The spring and summer of 2023 saw an "unprecedented" number of intense wildfires, literally around the world. Northern Alberta, Greece, Italy, Spain and here in BC. The only reason Australia isn't in that list is because it was winter down under. But summer there is coming.
[As an aside, I'm not sure how many more seasons we need of "unprecedented" fires, or "unprecedented" floods, before more people are persuaded that whatever we're getting isn't just "the climate doing what it always does" but that there's something behind all this unprecedentedness. Something like AGW, for instance, but I digress, again...]
A good many fires are started by humans, mostly by carelessness. Abandoned campfires, forestry operations, ATV use.... A small number are caused by arson. In fact, the RCMP caught one person in Northern Alberta who had been setting fires.
According to the BC Wildfire Service, most forest fires in BC are caused by lightning, and that fits with an article (noted below) from the Fraser Valley Current where it was observed that BC's fires tend to be in mid-summer, when lightning tends to be the main cause. Alberta's fires tend to be earlier in the season when recreational causes (ie: human) are more prevalent.
The arson conspiracies are mostly groundless. Every year, some wildfires have been deliberately set. But there’s nothing new in that, and those blazes tend to be a very small proportion of all wildfires. There is also no indication that arsons are on the rise in any way or responsible for the largest fires.
In Canada, arsonists are almost never to blame for the most-serious fires, which tend to be sparked in remote areas either by accident or by lightning. (Although some have recklessly speculated the 2021 Lytton fire was caused by church-burning arsonists, a 2022 report—or any familiarity of the town, direction of wind, location of churches, and burn patterns—reveals the illogic of the speculation.)
Flannigan said arson ignitions in Canada comprise between 1% and 3% of fire starts. When arson does cause fires, it’s often in urban areas—like several that broke out last year in Mission—where they are quickly extinguished before they can grow too large.
Unsurprisingly, Danielle doesn't believe ANY that. She has brought in arson investigators to get to the bottom of what she is certain are all those fires that have been caused by arsonists. It's certainly an easier target for finger pointing if you can't accept that decades of fossil fuel burning have released a mega-gazillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere that have caused the planet to warm up, making all these fires easier to start (by lightning) and to burn more intensely, no matter how many millions of $$ you throw at them (over $700M in BC so far this year).
“I think you’re watching, as I am, the number of stories about arson,” she responded. “I’m very concerned that there are arsonists.” Toronto Star, June 8, 2023
Danielle is nothing if not a conspiracy theorist and a big supporter of burning even more fossil fuels, so it's somewhat understandable that such views would be entrenched in her psyche. Danielle is also a person who seemingly has no filters at all, especially what we colloquially call bullshit filters (in polite company, let's refer to them as analytical filters). This was noted in an article appearing in the Globe & Mail on May 16, 2023, as follows:
It would be easy to dismiss the many odd things that come out of Danielle Smith’s mouth as the product of a disordered mind. Easy, and accurate.
The past week alone has provided several examples. Equating the vaccine-compliant majority with Hitler’s followers; suggesting police officers who enforced public-health orders should face criminal charges; calling for doctors to be removed from decision-making roles in the next pandemic, in favour of the military; all on top of her previous musings about ivermectin, the World Economic Forum, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and of course, Alberta sovereignty: she appears to have no analytical filter of any kind, but rather functions as a sort of ideological magpie, lining her nest with whatever shiny objects she happens across, without further examination.
Even The Beaverton weighed in on Danielle's comments.
“Trees that got vaccinated to protect their fellow trees from disease are actually Nazis,” Smith explained. “A lot of people are saying these fires are caused by nature, but I think it’s pretty clear that the fire is simply a reaction to the fascist vaccine mandates placed on all these trees by the federal government.”
I have made a pact to stay away from Twitter (currently known as X), but I did read this comment:Many fans of Danielle Smith’s leadership have echoed Smith’s views on the connection between vaccines and wildfires, some believing that this wildfire is simply a reaction to the vaccine, some saying that the wildfire was lit by the government merely to force trees to get vaccinated to become slaves, and others that the fire was born out of a lab in China and not a real fire. (The Beaverton, May 10, 2023
“Pointing fingers at fake causes for political gain is an insult to the people who have lost their homes, the firefighters trying to stop those wildfires, and all affected by the smoke and other secondary effects.” (Post of uncertain origin (to me) on Twitter, currently known as X)
I did find some reassurance that at least some people think Danielle is nuts. Take this letter that appeared last June 10th, 2023 in the Edmonton Journal:
As our eyes water, our children cough and we swelter under unseasonably warm weather and hazy skies, our premier’s plan for dealing with this phenomena is to bring in arson investigators.
Apparently, one of the root causes of the fires that have currently devastated an area the size of Switzerland in Canada and have resulted in death and destruction in recent years in Portugal, Australia, California, Russia, is obvious: individuals with malicious intent.
For those of us who are in constant amazement at how poorly informed our premier is, it should come as no surprise that in a 2020 column she perpetuated the claim that the Australian fires that killed and destroyed in a wide swath of that country were deliberately set by arsonists. The fact that this was disinformation spread online by climate change deniers and that it was quickly and authoritatively put to rest by Australian police and fire authorities doesn’t seem to have changed Ms. Smith’s mind.
Why let facts about an inconvenient truth get in the way of an opportunity to project blame onto individuals and give the appearance of decisive, if ineffective action. Going after an international cabal of pyromaniacs and reckless campers is so much more satisfying and less messy than confronting the impact our energy choices have had on the global environment.
Anthony McClellan, Edmonton
This is what happens when you have a wingnut in the Premier's office.
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