Guest essay by H. Sterling Burnett

A recent story posted by Reuters blames recent wildfire numbers and severity that have erupted across Mediterranean Europe on climate change. Data and history debunk such claims. Satellite data from Europe and the United States show wildfire is in decline globally, including across Europe, and research and reports show wildfires have been common across the arid Mediterranean region throughout history.

In the Reuters story, “How climate change fuels wildfires in Europe,” writer Kate Abnett writes, “[w]ildfires have burnt 227,000 hectares of land since the beginning of the year – more than double the average for this time of year over the past two decades,” noting that while this years acreage lost to wildfires is far above the recent average (consistent records have only been kept since 2002), it is far below the recent record.

Abnett uncritically blames climate change for causing the Southern Europe’s fires, writing:

Scientists say the Mediterranean region’s hotter, drier summers put it at high risk of wildfires. …

Climate change exacerbates this risk, by creating hotter and drier background conditions. In the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, that has contributed to the fire season starting earlier in recent years, breaking records for the intensity of fires, and burning more land.

Greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning coal, oil and gas, have heated the planet by about 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. Europe has warmed at twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Abnett’s narrative may be compelling, but it is compelling fiction, unmoored from a historical understanding of fire in the region, and refuted by hard data and research.

As a matter of geography the climate of the Mediterranean region is naturally arid, prone to drought, extreme heat, and yes, associated wildfires. Abnett in particular discusses wildfires in parts of France (documented, for example, here and here), Greece (documented, for example, here and here), Spain (documented, for example, here and here), and even Syria (documented, for example, here and here). Syria is not normally considered part of Europe but I guess Abnett threw it into the mix because there are fires burning there and it is located to the Mediterranean Sea. The problem is research and historical reports from each of the countries and regions mentioned by Abnett show that wildfires, often set intentionally by people during wars, have been common there.

Fire helped shape the ecology of the entire region. Some past fires have been huge. For instance, more than 112 years of global warming ago, when global average temperatures were cooler and humans weren’t contributing significantly to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the great Thessaloniki fire burned for 13 days, left more than 70,000 people homeless, and destroyed two-thirds of Greece’s second largest city.

Factions have used fire as a tool to fight wars throughout history. In fact, many of the fires in Syria today have been set during its ongoing political strife or civil war. In the waning days of the Assad regime, it became common for militia’s fighting the government to set fires, which drained resources from the regime. Nowhere in Abnett’s story does she discuss the fact that many fires now burning and that have scorched the region in recent years have been the result of human carelessness, and sometimes intentionally set for political reasons or purely perverse ends.

That’s the history and context Abnett ignores in her rush to climate judgement.

Additionally, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) undermines Abnett’s linking long-term climate change and the increase in wildfires. The IPCC says in Chapter 12 of its Sixth Assessment Report there has been no observable change in the wildfire regime. “There is low confidence in any long-term increases in meteorological drought or fire weather at the global scale,” states the IPCC. The organization goes on say that, based on trends and models forecasts, it does not expect any observable change in wildfire behavior, numbers, intensity, or acreage lost, to arise by 2050 or even by 2100.

On this point, the IPCC would seem to be on solid ground since satellite data sets from NASA and the European Space Agency both show a decline in wildfires in recent decades.

In short, since wildfires are declining, it is impossible for climate change to be making wildfires more frequent or severe.

To the extent that people perceive wildfire trends as worsening it is likely due to the fact that with population and associated housing and infrastructure growth and expansion into regions historically prone to wildfires, more people are being affected by wildfires when they occur even when they aren’t as widespread or severe. In addition, the 24-seven global news cycle, a factor that never existed in human history before the last 50 years, makes people aware of even distant wildfires when they occur, making fires appear more frequent.

In the end, rather than focusing on the real factors behind today’s wildfires, Reuters chose to continue the drumbeat that climate change is behind everything bad that happens. This is especially unfortunate with regard to discussions of how to reduce wildfires, since the story ignores real world means of preventing and/or reducing the extend and damage from wildfires when they occur, such as increased active forest management, improved access for firefighting purposes, and hardening infrastructure. Instead, the story implies falsely that if only humans stopped burning oil, natural gas, and coal, wildfires would be relegated to the history books.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Wildfires are natural. They have been, remain, and will continue to be a fact of life for the foreseeable future, regardless of fossil fuel use. But the judicious use of fossil fuels, can help fight fires, by powering equipment, pumps, and timber removal machinery, for example, and by providing the on demand electric power and plastics which house electronics used to discover, map, track and to pinpoint suppression efforts. Fossil fuels also allow society to to map potential fuel load build ups and favorable meteorological conditions rapidly, to anticipate and possibly prevent fires before they occur. That’s what Abnett would have the world give up to prevent a modest rise in future temperatures.

Via SpaceWeather.com

Earth’s ionosphere is a bit like Swiss cheese. It contains holes called “equatorial plasma bubbles.” If any of these bubbles drift across your sky–grip the steering wheel–your GPS might go haywire.

That’s exactly what happened during a geomagnetic storm in March 2023. A new study published in the research journal Space Weather recounts how  GPS radio signals began to rapidly flicker, akin to the twinkling of a star, causing positioning errors across a wide swath of the Americas.

GPS satellites transmitting through a bubbly ionosphere.

“This is the most intense event we have analyzed,” says Fabiano Rodrigues, a physics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas and one of the paper’s lead authors. “It produced extremely intense disruptions at low latitudes for more than 10 hours and was even detectable by our mid-latitude sensor in Dallas (UTD in the diagram below), which is unusual.”

Completely surrounding Earth, the ionosphere is a shell of ionized gas created by the sun. Solar ultraviolet radiation ionizes air near the edge of space, creating a dynamic layer of plasma that varies with solar activity, time of day, and latitude. The ionosphere plays a critical role in GPS systems by reflecting or distorting radio waves passing through it.

When the sun sets, the ionosphere becomes unstable. This happens because the sun’s ionizing radiation suddenly disappears. A Rayleigh-Taylor instability takes hold, and bubbles of low-density plasma begin to rise, much like blobs in a lava lamp.

These structures are especially common near the magnetic equator, where electric and magnetic fields enhance the effect. That’s why they’re called equatorial plasma bubbles.

The March 23-24, 2023, event was remarkable because the bubbles were so widespread. They are normally confined within +/- 20  degrees of the magnetic equator, but during this storm, they spread at least twice as far, affecting population centers at middle latitudes. Peak position errors were wider than urban roadways.

Above: Red-orange-yellow marks where rapid fluctuations were observed during the March 2023 geomagnetic storm. A plume of yellow extends all the way into Texas.

Savvy readers may wonder if something similar happened during the Great Geomagnetic Storm of May 2024. After all, that was the biggest geomagnetic storm in decades (G5+), far more intense than the March 2023 storm (G4). The answer, surprisingly, seems to be “no.” The same sensors were running during both storms, yet only the lesser storm produced extraordinary scintillation.

“This is an example of how the ionosphere can respond differently to different magnetic storms,” says Rodrigues. “We still have a lot to learn.”

Do It Yourself: Rodrigues’s team monitors equatorial plasma bubbles using a low-cost sensor called ScintPi, based on the Raspberry Pi computer. You can build one yourself. Hobbyists are using them to observe geomagnetic storms and even solar eclipses.

Another day, another groaner of a climate alarmist press release—this time from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), touting a new study that claims the 2023 marine heatwaves were “unprecedented” and may “signal a climate tipping point” posted at EurekAlert, July 24^th,  2025.

The press release: 2023 marine heatwaves unprecedented and potentially signal a climate tipping point

The breathless tone is familiar, and the underlying logic is seriously flawed. But hey, if we scare people into action, we just might save the planet.

Let’s unpack this claim using a simple but often overlooked principle: context matters. Particularly in climate, which has cycles that span millennia, not just decades.

The foundational flaw in this study is its timescale. The research relies on satellite data beginning in 1982. That gives us about 40 years of observational history, which is virtually nothing in terms of Earth’s climate system. Prior to satellite coverage, comprehensive, high-resolution global measurements of sea surface temperatures simply didn’t exist. Claims of “unprecedented” events must be framed within that very limited context. As I’ve said before, declaring a “record” based on such a short window is like calling a coin flip streak a “trend” after four tosses.

Ocean temperatures fluctuate naturally over decadal, centennial, and even millennial scales. Our current observational capacity doesn’t cover even half of one oceanic oscillation cycle, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which paleoclimatology suggests runs as long as 50-70 years. To suggest a climate “tipping point” based on this short dataset is not just premature—it’s scientifically irresponsible.

The study makes much of the marine heatwaves’ “extreme” scale and persistence, yet it also quietly admits the 2023 heat spikes were linked to a strong El Niño. This is a naturally recurring phenomenon, not a man-made one. El Niño has been driving global climate variability for thousands of years, influencing ocean currents, sea surface temperatures, and atmospheric patterns.

The Tropical Eastern Pacific, one of the hottest zones in the 2023 event, is historically the epicenter of El Niño conditions. It should surprise no one that temperatures peaked there. What’s odd is the leap from observing a known, cyclical pattern to proclaiming it a new climate threshold.

The modeling mirage is strong with this one. Dong et al. used ECCO2 (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean – Phase II), a high-resolution ocean model that ingests satellite data to reconstruct conditions like mixed-layer heat budgets. While ECCO2 is a valuable scientific tool, let’s not forget: models are not measurements. They are educated guesses constrained by initial assumptions and historical tuning.

All models are simplifications, and when dealing with something as complex as ocean-atmosphere interactions, even a small error can yield a wildly different output. Yet here, model outputs are used not just to analyze the past but to hint at an ominous future—a future where every warm patch of seawater is a harbinger of ecological doom.

The press release tries to go for the jugular by suggesting that these marine heatwaves might “portend an emerging climate tipping point”. That’s a phrase straight from the climate playbook of fear, designed to bypass critical thinking and stampede policymakers into hasty action. Even the photo supplied with the press release was chosen to look “hot” and drive fear. Nowhere in the abstract or methods is there clear empirical evidence linking this event to irreversible climate shifts. It’s pure conjecture, wrapped in technical jargon and served up with a greasy side of urgency.

According to the press release, the authors cite “region-specific drivers” for each major marine heatwave. In the North Atlantic, enhanced shortwave radiation and a shallower mixed layer were culprits. In the Southwest Pacific, the heat was attributed to reduced cloud cover and increased advection. The Tropical Eastern Pacific was influenced by oceanic advection.

Notice anything? These aren’t unified, global changes due to increased CO2. They are local, meteorological, and oceanographic phenomena—exactly the kinds of natural variability we should expect in a dynamic system. The fact that these local causes are acknowledged undercuts the paper’s own argument for a singular, global cause rooted in greenhouse gas emissions.

Bad science and an unjustified extrapolation is the gist of this study and press release. Perhaps the most egregious leap comes in the suggestion that the 2023 marine heatwaves might represent a “tipping point” in the Earth’s climate system. The term “tipping point” implies a sudden, irreversible shift—a planetary point of no return. But what evidence is there for this? The authors provide none beyond the temperature anomalies themselves and vague references to mixed-layer dynamics.

No historical precedent is given. No paleoclimatic comparisons are offered. No quantitative thresholds are defined. It’s all speculation dressed up in technical language.

Predictably, the press release connects the marine heatwaves to coral bleaching, fishery losses, and ecological disaster. While it is true that marine heatwaves can affect ecosystems, the narrative ignores the fact that marine species have adapted to variability over millions of years.

Corals, for instance, have survived past periods of much higher global temperatures. Many fish species migrate or dive to avoid surface heat. And let’s not forget: ecosystems are resilient. The doom-and-gloom language betrays a bias that prioritizes alarm over understanding.

My conclusion: another tale of confirmation bias

The 2023 marine heatwaves were notable, yes. But were they a sign of a planetary tipping point? Unlikely. The evidence is thin, the dataset is short, and the logic is stretched.

Here’s what we actually know:

• Our observational record of global ocean temperatures is limited to a few decades.
• Natural variability, including El Niño and decadal oscillations, can easily account for short-term spikes.
• The study’s own data points to region-specific, localized drivers.
• The models used, while complex, are not infallible representations of reality.
• No historical context or thresholds are provided to justify claims of a tipping point.

Science should seek to inform, not frighten. The AAAS release on this study opts for drama over depth, projection over precision. In doing so, it exemplifies what’s wrong with climate discourse today: a preference for narrative over nuance.

Let’s not mistake a one year snapshot for a trend—or worse, for a crisis.

The paper: Record-breaking 2023 marine heatwaves

Dong et al., Science 24 Jul 2025 Vol 389, Issue 6758 pp. 369-374

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr0910

Abstract

The year 2023 witnessed an extraordinary surge in marine heatwaves (MHWs) across Earth’s oceans, setting new records in duration, extent, and intensity, with MHW activity totaling 53.6 billion °C days square kilometer—more than three standard deviations above the historical norm since 1982. Notable events include the North Atlantic MHW (276-year return period) and the Southwest Pacific (141 years). Using ECCO2 (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean-Phase II) high-resolution daily data, we conducted a mixed-layer heat budget analysis and identified region-specific drivers: enhanced shortwave flux and a shallower mixed layer in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, reduced cloud cover and increased advection in the Southwest Pacific, and oceanic advections in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. The 2023 MHWs highlight the intensifying impacts of a warm climate and the challenges in understanding extreme events.