Extreme weather is not getting worse. In fact, many events linked to climate have decreased. But, that never stops a good talking point
Scientists are getting better at linking extreme events, such as wildfires, to climate change
The largest B.C. city between Kamloops and Prince George has been evacuated because of wildfires.
As people have fled Williams Lake, a massive fire still rages out of control in the Ashcroft area.
Ten kilometres north of Princeton, there’s another huge wildfire. And 100 Mile House is close to another massive wildfire that’s simply called Gustafsen North.
Then there’s the sudden grassfire that grew to 30 hectares in Lake Country, which burned a few homes.
In total, up to 37,000 British Columbians have been evacuated from their communities.
Yet in the midst of all of this, there’s been very little mention of climate change in national and provincial media reports about these blazes.
Why is that?
Primarily because there’s no scientific proof that the fires were caused because Someone Else drove a fossil fueled vehicle. And, if you actually spend some time looking them up, they think that in most cases the fires were caused by humans doing stupid things, rather than a tiny increase in the average global temperature
Last year, a paper published by the World Meteorological Organization addressed this communications gap.
“While scientists have known for decades that changes in some classes of extreme weather would result from climate change, the science of attributing individual extreme events to global warming has only advanced significantly in recent years to cover a greater number of extremes and achieve a greater speed of scientific analysis,” the paper states. “Unfortunately, the communication of this science outside the extreme event research community has, with a few notable exceptions, not fully reflected these advances.
In other words, their scare-mongering talking points have gotten better, and tend to be disseminated by the Credentialed Media.
It’s worth noting that one local meteorologist, CBC’s Johanna Wagstaffe, has diligently tried to educate the public about the consequences of climate change. But by and large, B.C. media reports about the wildfires have rarely brought up the relationship between rising greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and the high likelihood of more forest fires, such as those that we’re seeing in the Cariboo and Kamloops forest centres.
It’s all a bunch of mule fritters. Wild fires have always happened, and will always happen. It has nothing to do with rising greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, wildfires have been going down.
Do you know what doesn’t help? When the enviro-wackos refuse to allow brush, otherwise known as “highly flammable tinder”, to be cleared in areas that could effect homes.
fires. all to do with global warming. nothing to do with…. fire.