August and September are great months to be a professional climate alarmist like Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State. You have hurricanes making landfall, wildfires seemingly everywhere, the odd F-4 tornado wiping out an elementary school, and you can pretend that these never happened before we had man-made global warming. Plus, you have virtually all of the media and a host of “environmental” groups parroting your every seemingly scientific observation without question.

The colder weather months are much more problematic, especially when you have just predicted the end of snow and then Washington, D.C., or New York City get pummeled with multiple crippling snowfalls. Or, you have to explain how so much snow and cold are caused by the same global warming thatt caused the fires and hurricanes and you don’t realize that knowledgeable people are laughing at you behind your back.

No, it’s best to use your time wisely during the hazy hot days of summer and link every possible weather event to our use of fossil fuels and that demon molecule, CO2. You know that you need to do it in order to instill the fear required to impose economically crippling new regulations and taxes like the Paris Climate Accord or a carbon tax. Both of which would necessarily drive up energy costs for all, while reducing our freedoms.

Unfortunately for Dr. Mann, those pesky facts keep getting in the way of this truly great horror story that he and his fellow climate travelers have concocted. Even worse for them, the data disputing these notions can be found by any enterprising soul with a computer and a healthy dose of skepticism. Research of governmental bodies such as NOAA and NASA and also a host of peer-reviewed studies put the lie to their notions.

Right now, with wildfires ranging across the western United States and also in Greece, the focus is on linking supposed man-made warming to these horrific events and characterize them as unprecedented. Are they really extraordinary and increasing? Let’s go to the real experts and put the current spate of fires in its proper perspective.

The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) is the agency responsible for reporting and cataloguing fire data in the United States. A review of their data, dating back to 1926 show that fires in the country have been in a long-term decline. During the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, there were nearly three times as many fires per year during that period compared to the most recent five years of data and almost six times the acreage burned.

The Canadian counterpart to the NIFC is the Canadian Fire Service, whose research has shown that linkage between climate change and fires, has been the exact opposite of what Dr. Mann tells us. According to the authors, fires in North America and Europe have been in decline and it is DUE to climate change: “Despite increasing temperatures since the end of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1850), wildfire frequency has decreased as shown by many field studies from North America and Europe. We believe that global warming since 1850 may have triggered decreases in fire frequency.” My, oh my… that’s a bit different than what you hear in the mainstream media.

Additional peer-reviewed studies confirm a long-term decline in fires globally, including a huge study of northern hemisphere fire dating to 1900.

Michael Mann and his allies promoting catastrophic man-made warming will continue to use the latest tragedies to their benefit until the current hurricane and fire season is over and then they will be off tying whatever seemingly unusual weather anomaly occurs to their theories of an Earth in peril due to our burning of fossil fuels. Their necessary ingredient is for people to remain ignorant of the inconvenient facts that contradict their ideas of a pending climate apocalypse.

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist of 35 years and the author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You To Know.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.