{"id":142886,"date":"2023-06-19T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=142886"},"modified":"2023-06-15T14:08:50","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T18:08:50","slug":"forest-fires-climate-change-chaos-were-doomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=142886","title":{"rendered":"Forest fires! Climate change chaos! We’re DOOMED!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Canada-Wildfires-New-York-3156711424.jpeg\"
Canada-Wildfires-New-York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Or maybe… not so much according to this rather interesting essay on the Financial Post.<\/p>\n

We all know about the large fire in Canada which sent clouds of choking smoke across New York (see above) and New England a couple of weeks back, right? It was widely touted as a harbinger (always wanted to use that word) of doom, a foretaste of things to come and it’s All Our Fault!, <\/strong><\/em>and shows how serious forest fire in Canada are increasing in number and intensity. Right?<\/p>\n

Well, not so freakin’ fast.<\/p>\n

For instance, Prime Minister Trudeau tweeted: \u201cWe\u2019re seeing more and more of these fires because of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

That statement is false. Canadian forest fire data are available from the Wildland Fire Information System. Wildfires have been getting less frequent in Canada over the past 30 years. The annual number of fires grew from 1959 to 1990, peaking in 1989 at just over 12,000 that year, and has been trending down since. From 2017 to 2021 (the most recent interval available), there were about 5,500 fires per year, half the average from 1987 to 1991.<\/p>\n

The annual area burned also peaked 30 years ago. It grew from 1959 to 1990, peaking in 1989 at 7.6 million hectares before declining to the current average of 2.4 million hectares per year over 2017-21. And 2020 marked the lowest point on record with only 760,000 hectares burned.<\/p>\n

The record shows that the fraction of fires each year that become major (more than 200 hectares in size) peaked back in 1964 at 12.3 per cent. From 1959 to 1964, it averaged 8.7 per cent then dropped to 3.4 per cent in the early 1980s. As of 2017-21 interval, it had climbed again to 6.0 per cent, but that\u2019s still well below the average 60 years ago.<\/p>\n

At the global level, satellite data from the European Space Agency also show that wildfire activity has been trending downward in recent decades and is currently approaching its lowest level since the record began in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

In an extensive discussion on the Royal Society blog back in 2020, U.K. forestry experts Stefan Doerr and Cristina Santin acknowledged that climate change may be making conditions for fire more favourable in some areas, but also noted it\u2019s leading to reductions in other areas. As for the tendency for some fires to become larger and more dangerous, this can be traced to our approaches to forest management. \u201c[Very] aggressive fire suppression policies over much of the 20th century have removed fire from ecosystems where it has been a fundamental part of the landscape rejuvenation cycle\u201d they explained. This has led to a buildup of fuel in the form of woody debris (‘deadfall’ – ed.) leading to the risk of more explosive and unstoppable fires.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Financial Post<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyone ever stationed in Germany remembers the painstaking clearing of deadfall they do. In the US, as an unintended consequence of the Smokey the Bear ‘Only YOU can prevent forest fires’ zero-fire-tolerance policy, our forests have accumulated a huge amount of deadfall. But as the stats show – no, it isn’t solely climate change. It ain’t your muscle car, it isn’t that nasty coal plant, it isn’t that you used a plastic jug, that the forests are going to burn off the globe some time in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or maybe… not so much according to this rather interesting essay on the Financial Post. We … Forest fires! Climate change chaos! We’re DOOMED!!!<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,98,238],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-global-warming","category-government-incompetence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}