Greater activity by the forest products industry would cull dried or dead trees that are particularly vulnerable to lightning, which causes most forest fires.
by Conrad Black
The recent fog that settled briefly on many Northeastern cities from Ottawa to Philadelphia as a result of unusually extensive forest fires in Quebec and northern Ontario led to the predictable conscription of this freakish event as further evidence of the need to assault the oil and gas industry and ratchet up the cost of living of practically everyone.
This is part of the self-assigned Canadian mission of saving the planet from the capitalists. There is never much of a respite from outbursts of delusional absurdities of the climate extremists. I’m not a climate denier but I am a resolute and vociferous opponent of hare-brained, self-punitive, instant cures for problems whose causes, proportions, and possible solutions are not fully known to us.
As I’ve written here before, the legitimate, if frequently tedious, hue and cry of authentic conservationists in the 1970’s and 1980’s making a good and at least in its objectives, an irrefutable case for reduction of air and water pollution, suddenly was transmogrified by a gigantic gain-of-function booster into an unholy war on fossil fuels and a verbal and regulatory assault on anyone who dissented from what was represented by hysterics such as Vice President Gore, (who at least made a lot of money out of it), as the necessity for a complete shutdown of fossil fuel industries on pain of the destruction of all life in the world within approximately 10 years.
These respectable if misguided alarmists were not responsible for the swift metamorphosis of a congeries of birdwatchers, lepidopterists, and duck-hunters into a war on the modern economy. That occurred when the international left, completely routed and humiliated without a shot being fired in the Cold War, and showing an unsuspected talent at improvisation, crowded onto and took over the environmentalist bandwagon.
They then transformed ecology into an instant and non-negotiable ultimatum to Western society to dispense with all economically viable means of heating and air conditioning and vehicular propulsion in the name of saving the planet from the evils of capitalism. It was a quick rebound from the West’s greatest and most bloodless strategic victory in the history of the world in the complete destruction of international communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Those of us who said this was nonsense were chastised, ostracized as morons guilty of the capital offense of failing to “follow the science.” It was an act of moral and intellectual turpitude comparable to the treatment many of us same recidivists received when we suggested several years ago that since children did not easily contract or communicate the coronavirus, shutting down schools was not a good idea.
Those of us who recognize that we have no idea what the proportions of climate change are, have given up suggesting that unusually horrid winter conditions undermine global warming alarmism. Our opponents in this debate have not shown any similar restraint and any warm day is conclusive proof of global warming.
The Globe and Mail led the Canadian press in unambiguous imputation of the unusually heavy forest fires two weeks ago to climate change. “The large, widespread wildfires this spring will happen more and more often,” read a Globe editorial. “The amount of forest burned each year is predicted to double (and) ever escalating climate heating is the propellant of all of this.”
Because global warming did not escalate as was deafeningly predicted 25 years ago, and only amounts to approximately 1.1 centigrade degrees since 1880, the climate alarmists have retreated from global warming to climate change, but their hearts and minds are still riveted on the delicious specter of us all frying like eggs if we don’t renounce the evils of oil and natural gas and gasoline. The Globe and Mail gave no hint of the source for these jeremiads but went on to describe an apparently irreversible and long-standing upward trend in the incidence and extent of Canadian forest fires.
“How we got here is clear.” The clarity comes from “a study” which unfortunately is not identified. However, “it all circles back to the interconnected extremes of human-caused climate heating.” There eventually followed the inevitable exhortations to “cutting greenhouse gas emission as fast as possible… major investments in clean power to slash use of oil and natural gas. Every country must act… Consider that Canadian per capita emissions are three quarters greater than China’s.” This is unsubstantiated rubbish.
China has 35 times Canada’s population, so our greater per capita use of fossil fuels, which is the result of our more sophisticated economy, higher standard of living, and enviable status as an energy-rich country, narrows the ratio between China’s use of the forbidden bogey of fossil fuels over Canada’s from 35 to 1 to 20 to 1. China and the other two leading climate change offending countries, India and Russia, all refuse to alter their industrial development policies in the slightest, and China is accelerating its construction of coal-fired electric power facilities.
Therefore it is eminently logical, according to the Trudeau government, cheered on by the always ashen and pious Globe and Mail, that the safety of the world requires that Canada festoon itself with solar panels and windmills, take to the bicycle lanes and public transit systems, give its provincial governments the right to lower the home thermostats of the whole country and shiver in self-inflicted discomfort in order to reduce carbon use in the world by approximately one half of one per cent.
It is insane; the whole argument is insane and only the floundering, befuddled, temporarily self-hating, aberrantly leftist West is paying any attention to this drivel. No one in Eastern Europe, the southern hemisphere, or the vast mass of Asia from Turkey and Israel to Japan is paying any attention to this foolishness, other than the opportunity it furnishes for hilarious jokes at our expense.
As for the forest fires, before it put on its editorial fire-hat in alarm over its anonymous “study,” the Globe and Mail might have considered the Fraser Institute’s authoritative and comprehensive analysis of Canadian forest fires over 60 years which noted “a general decline in (the destructiveness of Canadian forest fires) in the second half” of that period.
The peak in occurrence of forest fires came in 1989 with 7.6 million hectares burned, compared to 1.8 million hectares in 2019, (3.8 million hectares this year). These fires are aggravated by failing to remove dead trees and discouraging intelligent forest management in the name of conservation. Greater activity by our forest products industry would cull dried or dead trees that are particularly vulnerable to lightning, which causes most forest fires.
One-fifth of one percent of boreal forest is cut and removed annually while approximately five per cent perishes from the combination of fire, insects, and tree disease. Whatever is happening to the climate has absolutely nothing to do with forest fires. This kind of unrigorous pseudo-scientific fear-mongering is part of a societal death wish. As one of the most resource-rich and ecologically responsible countries in the world, Canada, including its principal press outlets, should be trying to save the world from the lunatics of our own left, not from the comparatively benign course of nature.
First published in the National Post, taken from the New York Sun.
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One Response
Well, an ice storm DOES suggest global warming in a place that used to normally be too cold to get so much of it [ since it’s something that occurs at transitional temperatures ] and generally got snow in larger quantities than it now does [southern and eastern Ontario]. OTOH, some sleet and freezing rain has always been normal here plus we have had exactly two ice storms in a quarter century, not exactly shocking.