{"id":351983,"date":"2024-11-22T09:12:45","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T08:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=351983"},"modified":"2024-11-22T09:12:48","modified_gmt":"2024-11-22T08:12:48","slug":"check-your-facts-pbs-news-climate-change-has-played-no-role-in-northeastern-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=351983","title":{"rendered":"Check Your Facts, PBS News, Climate Change Has Played No Role in Northeastern Wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

From ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By H. Sterling Burnett<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) News ran a story claiming climate change has caused or contributed to wildfires currently plaguing New York and New Jersey. This is false. Wildfires have plagued both states throughout their histories, so the present fire season is not unusual. Also real world data shows the acreage lost to wildfires in the United States has declined sharply since the early part of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PBS News story, \u201cThe role of climate change in an unusual outbreak of wildfires in the Northeast<\/a>,\u201d consists of William Brangham, correspondent, producer, and substitute anchor for the PBS News Hour, interviewing Hilary Howard a climate change reporter for the New York Times and Rocky Hazelman, a New Jersey farmer who discussed a drought the region has experienced. At the outset Brangham asserts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, wildfires across the American west have served as an urgent reminder of the threat posed by extreme weather, which is often made worse by climate change. But over the last few weeks, nearly 3,000 miles across the country, fires have engulfed parts of the Hudson Valley, stretching between New York and New Jersey, sending smoke into New York City, reducing air quality and turning the skyline a hazy gray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often driven by high winds the nearly 5,000 acre Jennings Creek fire has gained ground because of an unusually severe drought that\u2019s occurring on the East Coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As many people know, this is not a region that is used to wildfires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Howard, chiming in, \u201cDry conditions or a drought. They are the reason for the fire or the reason the fire spreads so rapidly. Right. So, it starts with global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is neither Brangham nor Howard are climate experts, they provide no evidence for their claims that the present drought or wildfires are unusual or are driven by climate change \u2013 because there is none \u2013, and their claims ignore both the history of wildfires in the two states and are debunked by data on droughts and wildfires across the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every region of the United States suffers droughts of varying severity periodically. No state or region has been drought-free throughout its history. As longtime farm families can attest, drought has affected farmers across the Northeastern U.S. periodically, just at is has farmers across the America. New York<\/a> and New Jersey experience some degree of drought every two to three years on average over some portions of the states with sustained or more severe droughts<\/a> occurring every few decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wildfires are also not uncommon in the history of New York and New Jersey. As an article on New Jersey\u2019s Forest Fire Service noted<\/a> in 1999:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 40% of the [New Jersey] is still in commercial forestland. Its pine barrens, located in the southern part of the state, contain over 1 million acres of highly combustible trees and brush. Another 13% is in parks, recreation areas and watersheds. Numerous farms, orchards and gardens are scattered throughout the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all that forested land, wildfires, some of them orders or magnitude larger than the present fires, have been recorded back to colonial times, as the same article details:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Jersey\u2019s Wildfire History<\/strong>The following are but a few of the many wildfires that have occurred:1755<\/strong> \u2013 A pine barrens fire was reported to be 30 miles in length.
1838<\/strong> \u2013 Sept. 7-10, Burlington and Monmouth counties suffered a fire of 179,200 acres with much property loss.
1930<\/strong> \u2013 May saw the worst fires in New Jersey history, with 267,547 acres burned. A huge fire leveled the entire town of Forked River.
1936<\/strong> \u2013 Five Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) firefighters were killed in a forest fire near Bass River.
1941<\/strong> \u2013 Huge fires destroyed 400 structures in the Lakewood\/Lakehurst area.
1963<\/strong> \u2013 A series of 37 major fires burned 193,000 acres, 186 homes and 197 outbuildings and killed seven people causing $8.5 million in property losses. One fire burned 76,000 acres and traveled 21 miles.
1977<\/strong> \u2013 A 15,000-acre fire burned six homes on March 31. On July 22, a 2,300-acre fire in the Bass River State Forest killed four firefighters from the Eagleswood Volunteer Fire Company.
1995<\/strong> \u2013 On April 4, a fire burned 19,225 acres in Ocean County and threatened numerous homes and other structures.
1997<\/strong> \u2013 During a summer drought, an 800-acre SWI fire damaged 52 homes in Berkeley Township.
1998<\/strong> \u2013 There were a reported 1,665 wildland fire ignitions burning 1,480 acres in New Jersey. According to Assistant Division Fire Warden Bert Plante, \u201cThis was a very good year for the State of New Jersey with respect to wildfire control. A cool wet spring, fire prevention and education programs and rapid responses to ignitions all contributed to that comparatively low acreage loss.\u201d<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s true for New Jersey is equally true of New York, with wildfires, many much larger than the present fire, recorded across its history. As an article in the Adirondack Journal reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Adirondacks have a long history of epic blazes. While there are no recent comparisons with the terrible devastation faced by the west, fire is no stranger to the vast North Country woodland. Whenever drought conditions exist, there is a heightened risk for fire. Following disastrous fires around the turn of the 20th century, especially those of 1903 and 1908, measures were established to prevent and detect fires, eliminating the scale of destruction that occurred in the Adirondacks a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no trend in increasing drought of wildfires across the Northeastern U.S. or in New York and New Jersey, more particularly, so there is no evidence whatsoever climate change is exacerbating the risk of wildfires there. Thus, Brangham\u2019s and Howard\u2019s assertion that there is such a connection is pure speculation or alarmist opinion, not supported by facts on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, for the U.S. as a whole, drought is in a fairly sustained decline. As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Drought<\/a>, the United States set records in 2017 and 2019 for having its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought conditions and has recently undergone its longest period in recorded history with fewer than 40 percent of the country experiencing \u201cvery dry\u201d conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the U.N. IPCC reports with \u201chigh confidence\u201d that precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, while IPCC has \u201clow confidence\u201d about any negative trends globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor are wildfires becoming more common in the United States. In fact, data from the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center<\/a> indicate the peak for wildfires, many in the eastern part of the country, over the past century and a half came in the late 1920s and early 1930s (see the figure below) not the 2000s as one may surmise from the false claims commonly made in the mainstream media about increases in wildfires in recent decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Figure 1: Total wildfire acreage burned by year in the United States, 1926 to 2019. Data from https:\/\/www.nifc.gov\/fireInfo\/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html<\/a><\/em>
Graph by meteorologist Anthony Watts<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1. Available wildfire acreage burned, by year, in the United States, 1926 to 2019. This includes data from NIFC prior to the disappearance of data that occurred in 2021. Graph by Anthony Watts.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s true of wildfires in the United States is also true for wildfires globally with NASA and the European Space Agency<\/a> both reporting significant declines in the number and amount of acres lost to wildfires since the beginning of the 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PBS News\u2019 coverage of the wildfires plaguing New York and New Jersey was long on words and anecdotes, but short on facts. One should expect better than false fire alarm from a news agency funded in part by taxpayers\u2019 hard-earned dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) News ran a story claiming climate change has caused or contributed to wildfires currently plaguing New York and New Jersey. This is false. Wildfires have plagued both states throughout their histories, so the present fire season is not unusual. Also real world data shows the acreage lost to wildfires in the United States has declined sharply since the early part of the 20th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":351988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","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_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"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":[691818056,691818514,691831611,691818913],"class_list":["post-351983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-climate-change","tag-extreme-weather","tag-public-broadcasting-system-pbs-news","tag-wildfires","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/0-wildfires.jpg?fit=2048%2C1363&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1tz9","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":255966,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=255966","url_meta":{"origin":351983,"position":0},"title":"No, AP, Climate Change Is Not Increasing Wildfires in Anchorage","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"05\/04\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"In fact, the increase in human population alone explains the increase in wildfires far better than climate change.","rel":"","context":"In \"Alaska\"","block_context":{"text":"Alaska","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=alaska"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/00alaska-heat-wave-wildfires.jpg?fit=1024%2C538&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/00alaska-heat-wave-wildfires.jpg?fit=1024%2C538&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/00alaska-heat-wave-wildfires.jpg?fit=1024%2C538&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/00alaska-heat-wave-wildfires.jpg?fit=1024%2C538&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":261638,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261638","url_meta":{"origin":351983,"position":1},"title":"What the media won\u2019t tell you about \u2026 Wildfires\u2013Roger Pielke\u00a0Jr","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"06\/11\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"With this post I discuss some of the aspects of wildfires that I see as missing in the public discussion. 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In a predictable manner, they attributed this event to climate change without any factual basis.","rel":"","context":"In \"Canadian wildfires\"","block_context":{"text":"Canadian wildfires","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=canadian-wildfires"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/0Screenshot-2023-06-11-114349.png?fit=930%2C537&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/0Screenshot-2023-06-11-114349.png?fit=930%2C537&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/0Screenshot-2023-06-11-114349.png?fit=930%2C537&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/0Screenshot-2023-06-11-114349.png?fit=930%2C537&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":413504,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=413504","url_meta":{"origin":351983,"position":3},"title":"SPACE.com Swallows Lies that Climate Change Is Making Wildfires Worse, It Isn\u2019t","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"11\/16\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"SPACE.com ran a story claiming that 2024\/2025\u2019s wildfires are proof that climate change is making wildfires larger and more severe. 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The fires, which killed at least 115 people, are believed to have been\u00a0started by a downed electricity line, but observers have said\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Global warming\"","block_context":{"text":"Global warming","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=global-warming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0ap-maui-fires.jpg?fit=1024%2C742&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0ap-maui-fires.jpg?fit=1024%2C742&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0ap-maui-fires.jpg?fit=1024%2C742&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0ap-maui-fires.jpg?fit=1024%2C742&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":270310,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=270310","url_meta":{"origin":351983,"position":5},"title":"WATCH: Morano on Watters \u2014 arsonists responsible for \u2018climate\u2019 wildfires","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"07\/30\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a global problem of people starting fires. 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Well, this would be the equivalent of blowing up a dam or sabotaging a dam and allowing a valley to flood and then saying \u2018Oh look, climate change is causing more floods","rel":"","context":"In \"arsonists\"","block_context":{"text":"arsonists","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=arsonists"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Screenshot-2023-07-29-at-07.05.19-1.png?fit=1200%2C666&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Screenshot-2023-07-29-at-07.05.19-1.png?fit=1200%2C666&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Screenshot-2023-07-29-at-07.05.19-1.png?fit=1200%2C666&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Screenshot-2023-07-29-at-07.05.19-1.png?fit=1200%2C666&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Screenshot-2023-07-29-at-07.05.19-1.png?fit=1200%2C666&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=351983"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351990,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351983\/revisions\/351990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/351988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=351983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=351983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=351983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}