The Heartland Institute is a group of climate change skeptics comprised of scientists and others, many like me simply impressed with their work and willing to contribute. (I tongue-in-cheek give them $33 a month). In 2022 they put out a booklet called Climate at a Glance for Teachers and Students that offers up a brief summary of thirty hot topics, so to speak. Each item is referenced so that debate among the public and climate “scientists” can go on intelligently.

The above graph is a 93-year record of forest fires in the lower 48. I recognize that it is somewhat blurry, as I had to scan it out of the book. It is no longer available on public agency websites. The X-axis is years, 1920-2020, and the Y-axis the number of acres burned in the lower 48, 10 million to 60 million. As we can see, the most acreage burned by forest fires was the 1930s and 40s, with 1931 seeing 52 million acres burned. I hesitate to say we “lost” acreage, as it has almost all grown back, and also know that wildfires are a natural component of forest health.

Continue reading “National Interagency Fire Center joins the long con” →