The global-warming crowd needs to take the rhetoric down a notch or two
By Jim Laris
The Pasadena Weekly published a front-page story in the Nov. 1 headlined “World on Fire.” Well, I hate to tell Amy Goodman, her expert, Tim Flannery, and whoever wrote that headline, but the world does not seem to be on fire to me.
Here’s how I figure it: Oceans compose about 75 percent of Earth’s surface, so we can safely say that the oceans are not on fire. Then there are all the lakes and rivers and streams, etc., which probably aren’t on fire either. Let’s say the lakes and rivers conservatively cover five percent of Earth’s surface, so that makes at least 80 percent of the world that is not on fire.
The 20 percent of the remaining surface is made up of land. Out of that 20 percent, there were no significant fires in the Arctic, the Antarctic, Russia, China, India, Australia, Africa, Greenland, Iceland or Canada or anywhere else on the planet. That is not hyperbole. That is how it was.
As far as I know the only major fires were in Southern California, and only in San Diego, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura and Los Angeles counties. And the fires did not come close to burning those entire counties. They probably burned, at most, one percent of all five counties.
So now you have one percent of five counties in one state in the United States. The other 49 states do not have any alarming fires going on at this time. So, at most, and even this is quite a stretch, the percentage of the Earth’s surface which was on fire was about one one-thousandth of a percent. Not one percent; one-thousandth of one percent.
If you don’t agree with this, please tell me where my stats are wrong. I’m sincere. I haven’t thrown any anti-liberal bombs in this column. I haven’t used any swear words. I haven’t taken any cheap shots. I just want to have a discussion. So discuss. Sure, I’ve generalized about the percentage, but I think what I’ve said is basically correct. So tell me: Where am I wrong? Tell me what percentage of the world was on fire.
When the Weekly comes out and says on its front page, “World on Fire,” I have to speak up. And that nice little Earth illustration, tinged in red with the subtle red-type headline? Well, while those fires were going on, I was driving from California to Tucson and I did not see ONE fire in either state, not counting the broiler in Denny’s. And when I got back, alas, even Pasadena wasn’t on fire. The only thing that was on fire, it seems to me, was Amy Goodman’s incendiary prose. I guess the headline “One one-thousandth of one percent of the world on fire” just wasn’t quite punchy enough.
The rest here:
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=5328&IssueNum=98