There is so much wrong with this popular notion that wildfires are caused/worsened by using fossil fuels and that they are destined to get worse unless we abandon using them.
▪️First, wildfires aren’t becoming worse or more numerous, either in Canada or globally. I’ll post a few charts in the comments showing this. However, more people and property are near wildfires today, and we see it more with social media.
▪️Most people are ignorant of the history of wildfires, as they are with all history. Wildfires were always horrific and burned unchecked prior to industrialization, frequently wiping out entire towns and killing thousands at a time.
▪️Here’s a brief history of Canadian fires in the 1800s and early 1900s. In 1825, the Great Miramichi fire destroyed 1/5 of New Brunswick in 2 days, burning 3M acres! Many other fires wreaked havoc, Ottawa would have burned to the ground if not for opening a dam and flooding the streets.
https://theconversation.com/despite-its-long-history-of-wildfires-canada-still-doesnt-know-how-to-live-with-them-190213
▪️The history of US wildfires is similar, this essay recounts in the 1800s “Fire was nearly everywhere, some places more vigorously than others. The amount of burning was, by today's standards, staggering.”
https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nattrans/ntuseland/essays/fire.htm
▪️Prior to European settlers, it’s estimated over 4M acres burned annually in CA, far more than even the worst years today. In the 17-1800s there were many accounts of smoke drifting East with apocalyptic sights, people sometimes thought judgement day was upon them.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/09/10/why-environmental-alarmism-makes-forest-fires-worse/?sh=2aadad813712
▪️This recent Twitter post shows a photo of a baseball game at Fenway Park in 1950 that had to turn on their lights for an afternoon game because of thick smoke from a Canadian wildfire.
https://twitter.com/otbaseballphoto/status/1666577623856697344?s=61&t=wYS_HEkyKg4NfAC06jGdAg
▪️Today, most wildfires are caused by humans, not “climate.” Studies show that 84% of wildfires in the US are human ignited, and 97% of all those that threaten homes.
https://www.science.org/content/article/human-sparked-wildfires-are-more-destructive-those-caused-nature
▪️Of all the threats climate change poses, wildfires are one of the easiest to solve. For centuries, even primitive societies had ways to manage forests to control burns. With modern machinery and knowledge (powered by fossil fuels) we are more capable than ever to mitigate fire risk.
▪️However, this involves impacting nature, which environmentalists vigorously oppose. Which is why many areas in CA and Canada aren’t managed properly and are ripe for destructive fires, as they’ve let too much fuel build up.
▪️Thus, when fires inevitably happen, they blame climate change and fossil fuels, do nothing to actually prevent and manage future fires, but pretend that building more windmills and electric cars are the solution. It really is madness.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...