During the past week, both the mainstream media and politicians chose to push a false narrative in response to the presence of smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketing New York City. In a predictable manner, they attributed this event to climate change without any factual basis.
However, it is crucial to recognize that climate change was not the actual catalyst behind this occurrence. In today’s episode of Climate Change Roundtable, we’ll scrutinize these assertions using the lens of scientific inquiry and historical analysis.
Join our host, Anthony Watts, alongside expert panelists Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken, for the latest episode of our weekly dissection of climate change fallacies. Tune in to the live broadcast 1PM ET/12pm CT/10AM PT to ask our panelists questions and chat with other fans!
Watch live HERE:
I was surprised to see a headline about NYC having the worst air quality. Thinking it was click bait I opened opened airnow.gov.
Sure enough if the air quality is not in the ‘good’ category, there is a major wild fire.
I would think its the climate change activists to blame. No proof at this time but looking at the simultaneous fires starting miles (km for you Canadians and Aussies) apart, it’s highly unlikely to be naturally caused. Also I’ve yet to hear anything coming from Trudeau et al on this. Maybe its our MSM at work after they floated the climate change argument which has pretty much crashed and burned (pun intended).
It also appears the apathetic middle is starting to get really fed up across the world. Hope so. With the looming Ukrainian grain shortage this fall people are going to be really hungry, and when that happens people get really angry.
I haven’t seen anybody raise the issue of- why so many fires? Sure, it’s hot and the forests are dry- but somebody has to start them- or lightning. I believe many of the forest fires in CA a few years ago were started by careless campers and arsonists. But these fires??? Maybe it’s all lightning, but where’s the evidence and why nobody talking about it? Haven’t watched the video yet maybe they’re talking about the cause.
The conventional explanation for late Spring, early Summer wildfires in Eastern and Boreal North America is that after the snows melt and before any forest underlayers have time to green up, the weather is warm,the humidity is low, and the forest floors are covered with dry leaves and twigs. Combine that with a dry spell and you have potential wildfires. Later in the year, the undergrowth will be growing vigorously and humid air from the tropics will work its way North. Harder to get a fire started then and it’ll likely be smaller. Sounds pretty reasonable to me
We do know for sure that most of the fires are arson, not sure if deliberate by climate activists. The reason for spread, absolutely poor forest management. Climate change is a convenient scape goat for politicians to blame their failures on something not their fault. Remember Chris Christie sucking up to Obama after a tropical storm New Jersey was not prepared for? Trudeau has utterly failed to follow any sane forest management process, so he blames climate change. So how come nothing last year?
G’Day rbabcobk,
Lightning can get multiple fire started, at least in a small area.
Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, in the mid-’90’s. A thunder storm came up the Rogue River valley. Plenty of lightning. When the storm passed there were eleven (11) columns of smoke to be seen. Firefighters were still in the area with helicopters and buckets. Some fires got just one bucket. Ten days later one of them flared up. The firefighters had moved south following the storms. Two days to get the firefighters back and then four days to kill the fire. It was serious enough that T-shirts were printed and passed out.
(My wife and I were ‘South Host’ at Diamond Lake Campground [National Forest] at the time – watched it all happen from a couple of miles away.)
Watching the news videos of what the smokey air looks like in DC and NYC, I doubt it really looks THAT bad. The close up videos on the streets don’t look so bad- but the long views look like a sand storm in the Sahara- I suggest that’s an artifact of long lens. I’m in central Woke-achusetts- the first day there was some orange haze- yes, but nothing like in those news clips- and very barely noticed the next day or today there isn’t any. All blown out of proportion.
“Covering Climate Now is the world’s largest media collaborative” according to CoveringClimateNow.org website. “Smokey NY” articles and photos are their free giveaway to any news outlet who wants to save 50 cents a word. Is it any wonder we have to put up with this crap?
If the forests are well managed- you won’t have a fuel build up- especially if the forestry work is allowed to send much of that fuel to biomass power plants which can consume vast amounts of wood- if that industry is allowed to develop. But it’s not allowed to develop because of these idiots saying “it’s worse than coal”. Now, the climatistas have gone the next step- with their proposal to end all forestry- and allow the forests to serve only one purpose – sequester carbon. Just fine as long as nobody wants wood and paper products. And, forest owners, most of them, like the periodic harvest to help pay the taxes on the land.
The national forest in my area of the Northern Rockies is very unhealthy. A beetle kill
plus a large legal decision has let the forest conditions turn into a matchbox. The
Cottonwood Decision of 2015 has let radical enviros dictate how the forests are
managed. Both the Obama and Trump administration plus the bipartisian Senate Energy and
Natural Resource Committee have been unsuccessful in overturning this. It’s about the endangered species act ESA which was created by the courts. It’s turned the forest
management into a never ending loop of where lawyers can slow down or stop
management projects that have already been thru the ESA process. The same enviros
behind this are the ones claiming the fires are caused by “climate change”.
The Earth’s climate isn’t changing it is still in a 2.58 million year ice age called the Quaternary Glaciation and it will be in this climate until all the natural ice on Earth melts which won’t happen for thousands of years, if ever. We are in a warm period that usually lasts about 10,000 years, it’s been 11,700 years, that happens about every 100,000 years and alternates with a glacial period that lasts about 90,000 years and is very cold with advancing glaciers. Long-range weather changes over the years, maybe that’s what they are thinking about.
Natural Resources Canada
https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha/nfdb
We should note that the 6 worst fire seasons in the last 4 decades were during the 1980’s/90’s BEFORE the fake climate crisis. Also note that the extremes are often defined by large spikes higher than the average related to natural variability.
If you want to use this data HONESTLY, it says the exact opposite of what one side is trying to sell about this current outbreak of wildfires.
Do you know how easy that was for me to click on the link above to get that data?
I just typed this into Google: “Canadian wildfires data history” then went to that link which was 2nd on the list. It took around 10 seconds.
It seems impossible to believe that professional journalists writing all the bogus stories tying these wildfires to climate change would not do that.
The ones that did and found it contradicted their false narratives……….covered that part up and like usual, wrote stories using junk science and deception to try to convince people that the current climate OPTIMUM for most life is actually a climate crisis.
They do it all the time in every realm and its just an accepted part of environmental and weather/climate reporting in 2023. They all know they all do it. Journalists in this age are often in that position because they are also political activists that can use their reporting to brainwash readers/viewers/listeners to believe their interpretations of the news.
A lot of them actually believe all this stuff. Their cognitive bias compels them to use things they WANT TO believe in. They discard things that contradict it.
This graph that I included or evidence with similar data should be a part of every objective discussion intended to gain honest discernment about Canadian wildfires.
I didn’t see this key data in any stories, despite it taking 10 seconds for me to find.
It’s almost impossible to get honest climate change reporting.
Attached is a screenshot of the UK’s DailyFail newspaper’s take on things.
They assert, I cannot easily see their source, that half the fires are human caused and the other half are attributed to lightning.,
I know this initially sounds crazy but that means nearly all of them were ‘human caused’
OK why:
Lightning = an electric discharge between a cloud(s) and earth.
Initiated by the charge separation that occurs inside strong convection systems such as thunderstorms. Where ice crystals are being uplifted and heavy/large rain drops are falling through the uplift.
Electrons are stripped off the ice, attach to the rain and fall to the ground.
Result being an increasingly positively-charged cloud and negatively-charged earth
For the hapless electrons this is A Disaster and so they form into a mirror image ‘cloud’ in the ground under the rain cloud where they want to be – constantly looking for some way to get back together with their positive counterparts.
The thundercloud will be constantly drifting with the mirror electron cloud always underneath and, at some point, the electrons will get their chance and = Flash Bang Wallop
‘that point‘ will be a point of least resistance – literally in many ways but especially:
In the case of a drought, all the landscape will be of = high resistance so the lightning is unlikely to chose to hit dry ground
Enter humankind: With his electrical infrastructure.
Because transmission lines, poles and pylons, especially if they have transformers on them and are thus ‘well earthed’ suit all the criteria that any potential lightning bolt is searching for.
So, lightning will be attracted to ‘electrical infrastructure’
The lightning is left with a small problem tho – when it attaches itself to a transmission line, it will discover that the line is well insulated from the ground = where the electrons are waiting.
No matter, it will set off along the transmission line it chose to hit, in both directions and for any distance necessary, looking for somewhere, anywhere, where it can jump to ground.
Enter: Old, damaged and dodgy insulators, dangling wires, poorly made joints and of course, overhanging trees.
Which will be bone-dry tinder due to the drought – which is why the lightning hit the wire in the first place
Hence, all the fires were = ‘man-made’
Any and all lightning would have looked for a ‘path of least resistance’ and thus hit damp wet or swampy pieces of ground which, by definition, would not have caught fire.
In drought situations, electric wires provide those paths.
Next we need to understand who or what made the drought – there’s no chance it was a guy onboard a huge fugoff John Deere tractor with one of Mr Deere’s ‘all steel’ ploughs attached was it
Just ‘somewhere south’ of the Canadian border, looking to plant corn and wheat……….
Nah, natural variation did that
Just searched for the two photos showing the synchronised start of a dozen fires. What is of particular interest is the total lack of stormy weather or even just clouds for many, many miles around.
I’ve seen figures of 50 to 80% of the Canadian fires being human causd ranging from arson to reckless campers and hunters etc to use of machinery etc through to power lines too close to trees. Add to that a period of hot, dry, windy eather and who needs ‘climate change’ … well except for the alarmist loons and media hacks who are up on their hind legs self promoting at every opportunity.
On another front, similar to the effect of floods and sever storm events near coastlines, the number of people and value of human infrastructure affected by such events, again without any ‘climate change’ effect, is 5 to 10 or more times what it was 100 or so years ago then turbo charge that with a world wide, instantly available audio visual media/intrenet delivered alarmist narrative and you get a far more realistinc idea of what is happening.
Here in Oz you can factor in the almost total shut down of continuous cool burning of an environment filled with highly flammaable flora which actually use fire to reproduce rather than winter snow and the deciduous technique. I gather many of the North American pine forests also require fire for effective reproduction and forest understory growth.
They always leave out that a health forest need fire. Our suppress of fire has only delayed the fires.