What's Really to Blame for the Canadian Wildfires
Townhall,
by
William D. Balgord
Original Article
Posted By: Judy W.,
6/19/2023 7:39:38 AM
Smoke from forest fires arriving from Canada this summer is choking residents of the United States and millions more Canadians in the prairie and eastern provinces. Thick, roiling smoke may pose health hazards to the aged and infirm in both countries.
The origin of the fires traces back to late winter and spring.
An abnormally dry winter left Canada’s boreal forests in conditions ripe for fire outbreaks from various causes, including ignition from lightning strikes in tinder-dry material.
Forested portions of Alberta and British Columbia have been the sites of pine bark beetle infestations that have left millions of acres of dead trees and combustible residue on the ground.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
BeatleJeff 6/19/2023 8:03:07 AM (No. 1495105)
A few years ago I was touring Hopewell Furnace National Park west of Philly. As I walked around the property, I happened upon a placard on the edge of a forest that was crowing about NPS' forest management policies, how they no longer thinned out the trees, no longer cleared out the underbrush, how they just let it grow naturally and how great this was for the environment blah blah blah. And I remember thinking to myself, there's a word for this: kindling. Talk about man-made disaster! Like everything else they touch, libtards have ruined forest management policies, and it's their own incompetence in managing our forests that is responsible for the severity of forest fires in recent years. Next time you're choking on forest fire smoke filled air, thank a libtard.
38 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
2assume 6/19/2023 8:03:27 AM (No. 1495106)
The environmentalist say that loggers destroy Forrest’s so it is better to let the forests burn down. I weep for the poor animals burned alive. I weep for people with health conditions being exposed to the deadly fumes. I weep that all that is left of once beautiful forest is now turned to ash. Just how does this helped what they claim they are trying to save? How does this help? Am I the one who is crazy?
34 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Paintman 6/19/2023 8:03:53 AM (No. 1495107)
Wasn't a lefty college professor caught starting that massive California wildfire ? "We have to destroy nature to save it."
24 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Dodge Boy 6/19/2023 8:25:53 AM (No. 1495112)
William, wake up. Canada is under a massive arson attack by the Canadian greenies. What better way is there to scare people into believing their climate change meme than torching the forest and making them breathe the stench of an incinerated forest.
29 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
planetgeo 6/19/2023 8:50:23 AM (No. 1495132)
This article doesn't distinguish between enabling factors (pine bark beetles, cyclical dry seasons, and buildup of brush and fallen kindling due to poor forest management, etc.) and direct causes (lightning, arson). The scale and geographic dispersion of the Canadian fires cannot be attributed solely to natural factors. They clearly have been set by coordinated arson activity across the Canadian provinces from West to East. And in fact, many dozens of arsonists have been arrested. This is a massive case of eco-terrorism on a continental scale.
26 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
felixcat 6/19/2023 9:16:19 AM (No. 1495155)
Well, before too long, these same forests, if not destroyed by fire will be eliminated for massive solar and wind turbine farms. Cause if you can't burn to death wildlife, then you can chop it up by the turbine blades.
10 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
sw penn 6/19/2023 9:22:39 AM (No. 1495161)
Q. What's Really to Blame for the Canadian Wildfires?
A. Eco-terrorism
26 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 6/19/2023 9:24:02 AM (No. 1495164)
I kept scanning the article for the real cause but couldn't find any reference to white, anglo-saxon, Christians. How'd they miss that?
14 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
chillijilli 6/19/2023 9:31:58 AM (No. 1495168)
Trying to manage nature is an oxymoron, isn't it?
15 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
seamusm 6/19/2023 9:51:37 AM (No. 1495184)
While the author is correct as to why the fires were so devastating, he's left out the part that satellite pictures show multiple fires starting simultaneously across a wide swath of forest. These fires were arson not natural in origin.
19 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
justavoter 6/19/2023 10:03:49 AM (No. 1495197)
This is nature's way of cleansing. By natural or unnatural means, mission accomplished.
4 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
TexaTucky 6/19/2023 10:05:51 AM (No. 1495200)
The silver lining is that fire does not destroy the forests of Canada. It rejuvenates them. And kills pine bark beetles.
6 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
JackBurton 6/19/2023 10:13:32 AM (No. 1495205)
There is more of a direct answer to 'what caused the fires' in the responses in this thread than found in the article.
Just sayin'.
6 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
DVC 6/19/2023 10:18:57 AM (No. 1495208)
A friend and diving buddy since college is a botanist, has made a living as a botanist for the last 50 years, generally working with forests and their impact on the water systems of Florida.
He has educated me that forests age and then just die, and then they burn. A young forest is filled with healthy, growing young trees, but as they age - and different species of trees age at different rates, they reach maturity, then they age to 'past their prime' and become more and more subjected to diseases and infestation with parasites, such as this pine bark beetle. Young, vigorous trees are minimally affected by these beetles, but old, past-their-prime trees are much more susceptible. Yes, forest management practices can trim out underbrush, etc and help minimize fire damage during the growth cycle of the forest, and is a good thing, but eventually, all species of trees reach maturity, and begin to decline. There are some exceptions, of course, like the redwoods and sequoia, and a few other unusual very long lived species, like there are some particularly short lived species of trees, too. The sand pine forests of central Florida are currently well past maturity, and my friend has been warning for years that a huge swath of forests in central Florida will have huge forest fires eventually.
The hard facts are that 'overage' forests can either be left to burn to the ground or can be harvested for useful lumber - either way they CANNOT just "live like this permanently" the way a lot of uneducated ecobumpkins think . Trees do NOT 'live forever', although many species tend to live longer than one human life, so the ignorant tend to believe that they are 'forever', when they are not.
So, there's the choice - harvest the forests periodically and replant them, like any crop, and have a healthy timber industry, or let the forest go unmanaged and it absolutely WILL burn to the ground, and destroy everything that is built in and near it. "Keeping the forest forever" is no more an option than keeping a ham sandwich forever is possible.
Forests have a lifetime, just like everything else.
And....a lot of these fires are ecoterrorism, too.
25 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
billa57 6/19/2023 11:47:30 AM (No. 1495267)
#10, also the satellite pics showed that sky's were clear, no thunderstorms, no lightening.
12 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Mike22 6/19/2023 2:11:27 PM (No. 1495382)
The fact checkers at Reuters and Yahoo News and other totally unbiased legacy media outlets assure us that the fires are totally natural in origin and absolutely no arson is involved. Of course, I have total (non) confidence in these reliable mainstream old media sources.
What does the data show? Were fires truly simultaneous? Same minute? Same day?
Was there a dry lightning storm overnight? If there was a lightning storm during the night the strikes could start small spot fires over a wide area. Later as the day warms, the forest floor dries and the winds pick up large fires develop "simultaneously". This happens in California. One day no fires, clear skies, later at night there is a lightning storm in the Sierra. Small smouldering fires are left throughout the area. The next day the hot dry wind hits the foothills and 4000+ fires erupt simultaneously (the count one year). Of course with satellite imaging, overgrown underbrush cleared and fire trails maintained firefighters could hit the fires while they were small but that would divert precious government resources from the mission of using taxpayer money to feed, clothe and care for the entire world's poor and the green mission of seeing the forest burn to ash and incidentally destroy the homes of the evil human interlopers intruding on the domain of the peaceful woodland creatures.
I am willing to believe a coordinated arson attack, this technique has been used against forests in Israel in the past. But to defeat the media's "totally unbiased completely reliable fact checkers" more evidence is required.
To number 1's comment - it is fun to listen to professional wild land firefighters comment on National Park Service "expertise" in dealing with wild land fires.
4 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
czechlist 6/19/2023 6:29:50 PM (No. 1495547)
https://nationalpost.com/news/are-eco-terrorists-causing-all-the-fires
1 person likes this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
or gate 6/19/2023 8:40:38 PM (No. 1495600)
Afraid to chop down a dead tree
1 person likes this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Faithfully 6/20/2023 7:10:40 PM (No. 1496217)
If you live in a community surrounded by wild fires with only one main artery out of town connecting to a highway miles away, you would understand the horror of it. Anyone caught setting fires for their own political agenda should get the death penalty if others lose their lives.
1 person likes this.
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This is a scientist's account of the conditions, (caused by ignorant or malignant environmentalists and politicians) that gave rise to the wildfires. I have no doubt that arsonists also took advantage of the conditions, but the author sticks to his field and presents a lot of background information.