"Kelowna Catastrophe: Climate Change or Preventable Disaster?"
I recommend watching this measured analysis of the Kelowna, British Columbia wildfires by Michelle Stirling of Friends of Science.
The following is their description for the video.
Aug 21, 2023
As of Aug. 20, 2023, large parts of Kelowna in south central British Columbia (B.C.) have been decimated by a wildfire, driven by extremely high winds and dry weather conditions.
A state of emergency has been declared across the province of B.C. as there are numerous wildfires out of control. All this is happening during the high season for vacationers who flock to Kelowna and other regions of BC for summer fun - camping, hiking, boating, and enjoying the many excellent restaurants, tourist attractions and wineries.
Sadly, high profile people like Mark Carney, Catherine McKenna, and even children's entertainer Raffi Couvakian are claiming the fires are the fault of 'climate change.' This despite the fact that even the UN does NOT ascribe wildfires to human-caused climate change. It's all about fuel load and ignition....and human activities.
In this explainer, Michelle Stirling, Communications Manager for Friends of Science, reviews wildfire facts and stats and recommendations from one of the regional wildfire prevention plans, specific to Kelowna.
Sadly, lots of studies were written, it is unclear what recommendations were implemented - the outcome is catastrophic. However, similar fires occurred in 2003 and 2009. Do we not learn from history?
The real risk...and tragedy...of ascribing these catastrophic wildfire events to 'climate change' is that precious and limited public funds will be squandered on green crony climate projects while the very PRACTICAL and doable wildfire prevention plans will be ignored.
The federal Liberal government has slated billions of dollars for Agenda 2030 climate projects - even a few hundred million, appropriately applied to wildfire fighting equipment and services would make a big difference for mitigating wildfire damage.
If cities took such natural disasters more seriously than they do their special projects like "Smart Cities" - then citizens, their properties and businesses would be much safer from harm.
Watch:
I hope you noted this section wherein Michelle mentioned an MIT report. From the transcript for the video:
You know building wind turbines or solar farms would not have done a single thing to stop or mitigate any of the wildfires that we've seen.
In fact there is an MIT report showing that wind turbines and wind farms raise ambient temperature and dry out the soil and that solar farms also raise ambient temperatures very significantly, so these are not the solution to climate change and global warming.
They are a cause of the problem so that would be going in exactly the wrong direction.
I intend to post the MIT report on my Tango With Renewables blog after I have an opportunity to find and read it.
I live in BC. How many people who read this will know that it is still logging industry practice to spray herbicides like glyphosate onto deciduous trees to make the conifers easier to harvest? They dump chemicals which cause the canopy to shrivel and die allowing water which is stored in the underbrush to evaporate leaving our forest bone dry and fire ready. How easy would it be to just STOP? But instead we talk about green initiatives... I am a dyed in the wool tree hugger and have recycled, composted, reduced my footprint and all that and I’m telling you that we the people can keep theses actions up but it will amount to nothing if we do not stop industry and corporations from doing the stupid things they are the real root cause of so much devastation.