Environmental Talk

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and a sign showing his official campaign slogan …

I have to admit, I don’t pay much attention when Harry Reid talks. If you asked him what his favorite Halloween candy was, he’d tell you George Bush isn’t doing enough to fight the obesity epidemic and he’d find some way to blame the creation of the fun-sized Butterfinger on Dick Cheney.

Reid is one of the new breed of politicians and political pundits on both sides of the aisle who choose to rely on political rhetoric in place of any attempt to think about an issue. Any time there’s a photo op or a microphone, you’re liable to hear some crazy interpretation of the day’s events.

After all, the politician or pundit in question can always claim later that he or she (giving Ann Coulter the benefit of the doubt), was taken out of context.

As Winston Churchill once said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

Harry Reid has been going without pants for awhile now and he continued to demonstrate this latest fashion with his statement last week that global warming caused the recent California wildfires.

Within days of Harry Reid’s proclamation, this nonsense had been picked up by a variety of other outlets.

Before the flames had even died down, the idea was being repeated by Bill Maher on his HBO show, Real Time, on CNN’s promotion of their global warming special and in a segment on 60 Minutes that suggested we are living in “the age of the mega-fire.”

A few days later officials confirmed that the fires had been started by kids playing with matches.

So, unless they were working on a school assignment trying to duplicate the effects of climate change, it seems like a stretch to blame this on global warming.

The really silly part about the whole debate is how easily the thesis ascribing droughts and forest fires to global warming can be disproved.

As noted by Steven Milloy over at Junk Science.com, data from the federal National Climatic Data Center (a source you would think 60 Minutes might have thought to check before throwing out accusations) shows the following:

During the period 1900 to 2005, moderate-to-severe drought conditions occurred in Southern California during 34 of those 106 years — about one-third of the time.

Comparing the southern California drought record against the global temperature record reveals the following:

— During the period 1900-1940, when most of the 20th century’s one-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase occurred, there were 7 years of moderate-to-severe drought.

— During the period 1941-1975, when global temperatures cooled, giving rise to concerns of a looming ice age, there were 11 years of moderate-to-severe drought.

— During the period 1976 to 1990, when global temperatures rose back to the 1940 level, there were 8 years of moderate-to-severe drought.

— Since 1991, when global temperatures rose slightly past the 1940 levels, there have been 7 years of drought.

So, in the period of the greatest temperature warming and carbon dioxide growth during the first half of the 20th century, droughts occurred less than 18% of the time.

During the 34-year cooling period around the middle to third quarter of the century (which, by the way, was a time when the planet cooled, despite rising carbon dioxide levels), droughts happened at a rate that was virtually identical to their hundred year average.

In the past 18 years, the first half of which Al Gore was in the Senate and served as Vice-President, droughts have occurred at a rate slightly above the 100-year average.

If there is some kind of trend here, Bill Maher and Harry Reid are way better at math than I am.

With a little research we can come up with a much better correlation if we examine the time frame from the early 1980s to the present.

For example, the increase in large fires since the early 1980s coincides quite nicely with the growth of rap music. Clearly, Tupac and Death Row Records are responsible for the bulk of California’s natural disasters.

Can’t you see we’re at a tipping point where it’s necessary to drastically curtail the production of rap music? Otherwise 50 Cent and Missy Elliott will destroy the planet.

Quick. Someone tell Harry Reid and then go find a camera crew ….

The whole wildfire news cycle is eerily reminiscent of the global warming hurricane scare stories that were so prevalent after Katrina. Remember how Al Gore and others suggested hurricanes were going to increase in frequency and severity?

Two years later, after two of the mildest hurricane seasons in recent memory, it is generally acknowledged that there was no data to support the hurricane claims.

And even fewer reasons to listen to Harry Reid.

global warming, climate change, California, wildfires, increased severity, Harry Reid, baseless claims, Katrina, Bill Maher, Real Time, CNN, 60 Minutes, Winston Churchill