Dear Editor,
Whenever the wildfire season rolls around it sure doesn’t take long for the prophets of doom to jump on the “sky is falling”/climate change bandwagon and start blaming the fossil fuel energy industry for their perceptions based in what I believe has gradually morphed into mass hysteria.
With some people advocating an end to the production and consumption of fossil fuels, I hope sanity will eventually prevail and most will be careful what they wish for.
It should first be pointed out that the April 26, 2016 Mayerthorpe railway trestle fire turned out to be the work of a firefighter firebug.
Then strangely, just five days later on May 1, the Fort McMurray fire started in a remote area 15 kilometres southwest of the town.
To this day it is suspected of having been human-caused, and I don’t mean human-caused climate change.
A reality check should always be in order before resorting to the David Suzuki approach to causality.
The truth is, in my opinion, we do have more than a few drugged up environmentalist whackjobs running around these days looking for some hill to die on.
Could any of these recent fires up north have had such an origin? I don’t think it can be ruled out any less than climate change can be ruled in.
Secondly, it is a fact that many years of fire suppression by humans has contributed to a preponderance of aged, dry and diseased forested areas which are prone to fire.
Indeed, fire is mother nature’s way of cleansing and keeping the forests young and healthy and providing a fresh start.
Pine cones for example, require fire to melt their seals and scatter their seeds.
A third consideration is since the time of the early settlers, a variety of trees have gained a pretty big foothold on the prairies where once unchecked prairie fires prevented the existence of anything much more consequential than a willow stick.
For many of the earlier immigrants, buffalo chips were the only fuel originally available for cooking.
Again, fire was Mother Nature’s way of rejuvenating the grass for the nourishment of the buffalo herds, a characteristic which attracted our cattlemen ancestors to this land in the first place.
It’s quite a quantum leap to go from worrying about finding enough buffalo chips to simmer a tick-sick jackrabbit for supper to believing that spring forest fires are signalling the end of the world as we know it.
Many times I have asked myself how a pair of snake oil salesmen like failed presidential candidate, Al Gore, and CBC fruit fly specialist/aristocrat, David Suzuki, could succeed in developing a following of people willing to embrace unfounded suppositions and throw caution to the wind for nothing more than to line the pockets of a couple of climatologist imposters. Unbelievable!
Reality is we live on a volcanic world with at least 1500 active volcanoes with around 20 erupting at any given time. This does not take into account undersea volcanoes.
Mankind’s CO2 contribution is minuscule alongside that which is produced by volcanism. And CO2, as a greenhouse gas, is negligible alongside water vapour, far and away from Earth’s predominant greenhouse gas.
Contrary to statements made by our incomparable Prime Minister, CO2 is not a pollutant, rather it is our food supply.
There is nothing new under the sun. Regarding any such resourceful scientists, researchers, engineers, (whether real or imagined) who have ways of halting and even reversing climate change, I would say it was a lot of truly resourceful and innovative people in the first place which brought about the industrial revolution and, with it, the ability to sustain over seven billion souls on this planet.
The laws and implications of thermodynamics are rigid and unforgiving.
They are laid out in several books, some up to three inches thick, which has always and will always dictate the reality concerning energy, it’s forms, sources, yields, transformations and associated losses, requirements and limitations.
All of our technological advancement has come about by working within the boundaries of thermodynamics.
We must stop the practice of sewing seeds of political correctness, political virtue signalling and environmental hogwash.
Wind, solar, and wishful thinking will not keep millions of “people kind” as well as said “researchers” from freezing and starving in the dark once you have succeeded in ending the fossil fuel energy industry.
The primary education system needs to stop indoctrinating students with “what to think”, based on the biased opinions of certain educators, and instead return to teaching them how to think for themselves.
That way, when history proves out, teachers can avoid future blame for students misguided education.
Otherwise, I believe there will be widespread hunger and strife come to visit itself upon western civilization.
I don’t write this out of concern for myself but for others.
It might not even require a couple of decades for such a season of regret to arrive either.
Lee Hudson
Calgary Alta, (and often times County of Paintearth)
