by Poppaloff, March11, 2020 in Electroverse

Never has the phrase “don’t believe the hype” been so relevant.

Last year media outlet after media outlet pumped the horror of the fires in the Amazon: “The Earth is burning up – The Earth is burning up.” However, the latest study released from the ESA points to the fact that last year’s burn, although 70% up on the previous year, was in fact in line with the previous seventeen years of acreage burn figures.

“While forest fires are common in the Amazon, they vary considerably from year-to-year driven by changes in climate, as well as variations in deforestation and forest degradation,” the ESA wrote.

The 2019 fires triggered an international demand for updated information about active fires, most importantly in Brazil. However, these figures were never compared to the number of blazes over a longer time period, reads a watchers.news article.

Using information from ESA’s Fire CCI project, researchers studied fire-ravaged areas in South America in 2018 and 2019, then compared the data to the annual average from 2001 to 2018. The report indicated that the total burned area in South America was roughly 70 percent more in 2019 as compared to the same period of 2018– however, only a fraction more than the annual average over the previous 17 years:

 

The study also highlighted the need to look at the long-term trends and historical data concerning the seemingly unpredictable and fluctuating nature of these areas as well as the role of fire, human activity and climate change within the Amazon.

“These observations show the challenge we are facing – the processes on Earth and in the forests are very dynamic … satellite data is essential to get a clear and independent picture in order to also understand long-term trends,” said ESA’s Earth Observation Program director Josef Aschbacher.

So, Brazil’s 2019 fire season was inline with the average for the past 18 years, with no significant trend implied — yet still, the world’s media used it to obfuscate and confuse, and bang the climate catastrophe drum.

Is there an agenda here…?