While it's naïve to expect quality reporting from the Daily Caller, one generally expects "reporters" to at least read the studies they link to. Andrew Follett—a relatively new hire fresh from George Mason University who previously worked as an oil and gas analyst at INTEK, a staffer for Witch Hunter Lamar Smith's Committee, and as an intern for the Cato Institute—has written a story headlined, "Evidence Shows Obama Polices Exacerbate Wildfires, Not Global Warming." Except the single study Follett cites, which was published back in 2006, says the exact opposite: "the broad-scale increase in wildfire frequency across the western United States has been driven primarily by sensitivity of fire regimes to recent changes in climate over a relatively large area."
The sentence in which Follett links to the study reads: "Pielke [says] that attempts to attribute recent wildfires to climate changes goes against the findings of scientists." So perhaps, in Follett's defense, Pielke Jr. fed him the completely wrong idea about the study. Or perhaps the link was intended as an example of the studies Pielke doesn't like, those that attribute wildfires to climate, because that is in fact what the study does. There is absolutely no way, however, that anyone who reads even the abstract (not to mention the freely available full text) would describe the study as supporting the contention that land use plays a bigger role exacerbating wildfires than climate.
The abstract concludes: "The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt."
So the question is, did Follet and the Daily Caller editors simply fail to read the study that they cited as the only piece of evidence for their entire story? Or were they counting on their readers not bothering to click the link?
---—
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories:
Climate Scientist Michael Mann: Exxon Story 'Confirmed Things We Long Suspected' | "proves that in some sense, the villainy that we long suspected was taking place within ExxonMobil really was. It wasn’t just a conspiracy theory. It was a legitimate conspiracy."
Lamar Smith's No Climate Denier, Just a ‘Semi-Skeptic’ | Asked why he would subpoena NOAA’s internal emails when their research data is already publicly available, Smith said it’s the only way to sniff out what he says is “biased” data.
Climate risk could undermine investments, report warns - University of Cambridge experts said global investment portfolios could see losses of up to 45%. No investor was "immune from the risks posed by climate change", they added.
Hillary Clinton Just Did Something None of Her Rivals Have Done | Clinton's $30 billion plan aims to save the coal country economy by pouring money into infrastructure and public health projects.
Declining snowpack could threaten 1.9bn people with water shortages - As many as 68 of the basins could see snowmelt diminish until it no longer meets water supply needs by 2060, the paper says – even if demand doesn’t go up.
Scientists say Greenland just opened up a major new ‘floodgate’ of ice into the ocean - From 1996 through 2010, the new research finds, Zachariae glacier’s grounding line retreated inland 3.5 kilometers. But then from 2011 through 2015, it retreated another 3.5 kilometers