It is a climate emergency shrieks the mainstream media. Rhodes is burning down. Everyone is being evacuated. Three weeks ahead of my next trip to Greece I am not panicked. As I noted in a podcast last week, the headlines on this matter are wilfully misleading.
About 15% of the island of Rhodes is, or has been, on fire. High, but far from record, temperatures do not help but Rhodes has also been suffering from strong winds which has made the fires much worse. And how did the fires start? Global warming? Er, no. as is so often the case in Greece it was, according to local officials, arson. My brother-in law’s village narrowly escaped the flames last year. That too was arson. A lot of the fires we see every year and have always seen are man made. And one reason Greece has seen more fires since the 1950s is rural depopulation which means fewer folks clearing scrubland which burns easily. That process accelerated during the economic slowdown so blame the EU for Greece’s wildfire problem.
So what about the mass evacuations? 19,000 folks have been moved. There are 125,000 Rhodians living on the island all year. 2.5 million tourists go there each year for holidays but the vast majority go in the summer months. So a rough calculation suggests that there are somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 folks on Rhodes right now. And thus, less than 10% of folks have been forced to move by fires.
Yes it is a lot of folks with a ruined holiday but is it as some commentators suggest a disaster of biblical proportions and a sign that global warming will burn us all to a crisp, something our nine year olds are taught in school when not being primed on how to masturbate and have anal sex? The facts suggest not.
But facts don’t seem to matter anymore do they, as the political and media classes move from pushing covid hysteria to climate hysteria.