COMMENTARY: Hot Air and Fires in Ontario Mean its Climate Panic Time in Central Canada: That’s Never Good News for Supporters of Conventional Energy Production – Jim Warren

By Jim Warren

Here we go again. After a spell of hot weather and an unusually large number of forest fires in Ontario, Central Canada’s hand wringers have once again hit the panic button.

As per usual, the troubles of Toronto dominate mainstream media newscasts. Reports about smoke and uncomfortable weather conclude by blaming it all on climate change.

Out here in the western part of Canada we watched with pleasure over the past couple of years as climate change declined in importance as an issue of political concern.

It was too good to last. The Angus Reid Institute recently published poll results showing that 21% percent of Canadians now rate climate change as one of their top three issues of concern. That’s up from 14% from this past spring when cooler minds prevailed.

The extension of winter into March and April of 2026 across vast sections of the country is now a memory lost to mass amnesia.

We are at a point where there is a growing body of statistical evidence supporting the contention that human-generated global warming is having some influence on temperatures and extreme weather events. But, that evidence does not suggest that the pace and intensity of climate change is so urgent we need to drive ourselves into penury by adopting the sorts of overly zealous emissions reduction policies demanded by climate-alarmed fanatics.

You know the type. It includes European leaders content to let old people suffer heatstroke because allowing the installation of more air conditioners would send the wrong message and increase greenhouse gas emissions. The planet must be saved so the old must die.

One of the wonderful essays Bjørn Lomborg wrote for the Fraser Institute put recent forest fire seasons into perspective. Lomborg presents historical and satellite data showing that over the period from 1900 to 2020 the area of the world burned by wildfires has declined in a major way (See the chart he developed below).

According to Lomborg,”The record shows a dramatic fall in the world’s average annual burned area. Last year it was the second lowest, and in 2022 the lowest ever. And studies find that with adaptation the area burned will keep falling, even without climate action.”

Lomborg adds that cutting emissions is an inefficient way to deal with wildfire hazards. “Studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show that even drastic cuts in emissions would reduce the burned area only slightly this century. Simpler, cheaper, faster policies like better forest management, prescribed fires, [etc.]…”

Here in Canada forest fire management hasn’t caught up with the decline in the forestry sector. There are a lot fewer pulp mills and saw mills operating today than a few decades ago. We’ve been removing a lot fewer trees and creating fewer fire breaks.

Common sense explanations won’t do much good for Toronto and Ottawa given that smoky conditions ruined picnicking on a few weekends and the CBC has already told them why.

We know what comes next.

The Green 14 in the Liberal caucus and the international environmental movement will demand Carney take a tougher stand against increasing oil production. And they will do all they can to block a new oil pipeline to the Pacific.

The Angus Reid poll is a reminder that there are politically powerful, well-financed environmental organizations poised to reinvigorate their assault on Western Canadian oil and gas. Challenging the propaganda and distorted science employed by the environmental movement will be critical in the months ahead as Canadian oil and gas producers attempt to launch the pipeline projects required to increase production and exports.

To that end this short column is accompanied by a movie review that takes a deep dive into one of the most successful and deceptive efforts to create a moral panic around the alleged need to save the planet from fossil fuels.—Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

It’s the 20^th anniversary of the release Al Gore’s climate change movie. It won him an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize. Green journalists will be celebrating, so it won’t hurt to be armed with a reminder of the errors and misrepresentations contained in, An Inconvenient Truth.

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