a path for regenerative growth. There is little evidence that natural trends are on the increase around the world, and none to suggest that humans play a part in natural ignition by burning hydrocarbons and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In its sixth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) specifically ruled out human involvement in \u2018fire weather\u2019, both in the past and going forward to the turn of this century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Morrison is the<\/em> Daily Sceptic\u2019s Environment Editor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop Press<\/strong>: Met Office update<\/strong>: As regular readers will recall, the Met Office recently came a cropper with a senior meteorologist stating last month on the BBC<\/em> that storms in the U.K. were becoming more intense due to climate change<\/a>. In reply to a subsequent freedom of information request from Paul Homewood, the Met Office admitted it had no evidence to back up the claim, but failed to correct the original statement. In a further letter<\/a> to Homewood, it now accepts that there is no evidence \u2018yet\u2019 for an increase in wind gust speeds, although these are \u201cprojected to increase with future climate change\u201d. Hardly a retraction since it still claims rainfall intensity, storm surges and wave heights are increasing with climate change. None of this can be proved \u2013 climate models are opinions, not evidence \u2013 while the IPCC also rules out human involvement in severe wind storms. It also rules out changes in river floods and heavy rain, along with coastal flooding and erosion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hardly a retraction since it still claims rainfall intensity, storm surges and wave heights are increasing with climate change. None of this can be proved \u2013 climate models are opinions, not evidence \u2013 while the IPCC also rules out human involvement in severe wind storms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":304397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Hardly a retraction since it still claims rainfall intensity, storm surges and wave heights are increasing with climate change. None of this can be proved \u2013 climate models are opinions, not evidence \u2013 while the IPCC also rules out human involvement in sev","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691819134,691818583,691820111,691819379,691821357,691818913],"class_list":{"0":"post-304390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-alarmism","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-mainstream-media","11":"tag-propaganda","12":"tag-rhodes","13":"tag-wildfires","15":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/017e7317c565651f97fb984922b99021825313921-1200x801-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1hbw","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":375975,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=375975","url_meta":{"origin":304390,"position":0},"title":"The Guardian exaggerated European extreme weather","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"20\/04\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Guardian\u00a0has churned out yet another piece of climate exaggeration, this time claiming that storms, floods, and wildfires in 2024 \u201caffected\u201d over 400,000 people in Europe.","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate crisis\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate crisis","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-crisis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/00Extreme-Weather-Storms-Climate-Change-Concept.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/00Extreme-Weather-Storms-Climate-Change-Concept.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/00Extreme-Weather-Storms-Climate-Change-Concept.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/00Extreme-Weather-Storms-Climate-Change-Concept.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/00Extreme-Weather-Storms-Climate-Change-Concept.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":376612,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=376612","url_meta":{"origin":304390,"position":1},"title":"No, Euronews, Europe is Not Suffering \u2018Serious Impacts\u2019 from Climate Change","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"27\/04\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent post by Euronews, titled \u201cDeadly floods, storms and heatwaves: Europe suffered the \u2018serious impacts\u2019 of climate change in 2024,\u201d claims that Europe is experiencing very severe impacts from climate change, citing heatwaves, wildfires, and flooding, among other conditions. This is false. 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