Climate alarmism was in overdrive last week as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted over heavily populated areas of North America. The BBC reported the fires under the category ‘Climate Change’, while local Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault noted the “threat of increased fires due to climate change”. Lightly-smoked New York City Mayor Eric Adams said climate change has “accelerated these conditions”. But, alas, not all agree. Notably, the climate alarmist bible produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says weather is not the most important factor in fire. Most fires are started by humans. “Human activities have become the dominant driver,” it observes.
On any sensible reckoning, wildfires are a bit of a dud when it comes to alarming populations about climate change and driving them down the collectivist Net Zero route. According to the science writer and former economics professor Roger Pielke Jr., global wildfires have decreased in recent decades, while neither Canada nor Quebec have seen increases this century. Fire incidence across Canada is lower today than in centuries past, he notes.
The above graph plots the gradual decline of global emissions from wildfires over recent decades. As Dr. Pielke notes, this is something the media will not tell you about wildfires.
The fires last week were particularly bad around Quebec, but there is no sign, as the graph above shows, of a long term increase in fire activity. As Dr. Pielke observes, recent years have been unusually quiet. It might be suggested that matters would be helped further if people learnt to be more careful with matches. The graphs below show that the majority of fires in Quebec and the area that they burned over the past decade are caused by humans, with the balance attributed to lightning. Others have noted that the lack of fires in recent years has resulted in a build-up of deadwood on the forest floor, and that a reduction in controlled burning has not helped.
Dr. Pielke goes on to note that the IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change. Rather, the IPCC focuses on ‘fire weather’, which it defines as weather conditions “conducive to triggering and sustaining wildfires”. But a lot of this is highly speculative, and the IPCC seems reticent in promoting any signal of human-caused climate change in future wildfire development. Even out to 2100 and using the implausible SSP5-8.5 pathway with its 5°C boost to temperatures, the IPCC sees no human signal for the ‘fire weather’ category.
In short, continues Dr. Pielke, the IPCC does not provide a basis for strong claims of detection or attribution of ‘fire weather’ to climate change. It is “silent” on trends in fire numbers and area burned. “These conclusions are contrary to almost all media reporting,” he adds.
If you are a climate alarmist, frankly there are times when the IPCC can be a little disappointing.
In the last few years, a major pseudoscientific industry has grown up using climate models to ‘attribute’ individual weather events to long-term changes in the climate. Various simulations that imagine atmospheres with and without human-produced carbon dioxide are fed into models and the resulting hocus pocus pumps up media headlines. Of course, to take the individual attributions seriously, one needs to assume the models have been fed correct information in the first place. The past record of models trying to model the chaotic, non-linear atmosphere does not inspire confidence in this particular project.
In a previous article, Roger Pielke suggested that the rise of these individual event attribution studies coincided with frustration that the IPCC has not “definitively concluded” that many types of extreme weather have become commonplace. In his view, such studies offer “comfort and support” to those focused on climate advocacy. Since they fill a strong demand in politics, Dr. Pielke suggests they are “here to stay”. But he also notes that he can think of no other area of research “where the relaxing of rigour and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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A lot of work has been done on Forest management to reduce the risk of fire. E.g. https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/publications/building-wildfire-resilience-into-forest-management-planning and many more. I guess it could be that reduced economic activity for whatever reason has had a negative effect on it. So not necessarily a weather related problem, at least not on it’s own.
Similar issues with moorland, if it’s not managed well, especially in areas where is property development nearby.
Apparently, 50% of wildfires are started by lightning which accounts for 85% of the destruction. Additionally, I read an article this morning claiming that satellite imagery purports to show arson is responsible in some cases.
Official fire fighting figures from forces around the world agree on 85% human causes and 15% natural (lighting, lava)
https://www.nps.gov/articles/wildfire-causes-and-evaluation.htm#:~:text=Humans%20and%20Wildfire,and%20intentional%20acts%20of%20arson.
They were set. 250 started at the same time.
Satellites prove this. Many sites have detailed this. Easy to find on Gab or Telegram.
Same pattern we saw from Aust and Calif.
Follow the green nazis and their matches…..
June in Canada is not hot – it is July and Aug where temps can be 35 C and 100% humidity for days/weeks on end.
When everything that ever occurs is because of your theory this isn’t science. If it is science there has to be a way to disprove or falsify it. Otherwise you can claim all manner of things and simply declare it is the truth because you are the biggest organisation with the most podiums to spout from and the most press conferences. Why is that other people are expected to disprove what proponents of dangerous climate change cannot prove in the first place and if they can’t disprove it then it must all be true? This is not science. It is “official science “in support of public policy. ————-One by one these claims vanish into the ether when they are finally shown to be false, like the Hockey Stick where it’s authors would not release data, code or methodology to those seeking to check it’s accuracy. Or the claims that Malaria would spread north because of global warming which turns out to be not true as Malaria is not really a disease of climate. It is a disease of poverty and one of the worst cases of Malaria occurred within the arctic circle.
If forests produce fuel at a reasonably constant rate (dead trees or parts of them) but through management we inhibit too many fires then there will be a build up of fuel. When we do get a fire (due to lightning, careless use of barbecues or arson) there will be a greater and hotter fire. Pretty much the same amount of fuel but all burned at once.
It is hubris to expect mankind to be able to prevent forest fires. Many forests survive because of periodic fires which clear out the old trees to make room for the new.
There are species of plants which require the high heat provided by a fire for their seeds to germinate.
I think you’re both right, and it’s a natural process. However, many of the forests are not just natural ones, but manually set up, by the likes of the Forestry Commission. When they do that, it’s up to them to try managing it to reduce the risk. When it comes to the organisation that grows timber as a fuel on the other side of the pond, they don’t want fires in the wrong place with negative cash flow!
There was a seriously extreme extreme weather event in Reading on Sunday when 2.8 inches of rain fell in less than an hour. But that’s not the kind of story the climateers want to see reported in summer as it cannot be associated with latent fear of death by fire/ heat/ drought.
As I’ve just read that on the BBC website:
Speaking at the start of London Tech Week, the mayor said the London Climate Resilience Review would explore how the capital could harness technology – including AI – to better adapt to, and prepare for, the impacts of a changing climate and future-proof the capital against its devastating impacts.
Mostly, the climate disaster sloganeering is just a sales pitch for otherwise demonstrably useless products like computer programs with unpredictable behaviour (which may seem intelligent to human observers because their brains are bound to detect consistent patterns where there are none).
The Net Zero camp missed an (illusory) evidential opportunity here – they could have used the actual reduction in forest fires in furtherance of their pseudo-scientifuc AGW hypothesis because it posits increased rainfall due to warmer air picking up then dropping more water (though that in and of itself of course says nothing at all about the causes of any such warming, especially the alleged anthropogenic component).
However such a relatively benign outcome would be of no interest to what is in reality a terrorising and compliance political movement rather than anything to do with genuine science, so they as usual ignored the relevant facts and went with the ‘You’re all going to burn!’ approach instead.
Net Zero zealots wilfully forget history as this Tony Heller video beautifully points out.
Dark Days Indeed. “Some people think that forest fires are catastrophic, but forest fires are essential for good forest health. Some species of trees like lodgepole pines cannot reproduce without very hot fires to open up the cones.”
I’m waiting for The Guardian to tell us about climate change in Nottingham.
How can forest fires be started by the temperatures we experience on earth? They will only start by lightening or human activity.