No, the world is not “literally on fire”. This sort of untrue statement – straight out lying – is a complete turn off. When the news is now filled with this bewildering display of untrue statements (see our other posts), we end up tuning it out. Seriously. I’ve stopped reading news stories about climate because so many are now filled with this nonsense, rather than presenting facts and logical analysis and argument. I suspect many others have reached the same point – and just tune it out.

This is a major failure of climate communications.

Bloomberg TicToc is a service of Bloomberg and nonsense like this tarnishes their brand. It can take decades to build up a brand’s reputation but mere seconds to destroy it.

Peer Reviewed Literature Reference

“Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. “

– Doerr, S., Santin, C. (2016) Global trends in wildfire and is impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world. Phil Transactions of the Royal Society B. Retrieved from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345

And if you are shouting “But, But But! Amazon! Fires”, then read this.

Related:

• CNBC: How Greta Thunberg’s rise could backfire on environmentalists – Or how stage managed PR stunts are becoming total turn offs. People are noticing there is only one proposed solution – larger, more centralized, more powerful, more globalized government – and the PR stunts seemed aimed at that rather than finding solutions that resolve climate related threats. Again, stick with the facts and logical analysis. There is plenty of reality to climate concerns without resorting to fiction and PR stunts.