STIRLING: Pollsters and climate activists love the flames of wildfires to fan their apocalyptic fantasies

On July 20, Angus Reid released a poll titled “Wildfire fears burn hot, even as belief in climate change continues to decline.” Right from the get-go, they are conflating wildfires with climate change, something that not even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does.Long-time climate policy analyst and prolific commentator, Roger Pielke, Jr., wrote “What the Media Won’t Tell You About…Wildfires.” In it, he states: “The IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change.”Wildfires burn because there is fuel, oxygen and an ignition source, whether that be lightning or one of many human causes. The human cause can be negligence (as in campfires left still burning; fireworks set off irresponsibly), accidental (a spark from machine repair; power lines swaying against branches in the wind and sparking a fire), or arson.So, it is odd that a pollster asks a question about ‘climate change’ without defining the term for the respondent, using the undefined ‘climate change’ as a cause of wildfire, rather than the more likely ‘human-caused’ wildfires (often human-caused is >50% versus lightning, though lightning-sparked wildfires tend to burn more territory).The IPCC scientific definition of climate change is stated as: “Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.”Note that neither carbon dioxide nor human industry are singled out as the climate criminals..The IPCC further clarifies that there is another definition of climate change: “Note that the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: ‘a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.’” The UNFCCC is a political, not a scientific body.Indeed, in 2005, Roger Pielke, Jr., had identified the problem with “Misdefining Climate Change: Consequences for climate and action.”The Angus Reid poll on “Wildfires burn hot…” seems to offer a mishmash version of these two definitions by posing these unscientific options:Climate change is a fact and is mostly caused by human activitiesClimate change is a fact and is mostly caused by natural changes and cyclesClimate change is a theory that has not yet been provenNot surePeople’s answers might be quite different if the lead-in explained that “climate change is scientifically defined as a statistically verifiable change in climate over periods of 30, 50, 100-year and millennial time-scales.”.As Dr. John D. Harper, former director of the Geological Survey of Canada, noted in a 2016 interview, “the average individual doesn't live long enough to even see the impact of the slightest of changes.” This was part of a series of interviews that Dr. Harper did with me, for Friends of Science Society, where I am the Communications Manager.I know — you will protest and claim “That was 2016 … but what about 2023? Wildfires in Canada, especially area burned, were off the charts.” That is true. One year. As Dr. Ian Clark says in his presentation for Friends of Science Society, “A Reality Check on Climate and Net Zero,” showing that wildfires were trending down until we get to 2023, which he explains “…in science, we call this an anomaly.”So, the Angus Reid poll conflates wildfire and climate change, when even the IPCC doesn't do that. The poll also does not define climate change for respondents, which leaves respondents to draw on their current exposure to dramatic media headlines as a reference point.Imagine if the poll had stated, “The IPCC does not see climate change as a driver of wildfire. In Canada, wildfires have been trending down over the past 50 years. Climate change is real and is measured by statistically verifiable changes over 30-year and longer periods. Based on this information, do you think wildfires will become worse or better in the future?”Angus Reid thus turns a scientific issue into a political statement: “A majority of Canadians link the worsening wildfire threat to climate change, though views are sharply divided along political lines. Overall, 55 percent say climate change is a major factor and another 20 percent call it a minor one. This rises to approximately four-in-five among past Liberal (79%), NDP (82%) and Bloc Québécois voters (83%), compared with 22 percent among Conservatives.”.This outcome implies that Conservatives “don’t care about climate change,” rather than the reality, which is that Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québécois respondents are misinformed about climate change and wildfire by the pollsters!This further results in elected officials misallocating public funds. Rather than funding green crony climate projects, that money could be going to creating the winter mechanical removal of standing deadwood and fuel load around wooded communities at risk of summer wildfires.This is reminiscent of the 2023 Leger poll, which also linked wildfire to climate change. That poll resulted in dozens of misleading headlines that read “7 in 10 Canadians worried about climate change.” In fact, a closer look at the poll indicated that it could more properly be read that “93% of Canadians don’t care about climate change;” they care about the economy!The mainstream media, by repeating these conflated poll findings to the public and not providing the factual context of the background facts and data on wildfires, thus creates a ‘social proof’ for climate action, when the $476 billion Canada is spending on climate action between 2020-2030 will do nothing to mitigate wildfires.Politicians further exploit these wildfire tragedies and conflate polls, as in September of 2023, when at UN Climate Week in New York, then prime minister Justin Trudeau and former environment minister Stephen Guilbeault claimed that Canada’s wildfire season was evidence of climate change; thus, they argued a need for a global price on carbon..In fact, wildfires are huge emitters of carbon dioxide. A global price on carbon would put Canada in the crosshairs of enormous financial liability by ‘climate justice’ activists for the ‘crime’ of letting Mother Nature do her cyclical housekeeping work in the forest.We need practical action on wildfires, like ruthlessly, mechanically clearing fuel loads out of forests near communities in winter. This would be far less costly than a wildfire, and more beneficial than the price of an opinion poll.

STIRLING: Pollsters and climate activists love the flames of wildfires to fan their apocalyptic fantasies

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