Ross Clark has written a good piece for the Spectator’s Coffee House blog pointing out that 2023 has not been an unusually bad year for forest fires in Europe and, according to Nasa satellite date, the number of forest fires globally actually fell by about 25% between 2001 and 2015. Here’s how it begins:
Summer wouldn’t be complete without hordes of disgruntled British tourists being evacuated from their hotels, flown home early or spending their holidays sprawled on the floor of an international airport. But are the scenes of Rhodes really a symptom of a the world ‘being on fire’, as Greta Thunberg would put it?
Actually, in spite of scenes of burning forests on Rhodes and elsewhere being presented daily on our television screens, 2023 has not been a devastating year for forest fires in Europe. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), which covers the EU, shows that it has been an average year to date – with an early burst of fires in the spring followed by less activity since then.
It is a similar story with wildfires globally. A 2016 study published in a Royal Society journal using Nasa satellite data surprised many people by revealing that the amount of land burned annually in wildfires globally had decreased by about a quarter between 2001 and 2015. The authors have since updated their study and confirmed that in spite of increasing agonising over fires in the US, Europe and Australia, the amount of land being burned is still falling. This data includes all wildfires, not just forests – and globally 70% of fires are on grassland rather than forests.
None of this is to say that climate change is not increasing the risk of fires in certain locations at certain times of year, but it does rather undermine lazy claims about the world being on fire. If anything, the world is being damped down.
We have been conditioned to think that climate change is the overwhelming problem facing human civilisation and all other life on Earth. But why is the extent of fires not actually increasing in the way that climate campaigners frequently claim? Partly because in some places shifting patterns of rainfall have reduced the risk of fire. But also because rising global temperatures are not the only influence on fires.
The incidence of wildfires also has a lot to do with land use. Where wildfires have increased in recent years, such as in some parts of Eastern Europe, it is down to farmland being abandoned and allowed to return to scrubland, which contains far more flammable material. Urban development close to forested areas also plays a big role, increasing the sources of ignition through barbecues, overhead electricity wires and so on.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The more likely cause of the fires in Greece is arson. Firefighters in Rhodes have indicated arson may be to blame, while local officials in Corfu say the fires in Corfu were started by arsonists. Not surprisingly, the BBC is still trying to argue that global warming is to blame: “There are reports that some fires may have been started by arsonists, but southern Europe’s extended heatwave has helped create the dry conditions that make it easier for flames to take hold and spread,” writes Justin Rowlatt, the Beeb’s Climate Editor. Careful with that straw you’re clutching, Justin. It might catch fire.
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Sounds like a load of commercial tosh and gibberish to me! Go to an interview, take your cv, most suitable person gets the job!
Simples
Recruiting only on the basis of ability to do the job? The world needs to be PURGED of people like you!
And how are you going to appoint people able to do the job of purging?
Only Black and Asian purgers need apply
Or indeed how will you appoint the appointers? It’s a vicious circle…
That system worked so well, didn’t it, Dings?
Too right it did
Uber globalist McKinsey could not be expected to come up with anything else. They know its findings don’t hold water but they are the key researchers, facilitators and propagandists of corporations and governments globalist agenda. Their fingerprints are everywhere!
“Is diversity our strength? Our leaders certainly seem to think so. ”
I strongly doubt that they really think that. Hard to know what all of their reasons are, but I expect it’s partly political.
When it comes to politicians their beliefs are always amenable to the contents of a brown envelope or its equivalent.
Indeed. As Frank Herbert (author of Dune) put it:
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.”
Does Herbert have experience with any other form of government than those based on periodic politalker popularity contests?
Not sure what those are but he was from the US, think he lived there all his life, died a few years ago.
“Diversity” would help companies if the companies were actively discriminating against certain types of people, rather than trying to get the best people for each job.
But as it happens, they weren’t. They were recruiting by talent.
But now they are discriminating, against white men and so not getting the best person for the job.
That’s what DEI has achieved.
Diversity is just another name for racism.
There is “no business case for diversity” because diversity is not “business” it is politics. Just as there is “no business case for Net Zero” because that is politics as well. —–So nonsense like “Diversity is our strength” is a political statement which implies that if you don’t have diversity you cannot have strength. Which is patently absurd. Companies in 1950 1960 and 1970 never had much “diversity” so did they not have any “strength? How about companies in Japan where there isn’t much in the way of “diversity”? Do they have no strength? ——But notice how diversity only works in one direction —–Less white people.
Yes, quite. And as I’ve said before, would you rather fly in a plane with a pilot* who was chosen because of their ability, or have a surgeon perform your operation because you trust them to be sufficiently skilled, than have your life put in the hands of people who were basically a tick box exercise, a sub-standard ‘DEI plant’, because TPTB had targets to meet? It’s insane really that such basic things even need pointed out.
*Even more so if planes are going to start flying with only one pilot. I don’t want some crappy, sub-par ‘woman of colour’ flying my plane just because she’s got a penis!
Yep——I always used the example of “Your 3 year old child is in a burning building. Who do you want to climb the ladder and rescue her? The 6′ 4 14 stone guy or the 5′ 1 8 stone woman?
Diversity is our strength is obviously just an purposely constructed anti-version of Unity is our strength, ie, our ability to cooperate as team against our external opponents, as opposed to loads of infighting among different groups each seeking to outmanoeuver the others wrt access to positions of influence and income. The latter is only the strength of diversity-enablers like UNWEF which absolutely don’t want some kind of united front against their evil agenda.
Good article.
Re: causality. Correlation is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for causality, is it not? So no correlation implies no causality. Or am I missing something?
Yes, another good, datacentric thread here which illustrates the con nicely;
”This plot presents a sad truth:
Media has failed it’s duty to inform the public
Instead, a business model of selling fear, stoking conflict, pandering, and pushing advertisers propaganda.
McKinsey-ification and it’s consequences has been a disaster for the human species.
It wasn’t always like this.
In the past newspapers made money by selling newspapers, and they competed on quality of research, clarity of insight, and reliability of sources.
Then newspapers started raking in massive sums in advertising revenue and things went sideways.
The issue is that the advertising revenue model fundamentally drives a race to the bottom in hacking dopamine, while favoring content that can be digestible to the largest number of people.
Clickbait for the lowest common denominator.
How’d we get here?
We unleashed an army of “Managerial Executives” on the economy who brought an industry-agnostic mindset of driving shareholder value by any means necessary.
Boeing used to be run by engineers. Newspapers by journalists. Hospitals by doctors.
Now’s its MBAs.
The net effect beyond destroying our institutions, democratic process, ability to innovate and govern effectively is this:
It drives a casino economy where returns concentrate to capital over labor.
It disincentivizes hard work.
And the media capitalizes on this collapse of civic society by selling more fear, more hysteria, inventing more wedge issues and clickbait outrage every day.
Gaslighting a generation into not having kids, opposing economic growths, and hating their own country..”
https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1774175317294473539
If there was a compelling business case for diversity, why would would businesses need to be bullied or coerced into adopting it?
I think the argument goes like this.
People from minority groups (and women, who arent a minority, but anyway) are just as capable as those from majority groups (I.e. white.men, who don’t constitute a majority anymore, but anyway) but are held back by a lack of opportunities, which don’t come their way because of the prejudice and bigotry of, essentially, white men.
In all occupations. No nuance. No exceptions. Everyone can do everything equally well. (Actually, minorities and women can do things even better in some instances, but that can be put aside for now.)
And because the people making this argument are really good people, they are willing to concede that this prejudice isn’t conscious but subconscious.
Luckily, the proponents of this idea are here to set white men straight (and white women when it comes to matters of race) and by forcing them to hire “minorities” they will discover that minorities are just as capable as anyone else. And for reasons that are not entirely evident, a workforce that perfectly represents society in all the right proportions creates some sort of goldilocks conditions that unleashes potential and companies will prosper even more for it.
And white men are too bigoted and blinded by their own self interest (subconsciously, let’s be kind) to see this so they need to be forced to hire “diversely”.. For their own good. And the good of society. Mostly the good of society. After all who wants to fight against what is good for society, right? Only white male monsters (acting sunconsciously).
It seems like a lot of people are uncomfortable with the fact that success in life* is not evenly distributed among whatever grouping lines are in vogue (race, sex etc). Significantly, this includes a lot of successful people. I am not sure why, but it seems quite common.
* measured by what seems to be important to people – money, power, status, skills – not saying these are the most important or that they are the only things that make up “success in life”
On the one hand impostor syndrome,.on the other envy?
I mean, life is very complex and random and so equal efforts and abilities don’t produce similar results.
I think most people are able to accept and live with that, but there are enough who don’t who use it as a pretext to try to re engineer society
I think most are able to accept that on an individual level, life is chancy and unfair. But more than a few are unable to accept that this unfairness (or its opposite) can apply unevenly along the lines of race, sex etc.
Over time I would expect companies recruiting for diversity rather than ability will perform worse. In some industries the result could be fatal…
Can anyone point me to a charity that works to achieve gender diversity among construction workers?
I’d.like to contribute.
If you’re talking about well-paid white collar construction workers, there probably is one
I’d stump up a few quid for the group that is campaigning for gender diversity in the night-time office building security guard sector, and of course the one pushing for racial diversity in the NBA.
Since John Lewis went all woke and diverse their profits, takings and quality has taken a nose dive. They have a black woman chairman, an Asian CEO, more women and ethnics in senior positions than you can shake a stick at, and a smattering of gay and trans types to make up the DIE numbers.
They invest heavily in black history month, all the trans nonsense, ESG and DIE and the company is a dead man standing. All the woke DIE nonsense did them no good at all and the staff are suffering as a result.