Canada Wildfires: Data vs Hysteria

Cap Allon

“There have already been 2,355 fires covering an incredible span of 10 million acres in Canada this year,” screams the opening lines of one recent MSM article — no context, just what appear to be high numbers and a sprinkling of hyperbole.

The latest data from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) shows that as of June 6, there were 437 active fires, bringing the year’s total to 2,355, which is running about 400 fires above the 10-year average.

“Wildfires are a natural phenomenon,” continues the the MSM article; however, “climate change is making them last longer and be more intense.”

Let’s look into that claim.

Below is a chart courtesy of the National Forestry Database. It shows Canada’s annual number of forest fires and the areal extent dating back to 1990.

Study the chart. The claimed ‘climate signal’ simply isn’t there. The trend is quite clearly down.


Next, let’s look at the cause of the fires.

Taking Alberta as our example –simply because it was first on the list– ‘humanity activity’ has been the leading culprit of wildfires in the province every year since 2003–and by some margin, with lightening strikes second, and prescribed burns third.

Taking one recent year, 681 fires were caused by humans, 89 by lightning, and 2 by prescribed burns (with 28 unspecified).

“Climate change is making [wildfires] last longer and be more intense,” is the claim. However, the data suggest human recklessness is the leading cause of the fires — and even then, the trend is still down.

Adding weight to this, let’s refer back to the chart, and note the year 2020 — specifically its dramatic drop-off. That was pandemic year — you know, when Canadians were forcibly locked in their houses because of a nasty round of the flu.

Curiously, ‘global warming’ appears to have come down the sniffles that year, too, with both wildfire numbers and burn acreage hitting all-time lows.

I try to stay clear of specious conspiracy theories on this site, but help me out a bit here climate alarmists. Explain the satellite imagery showing the fires starting-up simultaneously across Canada. The footage is fake? Possibly. It’s either that, or the majority of these fires, as they are every year, were started by arsonists — only this time in perhaps a timed attack.

Seeing what I’ve seen in recent years, I consider it well within the realm of possibly for a government hellbent on increasing its carbon tax and ‘climate fighting powers’ to stage a narrative forwarding spectacle such as this.

And, in turn, their dutiful MSM lapdogs are on overdrive right now:


Another curiosity, Canada’s fires seem very patriotic, adhering, for the most part, to the north side of the U.S. border:


The fires’ patriotism is of course a great relief for Americans, who can thank their lucky stars that they aren’t enduring another year like 1937 when a forest fire broke-out every three minutes:


Weather-fixated television news would make us all think that disasters are all getting worse.

They’re not — the data are clear on that, too.

In 1900, around 4.5% of the land area of the world would burn every year. Over the last century, this declined to about 3.2%. And in the last two decades, satellites show an even further decline. In 2021 just 2.5% burned.

Below is the ‘official’ wildfires chart for the United States:


It, as we also note in Canada, shows a declining trend.

But there’s more to the story.

The Biden administration recently scrubbed all wildfire data prior to 1983. This was done because fire burn acreage was found to be much higher between 1910-1960 than it is today and therefore contradicted the desired AGW/wildfire correlation.

In typically Orwellian fashion, the administration wiped these decades of inconvenient data from the history books citing the lackluster reasoning: “it wasn’t official” (linked here).

Moreover, the year 1983 –the new starting point– just so happens to have the lowest burn acreage in recorded history:


The National Interagency Fire Center [NIFC].


The picture is clear, there is no –that’s zero, zip– correlation between fire intensity and/or frequency and ‘climate change’.

Anyone claiming otherwise is spreading unscientific propaganda.

U.S. burn acreage is actually down 90% since CO2 was at pre-industrial levels.

Tellingly, the Biden administration recently deleted this document, too:


Further reading:

Wildfires in Europe are also trending down (scroll to third story in the article linked below):

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