Thread by @BjornLomborg

Fires burned 10% of Australia's land surface on average every year in 20th century

In this century, it burned 6% (2001-19)

We now have the data for 2019-20, the year with "Australia ablaze":

4% (3.95%)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.…. globalfiredata.org/analysis.html nature.com/articles/d4158…

Yes, tragedies: Much more fire close to where people live (NSW and Victoria)

But we were told "Australia burns" and "this is what a climate crisis looks like"

No

Australia had one of its lowest areas burned in last 120 years

And fires inconsistent with climate impact

Along with bad media coverage, misleading graphics pushed the idea that the Australian continent was ablaze

Australia burned area 2019-20 inconsistent with climate change

Total burn should have been *larger* — it was *much smaller*

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

Everyone pointed to Australia's eucalyptus forests which burned much, much more

But climate models said they should have burned just a little more

Tropical woodland, grass and total off as well

One can't just pick the area that sort-of-fits and ignore everything else

Actually, the biggest Australian fire is the 1974-75 fire, mostly documented by satellite

It burned 117 million hectares in Central Australia, or 15.2% of Australia in one year

Almost 4x the area burned in 2019-20

Few people live there, so smaller problem

Many chastised me for using "wrong measure" of "burned area"

Yet, I use same measure as official "Australia's Environment" annual overview

It also concludes "well below average"

I suspect "wrong measure" means "doesn't support scary story"

Here are my other replies to various claims