This alarmist habit of treating something ephemeral as the “new normal,” and some old familiar peril as new and unprecedented, does not just extend to wildfires generally. They have also discovered a fresh horror called wildfire smoke. It’s a trend. It’s a theme. It’s a meme. It’s a health crisis. (Bring back the COVID mask. Yippee!) It’s the best because it’s the worst. It’s a new and ominous harbinger of doom. Not that climate alarmists are prone to trendy groupthink. But does anyone remember atmospheric rivers? They came out of nowhere (as a problem, not as a phenomenon) and it got so you could hardly read a climate story without one. Then it was all heat domes all the time again as if nobody ever had a heat wave that wouldn’t go away until six years ago or whenever, whereas old atmospheric river was long gone. And now it’s this weird stuff that comes out of fires and gets in your eyes. Of which our parents and grandparents knew nothing… unless it’s journalists and politicians who know nothing. And if it turns out there are a few bad years and then it stops, they’ll deny having said anything. Having already implicitly denied that fires have given off smoke since the invention of the burning tree.
Speaking of climate memes, Scientific American did manage to package smoke and heat domes. As did Bloomberg Green which also poured in floods and dumped on Trump but alas cried us no atmospheric rivers. SA also blithered:
“A fire hose of dangerous pollution from wildfires blankets the northern U.S. Smoke from northern Minnesota and western Ontario wildfires is pouring over the Great Lakes, mid-Atlantic and Northeast, bringing record levels of hazardous air pollution to major cities”.
Record levels? Recent maybe, but only because air quality has been so good since the 1990s. But worse than the chronic smog of the 1940s and 1950s in places like Los Angeles? We think not.
Meanwhile Heatmap Daily emailed “What Worries Me Most About This Smoke” and Robinson Meyer wrote that:
“It’s significant, I think, that a mass smoke-out like this has now happened to the eastern U.S. for a second time. Second times matter. When exhaust from Canadian wildfires blanketed the Northeast and parts of the Midwest in June 2023, exposing more Americans to wildfire smoke than on any previous day in history, one could almost write it off as a freak occurrence. It was upsetting, sure, and reminiscent of California’s climate-addled amber skies. But didn’t wildfire smoke also descend on New England once in the 1780s? Even on a warmer planet, couldn’t this remain a once-in-a-century blip? Twice in just over three years, though – that‘s more than a hiccup. That’s almost a trend.”
Having ignored the actual trend the author is now able to spot a totally new one with only two data points to work with. Now it is very probably true that more Americans were exposed to wildfire smoke in 2023, since the population is enormously higher than it was a century ago, never mind the 1780s. But that’s a comment on the population not the air quality. And if Meyer honestly thinks there wasn’t smoke twice in three years in 18th-century Boston he’s not well-informed.
Again, to be fair, he is well-informed enough to be referring, almost certainly, to “New England’s Dark Day”, May 19, 1780, when people needed candles at noon due to a mix of fog, clouds and yes smoke from forest fires.
By the way we have to mention that when someone proposed adjourning the Connecticut upper house because it appeared to be the Day of Judgement, one Abraham Davenport retorted “I am against adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.” We do not seem to elect such people today and it is a pity. And we also have to mention that the fire in question appears to have been burning in part of what would later become Canada. Plus ca change…
Then we have to insist that there was nothing unusual about there being fires, including in fairly rapid succession, or them giving off smoke or people breathing it in with displeasure. Thus an account of the massive Cape Cod fire of 1887 includes this passage:
“Although no lives were lost, the Boston Daily Globe later described the fires as ‘the most disastrous in the memory of man.’ This statement is made more remarkable given that the 1887 Cape Cod fires were part of a broader collection of wildfires that erupted across the northeastern and midwestern United States during the late nineteenth century. For these burns to stand out in an era marked by wildfires illustrates their cultural impact…. The quiescence of fire beginning in the early twentieth century has likely contributed to the belief that fire did not have a substantial influence here: however, this recent absence is actually an outlier that stands in stark contrast to the Cape’s fiery past.”
Too bad Meyer doesn’t have Google on his computer as we do or he would know such stuff in the interest of, oh, say, informing his readers instead of stampeding them. And we’ll bet those fires had smoke as well as flame. It used to be a thing, see. Of course back then authorities did not close outdoor pools on a hot day lest people breathe smoke outdoors rather than inside. But we are more… is enlightened the word?
No. Meyer’s colleague Jessica Lange wrote:
“Heat kills more Americans than any other extreme weather event in the United States. But wildfire smoke – while not strictly ‘weather’ – appears to kill even more.”
No. If she had Google on her computer she’d know cold kills ten times as many Americans as heat, or more. It also kills more of them than even the most tendentious measures of smoke deaths, which involve “long-term exposure” and the PM2.5 kluge. But hey, what are mere facts? We got smoke. Smoke smoke smoke!
Even the right-leaning National Post headlined a story “Carney defends new pipeline in face of questions over wildfires, climate” just in case anyone didn’t know oil causes forest fires, and then got smoky with:
“As Toronto recorded the worst air quality in the world this week amid smoke from raging northern Ontario wildfires, Prime Minister Mark Carney defended against reporters’ questions over his climate priorities by pointing to his predecessor’s record.”
A remarkable passage in which the journalist makes as little sense as the PM. Which can’t have been easy because it was the usual Carney blarney, saying “This is not the result of the actions of our government” as if anything he’d done could conceivably have affected global weather patterns… or whatever he thought he was talking about. And then he said “I just got here” though in fact he’s been Prime Minister for nearly a year and a half.
It got worse:
“Asked by a reporter on Thursday what he would say to Canadians who believe the current wildfires are a sign Canada should ‘lean in’ to its climate targets rather than dropping them, Carney said, ‘I absolutely agree. We – the government – view leaning in as actually putting the investment in the ground that’s going to achieve those climate targets,’ he said.”
Which arguably constitutes blowing smoke especially since he has recently admitted his government won’t meet their climate targets. And the question was about pipelines which, whatever they may be, are not emissions reduction capital equipment. And what is it that he’s putting “in the ground” that’s going to achieve those climate targets? It’s remarkable word salad. But so is the news story implying that Carney has something to answer for because there are still forest fires after millions of years of there being forest fires, and that thing relates to pipelines that have only been around for decades.
Alas, all good things must come to and end. But the Toronto Star emailed nostalgically “The smoke clears. The fires still burn.” So there’s lack of hope. Oh, and they tout that “As wildfires rage, First Nation elders near Thunder Bay hold their ground” whereas if anyone else refuses to get out of the way of a fire when urged to by authorities they are a dunce. But of course everyone else doesn’t get to be elders, just old people. Sigh.
