• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

The Fires in Greece Are More Likely to Have Been Caused by Arsonists Than Global Warming

by Toby Young
24 July 2023 4:00 PM

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.

Tags: ArsonForest FiresGlobal WarmingGreece

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

The Pandelusion

Next Post

The Failing MHRA Consistently Misses Safety Signals From Dangerous Medicines. Time for the Government to Act

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

31 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Dinger64
Dinger64
1 year ago

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

78
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago
Reply to  Dinger64

Recruiting only on the basis of ability to do the job? The world needs to be PURGED of people like you!

😜

61
0
Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
1 year ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

And how are you going to appoint people able to do the job of purging?

21
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
1 year ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

Only Black and Asian purgers need apply🤭

Last edited 1 year ago by Dinger64
38
0
AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
1 year ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

Or indeed how will you appoint the appointers? It’s a vicious circle…

Last edited 1 year ago by AethelredTheReadier
22
0
AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
1 year ago
Reply to  Dinger64

That system worked so well, didn’t it, Dings?

12
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
1 year ago
Reply to  AethelredTheReadier

Too right it did👍

5
0
Smudger
Smudger
1 year ago
Reply to  Dinger64

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!

3
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

“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.

46
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

When it comes to politicians their beliefs are always amenable to the contents of a brown envelope or its equivalent.

31
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

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.”

27
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Does Herbert have experience with any other form of government than those based on periodic politalker popularity contests?

0
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  RW

Not sure what those are but he was from the US, think he lived there all his life, died a few years ago.

3
0
stewart
stewart
1 year 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.

56
0
AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
1 year ago

Diversity is just another name for racism.

52
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

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.

65
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

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! 😮

45
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  Mogwai

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?

9
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

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.

15
0
cchambers
cchambers
1 year ago

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?

9
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

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

26
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

If there was a compelling business case for diversity, why would would businesses need to be bullied or coerced into adopting it?

35
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

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).

12
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

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”

4
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

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

7
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

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.

4
0
lymeswold
lymeswold
1 year ago

Over time I would expect companies recruiting for diversity rather than ability will perform worse. In some industries the result could be fatal…

15
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago

Can anyone point me to a charity that works to achieve gender diversity among construction workers?

I’d.like to contribute.

13
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

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.

8
0
Jackthegripper
Jackthegripper
1 year ago

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.

9
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

16 May 2025
by Will Jones

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

29

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

26

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

19

News Round-Up

18

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

27

Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

16 May 2025
by Dr James Allan

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

POSTS BY DATE

July 2023
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Jun   Aug »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences