Tag: wildfires

The Latest Wildfire Panic is Refuted by Data

Wildfires are in the news. With a hot, dry summer it was bound to happen. And, naturally, this is bringing with it talk of climate change.

The Independent is screaming and rending its garments:

Europe is on fire – will the continent’s climate change deniers finally wake up?

The Guardian has an opinion piece calling for prosecutions for climate crimes. Twitter experts are calling for changes to the way we live our lives.

Prince William is saying stuff:

Wildfires ‘stark reminder’ of extreme climate challenge, says William

I suppose we should make the usual point, that wildfires are a natural phenomenon that are an important part of the life cycle of many ecosystems. And that some years are bound to be worse than others.

But there’s just one issue, wildfire activity is actually down.

A new study from the University of East Anglia, published in May, found that 2025 was 16% below the average in terms of burnt area, and that’s despite policies known to increase both the chance of wildfires starting and the area they will burn.

But that was last year, this year must be different given the coverage, right?

Wrong.

Data from the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service shows that, to the end of June, this year had substantially lower wildfire activity – across every continent – than any year since they began collecting data in 2003.

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Flashback: The Amazon Wildfire Crisis That Never Was

Given the current hysteria about wildfires on the continent – hysteria which is refuted by data – we thought this would be a good time to remind everyone they’ve done this exact thing before.

It’s the summer of 2019, the Amazon’s regular wildfire season is underway, and for some reason it’s all anyone is talking about.

“The Earth’s lungs are on fire!”, that’s the line. Everyone from Obama down is lamenting the damage and wishing we’d done more about climate change sooner.

Full on South Park “we didn’t listen!” mode.

Just one problem – It was actually a below average year for forest fires in the Amazon, at least according to NASA data.

And the conversation was being muddied by people sharing misattributed photographs, and contrived or misleading statistics.

But when rational people point this out to try and calm the growing hysteria, they are shouted down and called names.

…and then the NASA data was changed to cover up the discrepancy.

It’s an interesting little time capsule, and microcosm of the model that would take hold of the entire world when Covid landed just six months later.

And it’s exactly what they’re doing right now in Europe.

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Nine in Ten ‘Wildfires’ Started by Human Hands, French Government Admits

The French government has revealed that an estimated ninety per cent of so-called wildfires are the result of human activity, undermining the persistent media narrative that climate change is driving spontaneous fires ravaging the countryside.

On Tuesday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that 184 people have been arrested in connection with wildfires since the beginning of the summer. Those arrested are a combination of arsonists, criminals, and careless individuals, he said.

According to the French Forest Observatory, around one in three (30 per cent) of wildfires are believed to have been set maliciously, Le Figaro reported.

In total, the Ministry of the Interior estimated that nine in ten wildfires in France were started by humans. The Place Beauvau said that since June, five people have been imprisoned and a further 15 have been placed in detention pending a trial.

A conviction for starting a fire can come with serious consequences, particularly if the fire resulted in deaths. Following a strengthening of the laws surrounding the issue in 2004 in the wake of a deadly heatwave.

People found to have been negligent can face up to two years in prison, while those who deliberately set fires face up to ten years in prison, though a life sentence is possible if the fires kill.

The wildfires in France have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes, with over 115,000 hectares of forest destroyed by the flames.

Yet, rather than addressing the persistent issue of arson and negligent accidents, the Western legacy media has heavily focussed on climate change driving blazes, with direct human action downplayed.

This is despite European governments having long recognised that so-called wildfires across the continent are typically the result of human activity.

Indeed, during the summer of 2023, when Greece faced hundreds of fires, Athens’ Climate Change Minister Vassilis Kikilias acknowledged that the majority of the fires “were caused by human hand” and that the people behind them were guilty of “arson either by criminal negligence or by intention”.

That same summer, the regional president of the Spanish Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, admitted that wildfires that forced over thousands of tourists to evacuate had been a result of arson.

In response to the prevalence of pyromaniacs, some governments have been forced to get creative with their attempts to stop arson, including the use of police drones in Italy to patrol the countryside for prospective arsonists.

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LAUGHABLE: Gavin Newsom Claims That When it Comes to Fire Management, California is a ‘Model for the Globe’

Sometimes, you may forget how utterly shameless Gavivin Newsom is and then he says something like this and it all comes rushing back.

The governor recently bragged, with a straight face, that California is a model for the globe on fire management and that people from all over the world look at what California is doing and try to imitate it.

During the wildfires at the end of 2024, there wasn’t even any water in the reservoirs to fight the flames. And yet, he’s bragging. It’s just amazing.

Townhall reports:

You have to admit that what Gavin Newsom lacks in brains and sound policy he makes up for in sheer hubris. That’s the only reason that Newsom could say with a straight face that his state is a global model for fire management. Perhaps that’s true in a sense; Canada was burning so much that people as far south as Virginia were seeing, smelling, and feeling the impacts.

That’s because Canada, like California, refuses to do basic fire management like clearing brush and old growth. This is nothing to brag about, of course.

But brag Newsom did.

“I can say this with absolute conviction. We don’t imitate; we’re a model for others,” Newsom said. “We have people coming from all over the United States and around the globe to look at what California is doing in orbit, in the air, and on the ground.”

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Canada: Indigenous Leaders Say Politicians Ignored Them as Communities Burned

Fast-moving wildfires in Ontario, Canada, destroyed an entire indigenous community this week whose leaders said politicians delayed evacuation orders, failed to help find lodging for the displaced, and ignored calls for help as the flames engulfed them.

Ontario formally requested federal assistance this week as dozens of wildfires threatened northern communities, some of which had already begun evacuating themselves or fleeing by boat. Canada does not have a federal emergency management agency or a federal fire authority, however, rendering its national government largely unable to address the country’s annual massive wildfires.

In a letter to federal Emergency Management and Community Resilience Minister Eleanor Olszewski, Dunlop said 15 communities were evacuating or considering evacuations. She warned that simultaneous air evacuations could exceed Ontario’s available aircraft and requested a federal response within 24 hours instead of the usual 48.

Federal officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported.

The request came after a fast-moving blaze devastated Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, also known as Collins First Nation, north of Thunder Bay. Chief Helen Paavola said residents escaped in small boats while watching flames swallow trees beside their homes. Some fled wearing only the clothes on their backs.

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“Sanctions, Asset Freezes, Visa Bans, Tariffs”: GOP Senator Readies Bill Against Canada Over Toxic Wildfire Smoke

GOP Sen. Prepares Sanctions Bill On Lefties in Canada  

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) appeared on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, hosted by Laura Ingraham, on Friday and provided new color about his bill to sanction Canada over the toxic wildfire smoke that has created an environmental disaster across parts of the U.S.

“We’re going to put sanctions on them, hold their assets, make sure they don’t have visas, and impose tariffs because we have to ensure that the people suffering are compensated,” Moreno told Ingraham.

Moreno continued, “This is an abject, avoidable disaster. And the left, who by the way, talks about climate change every single day, this is the worst environmental disaster you could ever imagine!”

“This is totally avoidable. And it’s not due to climate change. It’s due to leadership change in Canada that’s caused this problem,” he added. 

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Palisades Fire Victims Beat Gavin Newsom in Court AGAIN

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been playing hide the ball with the truth about the disastrous and deadly Pacific Palisades fire and the state’s culpability in it since it rekindled on Jan. 7, 2025. This week, the governor lost another court maneuver in his attempt to deny Palisades fire victims the ability to sue the the State of California. 

On Friday, the California Supreme Court denied Newsom administration’s latest stall tactic, that would have required yet another “review and request to stay the Palisades Fire Litigation,” according to Trey Robertson, who represents 4,000 Palisades victims. If the court had decided differently, those victims would have been completely iced out of their efforts to seek relief… and discovery. 

We’ve already seen the state run from liability in the case, but the secrets that would pour out from discovery in a court case of this kind could fill that entire empty Pacific Palisades reservoir. It’s still empty, by the way. 

The State of California has the right to defend itself against liability in the fire, of course. But there’s something else at play here. Newsom’s administration has fought the thousands of victims every step of the way as they seek  what could be billions of dollars in damages from the state’s complicity.  

The decision means that “justice is coming for the Palisades Fire victims,” Robertson said in an X post. 

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Not Satire: Newsom Took Money That Could Have Helped Stop Palisades Fires and Spent It Teaching American Indians to Start Fires

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California continues to light his constituents’ tax dollars on fire.

Moreover, he has done it in the name of cultural pandering and with dubious constitutionality.

According to the urban policy-focused City Journal, the state’s “Tribal Wildfire Resilience” program, overseen by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CAL FIRE, has distributed $24 million to “tribal groups and other nonprofits” to teach American Indians, identified as “cultural fire practitioners,” how to clear brush from forests in ways their ancestors would have found familiar.

Meanwhile, taxpayers have seen no appreciable return on that expenditure. How much brush have the tribes cleared? California has released no data.

Of course, this is not meant as an attack on the tribes — far from it. After all, one could probably find $24 million between the couch cushions at the Pentagon.

What makes this expenditure maddening is that it, like most things in California, is dripping with wokeness.

For instance, Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, who effectively oversees the program, justified it not on fire management grounds but as a remedy for historical injustices. California, he said, originated in a “state-sanctioned policy of genocide.” Thus, Crowfoot made it sound as if the governor had a plan to return the land to the “leadership of California Native American tribes.”

Newsom, of course, has no such plan. But saying that he has one sounds good in upscale places like the French Laundry.

Worse yet, the “Tribal Wildfire Resilience” program engages in discrimination by allocating resources based on race.

“As part of this commitment to ‘cultural burning,’” the City Journal wrote, “California has created separate fire-certification processes for nontribal and tribal populations. White, black, Latino, and Asian fire bosses must receive technical certifications, including a 40-hour burn-boss course and, in some cases, a federal certificate. ‘Cultural fire practitioners,’ by contrast, are certified through simple tribal recognition that a person has ‘substantial experience’ burning for cultural purposes.”

Should anyone ever make a case of it, the U.S. Supreme Court almost certainly would find those race-based provisions unconstitutional.

Again, none of this reflects in any way on the tribes themselves. Perhaps some “cultural fire practitioners” really do have “substantial experience” in clearing brush via controlled fires. After all, early American history is filled with stories of Indians skilled in that practice.

In that case, however, why do they require public funding? Why must the privileged Newsom, one of the whitest of white men who ever lived, teach them traditional cultural techniques?

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LA mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman proposes backyard BBQ ban

Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman wanted to ban backyard barbecues for residents during certain high fire danger days across the city.

Raman introduced a motion Wednesday directing city officials to examine emergency restrictions on grilling during Red Flag Warning days, when high winds and dry conditions significantly increase wildfire danger across Los Angeles.

The proposal specifically asks officials to consider possible limits on backyard barbecues, fire pits and other open flames in residential neighborhoods during those high-risk weather events.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who represents much of the San Fernando Valley, stepped in and successfully blocked the proposal by introducing a separate motion that stripped Raman’s barbecue ban.

“The last thing Angelenos need is a ban on hosting a carne asada in their own backyard,” Rodriguez told The California Post.

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HELL FREEZES OVER: CBS News ‘Fact Checks’ Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass From Debate, Says Spencer Pratt Was Right 

Something has shifted in the race for mayor of Los Angeles after Spencer Pratt’s amazing performance in the debate earlier this week.

Even CBS News has done a ‘fact check’ on incumbent Democrat candidate Karen Bass, something that is usually reserved for Republican candidates. It’s extremely rare for the media to call out a Democrat candidate in this way.

The fact check had mostly to do with claims made about the wildfires, which are clearly going to play a much larger role in this race than Democrats were hoping.

John Nolte writes at Breitbart News:

Here is a partially edited transcript from the debate that’s relevant to the first CBS News fact check about the mayor’s epic mishandling of the 2025 Palisades Fire that destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and killed 12 people:

SPENCER PRATT: A lot of people talk about climate change and hurricane-force winds. The winds in the Pacific Palisades never reached higher than 40 mph. For those first six hours, they didn’t go above 27 miles per hour.

The whole point of this exchange is that Bass is running around blaming the fire on Climate Change.

KAREN BASS: He talked about the winds — that is just completely inaccurate. If that were accurate, then the planes would have been able to fly. And so if the winds reached close to 100 miles an hour and the planes were unable to fly.

PRATT: Yes, she mentioned me. So this is — she’s an incredible liar. Everyone on their phones, Google it. 40 weather stations in the Pacific Palisades. It never went above 40 miles per hour. She is referencing the Altadena fire.

BIASED LEFTIST MODERATOR: I have to interrupt you. No name-calling, please.

PRATT: Yeah, but no name calling? She just lied though… No more lying. We need the truth.

Here’s the CBS News fact check:

Weather modeling reviewed for my reporting shows winds in the Palisades during those first several hours of the fire were, in fact under 40 miles per hour. Planes could and did fly. Stronger winds intensified later in the evening. And that distinction matters because the earliest hours of a wildfire are often the most critical for containment.

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