Those challenging, or even questioning, the orthodox narrative of climate change are likely to be treated as troublemakers or cranks

Few people wish to examine evidence likely to contradict the prevailing and accepted view on any subject

One of the prevailing themes in public debate in the modern world is the desire to place the people with whom one disagrees into discrete categories and, having done so, to then allocate disparaging terms nicknames or descriptions to them.  We see this all the time, This person is dismissed because he is a racist, the views of somebody else may be disregarded because he is a ‘Brexiteer’, and another might perhaps be scorned as a ‘global warming denier’. Often, all that somebody has needed to do in order to be labelled in this way was to ask the wrong questions. There is no need to express an actual opinion, it is quite sufficient in the current climate simply to ask why people believe such and such an idea, and that in itself is enough to enable progressive people to identify and label you. So it is that by running a YouTube channel in which I pose questions, and start debates, I have become in the eyes of some, that most awful of characters, a member of the far right.

     Some of the questions which I have asked relate to climate change and this has inevitably led to my being dubbed a ‘climate change denier’. This is quite mad. Of course, the Earth’s climate changes constantly and has done so for a billion years or more. At one time, crocodiles and lions lived in Britain because the climate was tropical, and at others, the country has been barren tundra where only a few arctic animals were able to survive. Some of the climate change in recent years may well be influenced by human activity. I doubt that anybody would dispute this. Set against that is the also indisputable point that some very odd things are happening in connection with the idea of climate change and that anybody asking questions is treated as though he or she were either a lunatic or in the pay of oil companies. It might make matters clearer if we look at a single example of this process.

    Readers will perhaps recall that the American state of California was hit by a number of severe wildfires this summer. The increasing number of forest fires and wildfires last year led to the coining of the phrase ‘global boiling’ In other words, wildfires are claimed to be associated in some fashion with climate change. At the foot of this article, I give a link to a typical piece about this year’s wildfires in California, which was published in June. It is suggested that climate change is responsible for an increase in the number and intensity of wildfires in California. We read that, ‘As wildfires continue to burn, scientists throughout the state are looking into the connections between these events and climate change. Extreme heat continues to be a reason of concern for scientists.’ Moreover, ‘According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, 10 of the largest California wildfires have occurred in the last 20 years.’ This is what you might call the standard narrative, that global warming is causing, or at least plays a role in, wildfires.

 I also give a link below to a BBC news item, headed ‘California fire agency worker faces arson charges’. We learn that an employee of California's State Fire Protection Agency has been arrested on suspicion of starting five forest fires in recent weeks. There is also mention in passing that, ‘On Tuesday a 34-year-old delivery driver pleaded not guilty to 11 arson-related crimes by prosecutors in southern California. Justin Wayne Halstenberg is alleged to have started one major wildfire - dubbed the Line Fire - which burned through 61 square miles (158 square kilometres) of the San Bernardino mountains east of Los Angeles’.

      In other words, the wildfires in California which have been in the news were started by somebody in the fire brigade. I have no idea what is going on here, but the same picture has emerged in Europe. First there is a wave of fierce forest fires in a country like Greece and then a few months later, we read that these were the product of arsonists. We are in fact seeing more wildfires caused not by climate change but by an increase in arson.

     To solve the riddle of the huge number of wildfires seen in recent years, we need to examine not meteorological data, but rather forensic records. Why are more people setting fire to forests in recent years? Are they environmental activists? Members of the fire brigade? What is going on and why do we not hear more about this and less about climate change and forest fires? There is a mystery here, one which hardly anybody seems keen to examine.

This is but one instance of a far wider phenomenon, that some scare story will be generated which raises a fear that Polar Bears will become extinct or coral reefs destroyed. In almost every such case, climate change is blamed. It is only much later that we learn that there are more Polar Bears in the world than ever before recorded or that the coral reefs are actually flourishing. For most of us, it is far easier and infinitely less trouble to accept the standard explanation for what is observed and not to ask awkward questions. This is because asking those questions is likely to see one being branded a troublemaker or crank. There is something very odd going on when it comes to climate change, but what is really happening is anybody’s guess!

https://abc7news.com/post/how-climate-is-impacting-californias-wildfire-season-solution/14967186/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr75ez47x0vo