Are Forest Fires Climate Change in Action?

Vincent J. Curtis

10 June 2019

Canadian Press reports on a report from some environmental action group that the forest fires that occured in northern Alberta just a few weeks ago was "cliamte change in action."


The claim of climate change that deserves to be exposed as extreme is the story that a recent forest fire in northern Alberta is “climate change in action.”  To see how extreme the claim is doesn’t requires detailed knowledge of science.

A forest is not a kind of climate; and hence a forest fire simply cannot be a change of climate in action.  Right away, we can see that “forest fire equals climate change” is far-fetched reasoning.  (far-fetched used here is a term of art in philosophy.)

The scientist said that “we burn about 2.5 million hectares a year on average - that’s using about a ten year average”    If climate change caused more forest to burn, then he wouldn’t have mentioned an average, but rather a continual uptrend.  An average implies a standard deviation, meaning some years more and some years less centered about a mean.  It simply isn’t scientific to say that a particular forest fire in a sign of climate change, especially when the fire season isn’t over and we don’t know yet how many hectares burned, and where that amount fits in the expected range.

The scientist then says that 2.5 million is more than double the average of the 1960’s and ‘70s, when Alberta’s forests were forty and fifty years younger.  The worst period we know of, however, was during the “dirty ‘30s” when the climate was extremely hot and dry, and the means of fighting forest fires were much less than today.

I‘m hearing a cry for another research grant.
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