The
Albany Times Union headline read, “Not so easy: Dousing the Canadian wildfires may
not be possible.”
It
may not be possible to put out the Canadian wildfires?! Humans learned
how to fly. Americans and Canadians have won two World Wars. Mankind has
been to the moon and sent unmanned craft around the solar system-- and beyond.
And Canada can’t put out a fire? Humans invented fire—or the planned use of
it—around 800,000
years ago. Almost concurrently, they learned how to extinguish it.
No matter the scope and location of today’s fires, it is surpassingly strange
that we can’t put them out 800,000 years later.
The
Times Union article went on to sanguinely note: “There is apparently little
that can be done to stop or prevent the out-of-control wildfires tearing
through much of northwest Canada - some engulfing over 250,000 acres. These
fires can’t be stopped…or even prevented?!
Apparently,
there are no roads or infrastructure in many of the remote areas where these
fires are burning. And, according to Paige Fischer, an associate professor at
the University of Michigan School of Environment and Sustainability, "There
aren't areas where people are actively managing forests."
So
there clearly are things that could be done to extinguish and even
prevent the fires: construct the necessary infrastructure and actively manage
the forests. Imagine that!
Fischer
added that almost two-thirds of the fires in Canada are ignited by lightning--
and that those fires tend to be by far the most destructive. She also noted
that Canadian forests include the Black Spruce tree “which is a flammable
species.” She further stated that the presence of lighting and flammable
species is outside the country's control and thus complex to manage.
Guess
what? We have Black Spruce trees in the U.S., from Minnesota to the New England
states. And more lightning strikes per square mile annually in much of
the country, as well. So we have wildfires, too. We just don’t say “there is
absolutely no way we can put them out.” And we do manage forests in order to
prevent massive, endless conflagrations.
Moreover,
the Times Union piece noted that N.Y. state Department of Environmental
Conservation Commissioner Amanda Lefton recently said that she is unaware of any
Canadian requests for assistance in fighting the more than 700 Canuck wildfires,
while also noting that the state has deployed firefighting resources to
other states in the U.S. Guess they asked for help.
Of
course, numerous authorities and experts have cited the allegedly increasingly
hot and dry summers due to climate change as another reason for prolonged
wildfires. I thought global warming was supposed to lead to increasingly
wet weather. Oh well, whatever.
Memo
to authorities and experts: If the temperature in northern Saskatchewan is,
say, 77 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 75 degrees Fahrenheit, due to
man-caused global warming, that doesn’t make a fire any more likely, nor
any more aggressive. Anyone who is an aficionado of bonfires can tell you that.
(And don’t try to tell me that the allegedly 1.4
degree Fahrenheit increase in average global temperature in
the past 145 years has resulted in significantly more lightning strikes over
Canada.)
Some
of the Canadian wildfires are man-caused, as they are deliberately
set by arsonists. And they are man-caused in other ways, too, but
not because of global warming/climate change/any change in the weather is due
to man’s actions. They are man-caused because Canada will not take the steps
necessary to douse them…or prevent them. Period.
As a
result, the United States—extremely unusually-- has recently had some of the world’s
worst air quality.
Like
a good bad neighbor, Canada is there.
