Ivory Tower

   Today we dedicate a song to Anderson Cooper and other media muffins who spout politically correct rhetoric that they have to know isn’t true: “Little Lies,” by Fleetwood Mac.

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   Anderson Cooper has to know better. But there he was, a special guest on fellow CNN talking head Nancy Grace’s show on Oct. 22, promoting “Planet in Peril,” his own version of the “we’re destroying the earth” shows that everybody’s doing these days.

   You know, like the “Today” show’s recent episode in which each of the show’s cohosts was dispatched do different corners of the globe to show viewers some of the glaciers, ice floes and jungles that we’re destroying by burning up fossil fuels. It was compelling, all right – until one wonders how much fuel they burned up flying to all those places, and running all those generators that powered the lights, cameras, campsites, etc.

   So, there’s Mr. Cooper, shilling away, and he decides to tell the world just how immediate the problem is. This isn’t something that might happen in the future, we’re all starting to die right now.

   Cooper did that by declaring that the raging wildfires that are burning up half of California are the result of everybody who doesn’t like Al Gore.

   “We’re seeing the wildfires today all across Southern California,” Cooper said. “You know, as the climate changes, the snows in the mountains out west melt faster. That means there’s drier conditions throughout the summer, and then you get wildfires like this. So we’re already seeing the impact in places around the world, and it’s only going to get worse for our kids and grandkids.”

   Of course he had to play on the love we have for our children. Too bad it’s all a lie, and he has to know it is.

   Make no mistake, these fires are directly caused by the hand of man. But it’s not because of our use of oil.

   We already know that much of the fire was started by at least one kid with a match.

   The fire got out of control, again, not because of drier conditions, but because of gross mismanagement of federal lands. The U.S. Forest Service has admitted that its policies make fires less frequent, but worse.

   Fires occur all the time. It’s a natural phenomenon that has gone on as long as the world has existed, archeologists say. It’s sort of the world’s way of renewing itself. Dead leaves, dried branches and other natural rubbish accumulates, and suddenly a lightning strike or other event ignites a pile. The fire spreads until it consumes all the debris, and often puts itself out.

   And that’s a good thing. Most people have seen places along the side of the road that have burned at one time or another. Just after the fire’s put out the area looks charred and black. About a week later, however, that same spot is alive again, with new sprouts of grass that are even greener than the surrounding unburned area.

   Federal, state and local officials don’t let those burns take place anymore. A spot of land flares up and they are quick to douse the flames. Forest managers sometimes even have to light “controlled burns” to do what they prevented all those times they snuffed out natural fires. By the time they do that, however, the leaves, etc., that fuel the fire are much more abundant than what would have burned originally.

   Development adds to the problem.

   “People have interjected their homes into a system that has a natural tendency to burn very frequently, and where we have suppressed the frequency of those fires for so long, there’s an ungodly amount of fuel there,” Forest Service ecologist Hugh Stafford told The Associated Press earlier this year.

   This is no sudden phenomenon. It seems we’ve had these kinds of wildfires for the past several years, burning up parts of California, Utah and New Mexico.

   A 2004 study by Duke University placed the blame squarely on federal land management. The study noted that the Bush administration implemented policies that were intended to “fireproof” the Western United States, and that those policies obviously backfired.

   “Fire suppression, logging and grazing on fire-prone public land were intended to reduce the risk of fires, but many Western forests are now more flammable,” concluded Norman Christensen Jr., professor of ecology and Dukes founding dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.

   He said too much dry grass, low shrubbery and other debris was being allowed to accumulate.

   “Ignited ground fuels can create enough heat to scorch a tree up to a height of 150 feet,” Christensen said. “Reducing them should be the first priority of any wildfire management plan. Yet the practice of suppressing wildfires has allowed debris to accumulate to dangerous levels on he forest floor.”

   The result: 9.9 million acres burned by wildfires in 2006; 8.7 million acres burned in 2005; 6.8 million acres in 2004; 4.9 million in 2003; 6.9 million in 2002; 3.6 million in 2001; and 8.4 million acres burned in 2000.

   And so far this year wildfires have eaten up 8.2 million acres of land.

   This tells us several things: First, the cause of our wildfires is general knowledge: We’re preventing small fires that would clean forest floors, inviting calamity when the areas finally ignite. And that ignition is inevitable; the harder we try to prevent fires, the more likely we make them, since there’s more fuel to burn.

   We also learn that fire, in small doses, is a good thing. It cleans and fertilizes the land. And the world is better for it.

   Unfortunately, alarmists draw more attention than those who say things aren’t so bad. And when you’re trying to attract viewers to you prime time show — viewers that mean millions in advertising revenue, some people aren’t going to let small nuisances like the truth get in the way.