Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The climate vultures are gathering – already attempts are being made to link the out of control Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada with “climate change”. But there is something about this disaster which caught my eye – a comment which may hint to a very different reason, why the Fort McMurray wildfire is so out of control.
‘We are in for a rough day’: Fort McMurray wildfire expected to flare up Tuesday afternoon
EDMONTON — The wildfire burning just outside Fort McMurray more than doubled in size Monday evening, and fire crews warned Tuesday’s weather conditions will likely be the greatest challenge yet.
Thick, ominous plumes of smoke filled the sky Monday night. But on Tuesday morning the sky was fairly clear. Officials said that didn’t mean the fire had died down, and explained how an inversion was holding the smoke close to the ground. That was expected to lift in the early afternoon, which is when smoke would begin appearing in the sky again.
“The fire conditions are extreme,” Darby Allen, regional fire chief for the Wood Buffalo municipality, said during an 11 a.m. update Tuesday, talking about how the fire will “wake up.”
…
“The boreal forest is a fire-dependant ecosystem. The spruce trees, pine trees, they like to burn,” Bernie Schmitte, forestry manager in Fort McMurray, explained.
“They have to burn to regenerate themselves, and those species have adapted themselves to fire. Their cones have adapted so they open up after the fire has left, and the trees have adapted in that once they’re old and need to be replaced, they’re available to fire so they burn.”
…
Schmitte said the southwest corner of the fire was most active and saw the most growth Monday. It was burning in a southwest direction, away from Fort McMurray.
Officials said that as long as it remains safe to do so, firefighters would be working with bulldozers through the night to construct a fire break between the tip of the fire and Highway 63.
Read more: http://globalnews.ca/news/2673945/residents-on-alert-as-three-wildfires-burn-near-fort-mcmurray/
Australians like myself also sometimes face serious risk from wildfires, our forests are also “fire-dependent ecosystems”. It is normal to attempt to cut new emergency firebreaks during a severe fire, to try to prevent further spread. But an emergency firebreak is no substitute for properly maintained firebreaks which were created before the wildfire strikes.
Digging a little deeper;
Alberta’s aging forests increase risk of ‘catastrophic fires’: 2012 report
“Wildfire suppression has significantly reduced the area burned in Alberta’s boreal forest. However, due to reduced wildfire activity, forests of Alberta are aging, which ultimately changes ecosystems and is beginning to increase the risk of large and potentially costly catastrophic wildfires.”
To deal with this threat, the committee proposed expanding fire weather advisories to include potential wildfire behaviour, developing quick-response, firefighting specialists, and doing more work on fire prevention through the province’s FireSmart committee.
The goal was to contain all wildfires by 10 a.m. on the day after it had first been assessed, and before the fire had consumed more than four hectares of forest. This standard is met for the vast majority of Alberta wildfires, but it was not met this week in Fort McMurray.
The panel’s report came in response to Alberta’s unprecedented May 2011 fire season, which culminated in the deadly and costly Slave Lake fire that killed one helicopter pilot and took out 510 homes and buildings costing $700 million. The Alberta government’s Sustainable Resource Development department set up a panel to figure out how to deal with this kind of threat.
…
The panel pushed for widespread fire bans, forest area closures, and elevated fines during extreme weather.
They wanted to deal with parts of the forest that presented risk because of their location close to town. “Priority should be given to thinning or conversion of coniferous stands, particularly black spruce, which threaten community developments (as identified through strategic analysis of wildfire threat potential).”
They pushed for more staff, and year-round staff. “Advance start times for resources, including crews, equipment and aircraft contracts, to be fully ready for potential early fire seasons. Ensure staff vacancies are filled as soon as possible. Expand work terms to year round for a portion of firefighting crews to support retention and provide capacity for FireSmart initiatives.”
…
Understaffed, under-resourced forestry workers struggling to contain a growing risk of wildfire, a risk which has been exacerbated by excessive fire suppression causing a buildup of flammables, is a recipe for disaster.
Did Alberta authorities act, and act effectively, on the recommendations of committee? I don’t know the answer to that question. It is possible weather conditions are so severe, even completely reasonable forest safety measures have been overwhelmed by the ferocity of the fire. But if my property and life was directly affected by the current ongoing conflagration, my first question to Alberta authorities would not be “why didn’t you build more wind turbines?”.
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The Aborigines in Australia periodically fired the trees intentionally as part of their nomad agricultural methods and culture. Tests have shown that such practices are botanically beneficial. I travelled through Victoria in early 2014, just after the massive wild fire disaster there. Two to three months after the fire the blackened trees were already sprouting new green shoots. I was told, but don’t know if it was true, that the fire had occurred because the naturalists and environmentalists had insisted that vegetation between the trees had to be kept in place to preserve and protect wild life. This was despite thousands of years of Aboriginal experience that their practice of bush burning had not affected wild life – a major source of food for them. Clearing out vegetation between the trees, creates not only a greater risk of fire but also leaves massive amounts of kindling type fuel in place which accelerates the speed of the fire front.
Natives in the Eastern US would do the same thing. They would burn down some forest which released nutrients to the soil, then they would move to a different area once that area became unproductive and repeat. In the meantime, the forest would gradually reclaim the old agricultural area. In fact, after initial contact with natives in the Caribbean and South America, disease traveled very quickly into North America. By the time European settlers were pushing inland from the Atlantic coast, it was estimated that the native population was already only 10% of what it had been a couple hundred years before.
Hit “post too soon. So anyway, by the time European settlers arrived, most of North America was actually more heavily forested than it had been for thousands of years prior due to the reduction in native population that had already taken place before they arrived.
Climate or incompetence? There is always a third option: http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2015/10/30/massive-fire-at-monsanto-facility-likely-arson-says-investigators/
British Columbia has 40+ active fires, almost all human caused according to BC fire officials. The Fort McMurray fire considered also likely human caused as no lightning strikes when it started….accidentally on purpose?
Severe weather conditions (AKA Red Flag) do bring out the pyromaniacs…
One doesn’t have to be a pyromaniac to start a wildfire. Few people understand how dry the forest is in the early spring ( especially when there has been no recent rain). Last year’s growth is now tinder dry detritus and will burn very easily. A hot muffler,a discarded pop bottle, a spark from a small campfire, sparks from striking rocks, field work such as grinding, welding, logging, etc. And then there are just careless actions…
Saskatchewan ( East side of Alberta ) already has over 60 fires burning. Early fire season and pretty dry. Hard to remember that 4 years ago was one of the longest, coldest and snowiest winters I’ve seen in my 58 years.
Firefighters set fires with alarming frequency:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cops-maine-fire-chief-set-blaze-fought-100-133304800.html?nhp=1
Related …
ANALYSIS: California’s waterbomber fleet is matched only by its wildfire problem
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-californias-waterbomber-fleet-is-matched-424300/
Yeah the author of that article also wrote a book
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History is a 2014 nonfiction book written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt & Company. The book demonstrates that the Earth is in the midst of a modern, man-made, sixth extinction.
Any surprise that this non scientist can somehow tell us something about the fact that over 98% of all the species that ever existed are dead and die long before modern man, can then say old forests badly managed are burning because of climate change.
The other problem is that nobody can find most of the species that are supposedly going extinct.
It’s all the work of models, predicting how many species should be going extinct based on the inputs.
The number of species assumed to be in existence prior to the coming of man has never been documented or confirmed.
PS: How many times have we heard about an “extinct” species being rediscovered?
The cases are inverted but it’s like trying to find species that went extinct without a trace.
I think Yogi Berra would have found a more elegant way to say it.
.Alberta 1910:. . . .12-18 Million Acres of Land burned . . .
1910 is “still remembered as the year of the big fire”. The weather conditions for Alberta in 1910 paralleled those of the Northern States. 1909 was a hot, dry year across Canadian Rockies and Foothills regions, with drought conditions that sparked the last of the great prairie fires in Alberta.
The largest fire burnt late in the fall, devastating an estimated 12‐18 million acres of land.
…June and July [1910] were drier than usual, with temperatures above the annual averages for the last twenty years by as much as three degrees” . . .
Taken from “The 1910 Fires in Alberta’s Foothill and Rocky Mountain Ranges”
PDF of Report with historical references here:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiCo6i-6sXMAhVRwmMKHa_CBGAQFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmountainlegacy.ca%2Fresearch%2Fdocuments%2FAnnand-1910Fires-FinalReport.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHiak7ZIzOjc072nkkpH938xO69iQ&bvm=bv.121421273,d.cGc
Elizabeth Kolbert makes a living from scaring people with junk science
Maybe she is doing comedy like Steven…just not that funny.
Steven? Funny?
A play on spelling, Kolbert vs. Colbert, phonetically the same.
Lest we forget…Lots of tragic fire history in the Alberta area. 97 years ago in May…
The Great Alberta Fire – May 19, 1919
More than 7.5 Million Acres burned.
….”At least 13 confirmed and unknown number of burned victims. Many injured.
Undoubtedly a complex of many fires burning simultaneously over a wide area. Springtime burning conditions”…
‘Lest we forget’: Canada’s major wildland fire disasters of the past, 1825-1938
PDF here: https://www.firesmartcanada.ca/images/uploads/resources/Alexander-Lest-We-Forget.pdf« less
I’m an Albertan. I look at the fire location centered on Fort Mac and say “Arson”. So right away climate change is not the cause of the fire, i.e. spontaneous, but man is. Are the winds unusual? No. So what is left? Dry wood and fuel load
Of these only dry wood may be climate change. Fuel load is the result of good growing conditions and will always occur in a boreal forest environment. Natural decomposition here doesn’t occur fast enough – because it is too cold and too dry! Now dry could be climate change, due to either lack of precipitation and/or heat.
It was indeed a warm and snow-free winter. But the stats are “for the last hundred years”. So we know it has been this warm before SUVs. Drier? Haven’t heard that. In the ’80s the land around Calgary cracked because of a 10-year drought. Not now, not here. So, maybe not unusual in the provincial sense.
We had an El Nino winter. Our warm air comes from the Californian and Pacific area. Weather maps each morning reflect this. So “Climate Change” as the cause of the Fort Mac fires requires this last El Nino to be caused or its areal extent to be caused by climate change. Was it? Didn’t we have a blocking high pressure zone in the nw Atlantic holding the hot air out west?
So now climate change has to have caused a blocking weather system. Or was that just weather. After all, the warmists haven’t said the European cold winter and late snow – caused by the blocked high – was caused by “climate change”.
Climate change in the American Green mind is whatever change they see through the keyhole of their front door. The Fort Mac fire is typical of this subjective view of the world. It is not just that all weather is local, for the eco-green REALITY is local. Every local data point is a global data point if it points in the direction of CAGW. (Hence NOAA adjustments always go up.)
A La Nina is coming with a 0.4C global drop in temperatures. How will that be interpreted by warmists? Weather or an anomalous climatic event? As if weather still happens …. or forest fires.
Doug, take a look at http://fortmcmurray.weatherstats.ca/ No trends at all to support the Green blinkered apocalypse view. Last quarter century of temps particularly, is flat as the prairie. http://fortmcmurray.weatherstats.ca/charts/temperature-25years.html
All it takes in the spring to make scary conditions for fire is a few hot days with a strong warm dry wind. You don’t need unusual conditions at all. The run of the mill bad timing of once in 10 year weather is all it takes to have big fires. As has been the case for millenua. They only make the Mainstream news when they hit towns.
What I think a lot of people don’t realise is that these types of fires soon create their own weather and especially wind. If the fuel is there, they <i.will self-oxidise.
We just got done with excess moisture conditions in Sask and I’m guessing Alta was similar. Where do they think the ideal growing conditions for all those trees?
Global warming is boon to governments; acts as a great cover for bureaucratic incompetence and also provides great opportunity for raising taxes.
This is all sort of dumb. The wilderness areas are going to burn and some of the species and ecology require it. A forest of old, sick, and dead trees is a fire hazard.
If you are going to leave wilderness lying around green areas near civilization need to be fire resistant so they act as a fire break.
Early spring fires are relatively common in the Boreal Forest of northern Canada. After the snow melts in the early spring sunlight the soils dry. The dead vegetation from the prior year’s growth is tinder and will ignite like “wildfire”. A wet spring will alleviate the fire potential. The high fire threat is generally before the biota have awoken from their winter hibernation to consume the detritus (Mother nature’s process for sequestering carbon). This is the natural process of regeneration.
However, man interfered with the process because the wood fiber has value and we have assets that need protecting. The plan was to harvest the fiber and replant the forests. This plan has been destroyed by the Green Movement who seem to think that Mother Nature is wrong and the Boreal Forest needs man’s protection and an international accord protecting the Boreal Forest was signed a few years ago. The aging forests have a higher fuel load and are more susceptible to disease outbreaks . The outbreak of the Mountain Pine Beetle in Western Canada is in part a result of the aging forests and has further increased the fuel load.The wildfires burn hotter and are larger because of the fuel load. When they start (most often from lightening) near a community, the devastation is horrific.
We in the neighbouring British Columbia have experienced this devastation several times. Large areas of BC and Northwestern US burned during 2003 when the communities of Barriere, McLure, Louis Creek, Naramata and the City of Kelowna were burned. I remember the Sentinel Mtn wildfire back when I was a kid threatened my hometown of Castlegar. In 1950 a wildfire in the Boreal Forest spanning BC and Alberta border burned 1.4mil ha.
http://bcwildfire.ca/history/largefires.htm
BC now considers logging a valuable tool in controlling wildfires and has or is logging vast tracks of timber that was killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle. The Ministry of forest has a funding program for fuel Management We continue to battle aging forests.
With respect to the Fort McMurray fire, it started close to the town in a dry spring and rapidly grew fueled by strong winds that blew it into town. If it was not burning a town, it would not have garnered the attention it is getting. There is a much larger fire burning to the west.
This fire is definitely not the result of climate change but it is the result of weather conditions that have occurred since history. And in my opinion, the Green movement is complicit in this issue. Their misguided notion that trees live forever and man’s management or use of the forest is evil is ill conceived. It has produced over mature forests with elevated fuel level that have increased the intensity of natural wildfires. When they interface with communities, the devastation is heartbreaking and that is what the focus should be – caring for those whose homes, possessions, keepsakes, heirlooms, livelihood, and peace of mind has been ripped away. Those who use tragedies like this one for political gain or to push an agenda should be considered pariahs and shunned. There is no honour in them.
That people even try to claim that climate change is responsible for the fires is sort of deluded.
The CO2 increase is having a slightly negative impact on the O2 (the atmosphere is where the O2 to make CO2 comes from).
Reducing O2 reduces fire risk.
It is thought that carboniferous forests were fire resistant species because at O2 levels above 25% the place would have been a tinderbox. A 25+% O2 level would make the fires in current vegetation unstoppable. That and metal would rust as you watched.
Yet another benefit of global warming – bridges last longer.
Great summary DCS. The intensity of this and other fires are a result of human meddling but not with the climate. People like forests because they are pretty/scenic/natural. All of that I agree with, but foresters and sensible people know that trees have specific general maximum age ranges for each species. If we’re talking about California redwoods, then fine, we’re measuring in the hundreds of years. On the other hand if we’re considering hideous poplar trees in eastern Manitoba, then we’re looking around 30 years; jack pine in the 40-50 year range, etc.
But we’ve had fire management programs going a lot further back than those age spans and as humans expand into areas ever closer to “nature” and we don’t manage those situations, either through controlled burning or logging (selectively) then we just build up the fuel load in the forests. As you mentioned, B.C. has suffered its share of fires and as I’m in Manitoba, we’ll see the same eventually in the eastern part of our province where cottage country is – the Whiteshell and Nopiming Provincial parks. I’m old enough to have watched 40+ years of cottage goers in those regions and if you threaten to remove any trees – well consider yourself immediately ostracized and a pariah. Yet those regions hold trees that don’t ever come close to what could be considered “old growth” as they simply don’t survive that long (aspen/poplar, various species of pine/spruce).
I remember being in grad school (ecology/forestry/entomology) over twenty years ago and having debates about forests because my thesis centered on successional processes in forests. One of my fellow graduate students was an eco-minded thing at the time and I loved asking her if we should allow logging? No was the ready answer, not surprisingly. I also asked if we should allow a forest to burn as a result of a lightning strike (natural occurrence y’know) and her answer was also no as we had to preserve and protect nature. Unbelievably she is a prof at a university now and still holds the same beliefs which are foisted upon students. Her answer to the lightning question is wrong because of what DCS summarized above.
Nature will find a way. Be it insects, disease or fire, nothing lives forever, not even forests. There’s a distinct human element at play here but it has absolutely nothing to do with presumed climate change.
“Hideous(?) Poplar trees…” Don’t you mean Deciduous?
Lectric, ‘poplar’ are a particularly fast growing aspen genus of deciduous. Most common on my farm in Wisconsin are ‘black toothed aspens’, named for the distinctive mark below each branch, buds of which are favorite ruffed grouse winter food. Not to be confused with the tulip poplar hardwoods of southern forests in the Appalachians where my significant other has her cabin. Her poplars grow early like weeds, also, but only to early outcompete the Southern White Pines, maples, and oaks that are the ultimate successional forest in that region (north Georgia in holding of Chatahoochie National Forest, established by TR on utterly devastated clear logged land). Northern Poplars die young at 30-40. Tulip poplars die young at 60-80. Maples and oaks and SWP in the Chattahoochie die young at >200 years with trunk girth diameters often approaching a meter at breast height.
We walk such forests often. And have a hand made Georgia cabin table made from a quarter sawn SWP that measures almost 3 feet wide, definitely not center cut.. Took her two years to finish that one, plus I had to go into the forest and select/cut/peel/cure/ finish the five hardwood legs supporting it. Only one tree. The tall, straight, narrow immature kind found in healthy forests.
lectrikdog May 6, 2016 at 2:05 pm
“Hideous(?) Poplar trees…” Don’t you mean Deciduous?
Hideous trees are unpoplar.
That she is now a prof is no surprise. The most removed from reality are the ones who set their sights on the ivory tower. As profs, their outsized egos are fed by dominating eager young students with ideas that have no grounding in the real world.
Hi from a old neighbour – Trail and Grand Forks teens – then all over. I am old enough to remember the big BC fires in the 50’s. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
James Delingpole’s takedown of the environmentalist [**beep**]s and their failures as human beings:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/05/05/greenies-fiddle-while-fort-mcmurray-burns/
“For those of a green persuasion, every natural disaster is not a crisis but an opportunity to gloat and say: “I told you so!””
Ft. Mac fire is currently ~85,000 ha. Chinchaga fire burned for months and consumed between 1.4 and 1.7 million ha. That was in 1950…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinchaga_fire
.. While I’m not exactly religious, I found this short read interesting !
“The climate gods and the political temple”
https://outlook.live.com/owa/?path=/mail/inbox/rp
Looks like 1988 Yellowstone Fires, all over again. Then as now due to mis-management of yearly fire-management (no burn at all) policies for a few decades created the tinder for the McMurray fires we see today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988
Having lived in the Lake Tahoe/ El Dorado county area from the 80’s-2000 I have seen this happen before. The logging companies , with the help of the forest service ( hey remember when they worked together) Stopped all fires from spreading but at the same time removed the under brush and dead fall a well as they could. People like me would get our fire wood permits every year and cut wood not only for our selves but for sale to others. This is why as a young man there was no excuse for being broke in the sierras. You could always cut wood. All fire wood had t be downed trees and at least two years old. who wants to load wet heavy wood when you can load dry wood that gets a better price. After Clinton closed most of the logging roads on public land and the government of California went after wood burning stoves in a lot of the state the amount of debris on the forest floor when up. Combined with the thicker forest on public land due to the planned destruction of the logging industry, see spotted owl hoax, and the larger more devastating fires were close behind. The high heat of these types of fires burn the ground and form a crust that seeds can and will not penetrate. These are unnatural fires brought on by un natural conditions due to stupidity and emotions by greenies both in and out of the forest service. The solution is more logging and better logging practices before the fires. After the fires the solution is to get in with heavy equipment and remove some if not most of the burnt wood and replant. The equipment breaks the crusted earth up so that plants and seeds can take hold. After the highway 50 fire back in 84 or so There was a short film produced by the logging companies that showed the difference between removing the old wood and planting and doing nothing and leaving it to nature. Public land and logging land boarded each other on a hill side where the two different methods were used and are clearly visible. 5 years after the fire the private lands are growing back with nice healthy young forest and all the wildlife that it provides for. The public lands that were left to mother nature, like it was a living person that was going to correct the problems, is a slide prone, waste land with nothing but manzanita and scotch broom. This area has slide down on highway 50 many times since then. We have a duty as a people to manage the environment around use as we change it. Doing nothing as the forest service is so fond of the last 40 years, is not a management plan. I am not a scientist nor do I have a collage education, not that they are worth a whole lot these days from what I have seen, I am just a guy that grew up in the woods some.
Too Funny…
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Michael Palmer
May 6, 2016 at 8:27 am
As a kid, my friends and I actually chewed real tar we found in pieces near the railway track – maybe used for treating railway ties – probably not a recommended thing to do these days. The stuff could be broken yielding a shiny, concoidal fracture. It didn’t spread in your mouth like molasses but rather gathered into a blob pretty much like chewing gum.
The National Energy Board of Canada describes the bitumen of the of the oil sands as a mixture of hydrocarbons heavier than pentane, a point at which production by wells is not possible. It is a viscous crude. They note that bitumen in Venezuela is even more viscous than the Canadian stuff. You definitely wouldn’t be tempted to chew this stuff! Tar is a real commodity – not so much in use as it once was, but before melting it, you could put chunks in your pocket and break pieces off it.
Anyway, the term “Tar” sands, like the term “Carbon” for CO2 is pretty much activist language – you know, awful black stuff. I think that is the point your opponents are trying to make.
Hey! They produce heavy crude in California that’s worse than the oil sands but the hypocritical b-tards never complain about that!
You will be surprised at how many forests need a fire. Some trees would be extinct if there was no fire.
For example, the southeastern US has a lot of pine trees. There are several type of pines trees in the southeastern US. The loblolly pine is a tall skinny pine with a deep taproot. Because it is hurricane resistant, it is the most common tree in the area. It will never blow over in a hurricane, but it will snap. Then there is the longleaf pine and pond pine. Both these pine trees must have a fire to survive, especially the longleaf pine. The pond pine seeds do not open until there is a fire. That is all well and good, we could burn a small area to get new pond pine trees. But the longleaf pine is special. The longleaf pine has a slow initial growth. For at most 12 years, it looks a tall grass. But during those early years, it is special because it can survive any wildfire. In a mature forest, new seedlings will lose out in the competition for sunlight with other trees. But if there is a wildfire, well the longleaf pine will survive the fire whereas other trees will burn down and have to start over. After the grass stage, the longleaf pine takes off. In its natural state, the longleaf pine must have a wildfire to reproduce.
Wildfires do a lot of damage to people’s homes. But forests need a wildfire every so often to be healthy. That is what the climate change hysterics miss. The only bad thing about these fires is that people are displaced from their homes.
In addition to longleaf pine, Table Mnt pine has a very limited natural range and is disappearing in the Appalachians due to fire-control — crowded out by oaks/hickories/red maples. When I lived near Blacksburg, VA, the VA Tech forestry school performed some controlled burns nearby on steep, rocky slopes where some few remaining Table Mnt pine groves existed, and after the fires the pines densely reseeded the burned areas — same as what had previously occurred naturally.
Greenies lol
That Oilsands site looks more like the sites near Cold Lake. In Ft Mac area, they are indeed open strip mines. However, after the oilsands are removed, the land is returned to as good or better than original condition.
The top is the Escondida copper mine in Chile, see http://www.miningglobal.com/top10/1663/PHOTOS-Top-10-Largest-Open-Pit-Mines-in-the-World
http://s14.postimg.org/966lxfdkh/Escondida_Copper_Mine.jpg
Just because you found it somewhere doesn’t mean its right.
While there are some open pit Lithium mines, I think most production is from brine recovery at dry lakes.
The bottom is from
http://www.megenergy.com/sites/default/files/user_uploaded/images/operations/PAD.jpg
and turns out to be a thermal recovery oil sands project in Alberta.
So much CO2 going up in smoke. And the fire is likely to be anthropogenic. This has to increase anthropogenic climate change for sure. Somebody ought to ask for a grant to study (and model) this.
The imagination of man is a dangerous tool.
Gang Green is proof of that.
Forest Fires are an abstract until you feel the heat.
Presuming these forces of nature can be fought and beaten is stunning hubris.
I live in the boreal forest , fire and freezing are our biggest fears.
Fire can be prepared for, by careful siting of infrastructure and firebreaks on the grounds.
We no long do that,in our towns and cities.
My city has fingers of green space, linking structures to the forest,like fuses laid into the heart of our habitats, our bylaw officers harass citizens who remove dead wood and garbage from these areas.
Fine you if you dare cut down a scrubby tree on your own property.
Our fire department says; “Not our responsibility”for these hazards.
Our Government, has a plan; That no one can see.
Public has been asking for the “plan” since last close call with forest fires.
When the conditions are right we will burn here.
Another “tragedy” caused by bureaucratic interference and incompetence.
I just hope the lake is not frozen, so I can sit on my tin boat and watch my assets burn.
So those blaming CAGW for increasing property losses through forest fire, are sort of correct.
Being deluded by this mass hysteria, seems to justify not doing the most basic age old prevention work, that are rightly the responsibilities of the local governments.
Doing stupid things in the name of “saving the environment” will come back to bite.
Even as the fire burns, the politicians and kleptocrats are certain that fires must be fought,can be fought and still persecute citizens who attempt to prevent fire.
More and more, burning of overgrown,standing dead timber is looking like self defence rather than arson.
Fire like bureaucracy is a fine servant when tiny, a totally destructive force when master.
Note the time lines the “authorities” are suggesting for allowing returning Ft Mac residents back.
I can understand someone wanting to live way out, in the woods…
…I can’t understand building neighborhoods, shopping areas, schools, small towns, etc etc
…and not build a fire break all the way around them
Amen!
Or sabotage? There is more than one country that is overly dependent on exporting petroleum and natural gas products. Prices have been in the can. Just saying …
A good resource for the situation in Fort McMurray is the Edmonton Journal http://edmontonjournal.com BTW there are dozens of wildfires currently burning in Northern Alberta and even more in British Columbia. It’s fire season up there. Most are in remote, unpopulated areas. There were actually two near Fort McMurray. One, North of town was extinguished.
Here’s a link that specifically addresses the wildfire plan http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/alberta-has-a-plan-to-contain-wildfires-but-is-it-working