Canadian Forest Fires – 2023 Interim Report

June 19, 2023 rjdavison

CSS-41 As I speculated back in early April (OPS-67 – US-Canada – 2022 Forest Fires), the CAGW alarmist community would ramp up the propaganda if there were any major fire issues this fire season. The major fires and the propaganda are both off to a fast start this year. What the alarmist community fails to recognize (or more accurately chooses to ignore) is the climate cannot be judged on what happens in any given year or even a decade. The trends show how the climate is changing. Not surprisingly, the alarmists do not want to talk about the trends. They immediately deflect and want to talk about the “climate change horrors” that we will face in the future (based on their Computer Models that self-admittedly run too hot and use implausible, low likelihood high emission scenarios (RCP7.0 and RCP8.5). Unfortunately (for the alarmist community) the forest fire data does not support their simplistic, unscientific narrative (i.e.: greenhouse gases (primarily CO₂) are responsible for “climate change”).

#climatechange #delaythegreen #globalwarming #showusthedata

Our political elites and their compliant media continually spew that forest fires have been getting much worse and much more common and human emissions are to blame. That is simply not true, not in Canada, not the US and not globally. Even the IPCC “does not claim a “signal” of greenhouse gas influence is currently present in the probability of fire weather nor do they expect one to be detected over the coming century.” Are you listening to “the science” now? That statement was pulled from the Fraser Institute (based on an article posted by Stephen McIntyre in the June 15^th, 2023, Financial Post). Note, I believe the 2020 low point was mis/overstated in the article. The CIFFC database shows 229,272 hectares burnt in 2020, the CNFD shows 218,232 hectares burnt (not 760,000). Both the number of fires and acreage burnt peaked back in the 1980s/90s. The number of fires has continually declined and will eventually level off (and potentially rise). The acreage burnt has more recently gradually risen (but not to the levels of the 1990s). This year could set a new record for acreage burnt (5.40 mm hectares to date), but that is a snapshot in time (as was the low acreage burn record (0.23 mm hectares) set just a three years ago in 2020).

Data over the 1980 to 2020 period was declining at a 140,000 hectare/century rate. If you believe the empirical data, you will have to conclude that rising CO₂ had not led to more forest fires over the last 40 years ending in 2020 (since the trend had been down). The higher-than-average 2021 and below average 2022 fire seasons added enough burnt acreage to produce a shallow incline, +220,000 hectare/century rise over the 1980 to 2022 period. The acreage burnt this year will increase the overall incline, but those increases are not due to CO₂ (which has only risen ±6 ppm since 2020). There are obviously other factors at play (both natural and anthropogenic (accidental (primarily) and intentional)) that have driven the burn acreage from 229,272 hectares in 2020 to over 5,000,000 hectares (to date) in 2023.

As I have stated before I do not believe that the fire statistics are a good “Climate Change” indicator (despite their obvious contradictions to the alarmist narrative). Humanity has many major influences on the fire statistics that have nothing to do with our CO₂ emissions. Separating those human influences from the natural influences is no easy task (as acknowledged by the IPCC). Unfortunately, that will not stop the alarmist community from claiming that forest fires are getting and will continue to get worse. But they will not (cannot) include any empirical data that backs those claims up. Ultimately, you the voter (left, right and everything in between) are the only ones that can force our political elite off their ideologically dangerous, unnecessary, unscientific, totalitarian “green” policies.