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 solution in both the US West and Canada is to sell the national and other public forests. Private enterprise will manage them properly, although there is a place for forest practice acts such as Oregon’s.
The only land the federal government should own is the national park system and military reservations. Maybe a few national monuments and wilderness areas, but those have been overdone. Indian reservations and the BLM should also be privatized.
Most of the Northern boreal forest is of very low value. Only a complete idiot would pay to manage these trees. Wanna buy a million acres of bush?
I’m from Alberta, and know people who live up there. So this is kind of close to home.
However, I have been saying ever since the Slave Lake fire, that towns in the forested part of Alberta need to have huge fire breaks around them. I had suggested 1 mile wide. If more is needed, so be it. I know that we all love to have trees near us, it makes us feel like we are in nature, but it is dangerous.
I can agree with that 2012 report. Whenever I go back country hiking off trail, I see massive buildup of fuel. Sometimes up to 5 feet of deadfall littering the forest. This is a major forest fire waiting to happen.
I think this is correct. Even if it’s raining embers, big fire breaks would make start up fires easier to get to, easier to fight and easier to back burn. Provincial governments should provide matching grants to incent communities to meet prevention standards.
Have they heard about it in Toronto or Ottawa yet?
Yes, the PM has committed to matching donation to the Red Cross. Of course, the Red Cross doesn’t help with recovery, only immediate human need (i.e. food, water, shelter during the crisis).
Send Al Gore to cool off the fire. No wait, he might ask for donations from the exodus crowd.
Just sit back and wait for Hansen to do another paper which will be published during the next strong El Nino, he made a big song and dance in 1998 during the El nino. He was back again this year obviously with his garbage paper.
I think there is a strong correlation between Hansen’s mental health and intense El Nino events.
Intense el Braino events!
Interesting read here, with some great data. Apparently, there has been no upward trend in fires in the southern boreal zone where Fort McMurray is over the last few decades.
https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/on-forest-fires-climate-activist-arent-just-insensitive-they-are-also-wrong/
Because they have been busy preventing fires using the wrong methods which leads to these kinds of intense fires.
Had they let burn, or burned large parts of the forest in a controlled fashion this wouldn’t have been so damaging, having all your stuff burned is a bad buzz, all because of an incompetent state policy driven by nutbag environmentalists and idiots
In exactly the same fashion, banning dredging of rivers causes floods. Then they blame the floods on “climate change” mkay
This,BTW, is a larger fire than the oil fires in Kuwait used by Carl Sagan to predict global catastrophe. The other predictions from that event are also worth reviewing for the scale of prediction error.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires
Just a thought…
The headline says “Fort MacMurray fire surpasses 10,000 hectares” !!!
A hectare = 0.00386102 square miles. Muliply by 10,000 you get >>
38 square miles burning. Now this is maybe a lot to manage or put out and it’s definitely tragic for the inhabitants of Fort Mac but…
The province of Alberta = 255,541 square miles. So we’re talking about 38 square miles burning out of roughly a quarter million square miles in Alberta.
The forest will survive.
Truth be told they will do better because of the burning, at the cost of a lot of homes and hopefully! no people.
“Climate change” obviously made this fire worse..
..by sucking all of the funding away from the Forestry service
Correct. Granted, this is not the only fire burning in Alberta right now.
A lot of people do not realize how huge Alberta’s forests are. They are essentially infinite. No amount of oil activity, fires, or logging will make a dent in it.
It’s not that big a fire. The location is what makes it tragic and more newsworthy and controversial to some. The North is dry this year as it is some years. Fires start from lightning, careless people and the occasional arsonist. There are well over a hundred fires burning in the four Western provinces. This fire was assisted by wind which is bad, bad luck when fighting fire. It will be a long, tough fire season unless we get several days of steady rain soon. Some years are just like this. Previously? It was wet!
“Did Alberta authorities act, and act effectively, on the recommendations of committee? I don’t know the answer to that question.”
You do know the answer to that question, events prove they failed to plan for fire outbreak that would threaten a populated area.
Controlled burns to make fire breaks would have meant the fire fighters and emergency services could MUCH better handle the situation.
Cost, money went into carbon mitigation nonsense.
Eric this is the whole anti adaption stance of the IPCC, this is the outcome. While the very tax payer bucks of these people goes to nonsense mitigation none goes to this problem that threatens their homes and lives and was GUARANTEED to happen sooner rather than later.
When you talk adaption to a dangerous environment the greenies go nuts, literally, and spit feathers yet this is the outcome, the UK flooding is the outcome, all the money is in profit making mitigation that is words over a trillion a year, adaption pff, who needs that when the UN thinks there are too many of us anyway 😀
Quick answer; when a fire starts, it’s not as severe when there’s less deadwood and the burn is mostly in the crowns of trees instead of whole, close-together trees going up in flames. There’s a big whoosh and then on to the next tree. First rain or river (or fire break) the fire hits, it’s out.
As a former Fire Chief myself with a coverage area that included 2500+ sq. miles in the NE. I feel badly for those affected by the fire and the crews working to contain it. Over the last few decades logging has been in decline. Logging took care of the dead and dying trees which acts as the fuel while regenerating new growth. Those practices reduced the fire situations that we had to respond to.
Unfortunately, the environmental movement and activist landowners have purchased large swaths of land in the region banning logging and traditional use like fishing etc. when the paper companies held ownership. This now has me very concerned as the chances of major blazes increase by the year and the old logging roads and bridges are not kept up making it dangerous for fire apparatus to respond.
A few years ago a fire was started by a wind turbine in a wilderness area just outside of my jurisdiction.
http://bangordailynews.com/2013/04/26/opinion/editorials/turbine-fire-illuminates-need-for-reporting-mandate/
The event was kept quiet for several years as was a fire started by lightning striking a wind ‘met’ tower in another location.
Forests do use fire for regeneration as is mentioned in the article, however, ill conceived land uses and careless campers are the main problem.
John, Please consider expanding on your experience, and post it as a story on WUWT. The more people know about exactly what is happening, the better chance voters have of forcing politicians to fix the problems.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/submit-a-story/
Thanks! I will try to do just that. I do write occasionally for an small economic/financial news blog (unpaid and I like it that way) and would be thrilled to do the same here.
john
I’d be happy to help out too. I’m fairly active with NH WindWatch next door. While I’m most interested in infrasound issues, I’m interested in shining light onto any part of the industry that the industry would rather keep in the dark.
I’ll drop you a brief note directly.
For four days this week the jet stream had been funnelling air from Baja California right up to Hudson Bay. You can see it in the maps from 5 May clearly. It’s no wonder there was a big fire.
Sinuous jet streams have been linked to low solar activity, but not to CO2 (despite some efforts by the climateers):
The North Atlantic jet stream correlates with Solar output over a millennium
Paper suggests solar magnetic influence on Earth’s atmospheric pressure
Isn’t this one of the most important recommendations as quoted in the article : “Priority should be given to thinning or conversion of coniferous stands, particularly black spruce, which threaten community developments [..]“. As in Australia, building right next to dense fuel or allowing dense fuel to grow near buildings is crazy. Less fuel = less fire, no fuel = no fire. I despair of the brave but misguided people in Australia who proudly declare after their house has burned to the ground “We’ll build again”. If they build again, they will burn again. First, they have to remove the fuel.
They will cease to exist as natural forests without the fire that opens the cones. If fire is kept at bay long enough the trees can suffer from pestilence and disease, and then you have an old and sickly forest. Natural fires can kill off entire area infestations of pine beetles, and keep other unwanted pests and diseases supressed. They could be maintained as unnatural forests by human cultivation and planting of the same tree types, but without periodic fires, much is lost, as in the ash nutrients that return to the soils, plant secession, etc.
Plus many. Man management can never fully supplant Nature and billions ofmyearsnof evolution. We aint that smart, and just arrived.
Unfortunately, this fire has provided fodder for the propagandists and crackpots.
They’re oozing out from under the rocks where they reside.
During the last election in Alberta, a freak vote splitting event between the two “right” wing party’s, allowed the utterly incompetent and formerly fringe eco\ socialist, anti oil activist, NDP to get elected.
The ultra left wing loser’s promptly cut the fire fighting budget so they could pay for more public sector union pensions and perk’s.
https://www.facebook.com/Ndpnodamnplan/photos/a.657336611074408.1073741829.656375301170539/692663690875033/?type=3&theater
The real “karma” will come after these evil bastards are voted out. The massive cuts to public sector employees and really bad social programs that will be needed to get Alberta back in the Black, will have these leftist crying like little babies. Again…
King Ralph will be smiling down from above.
It wasn’t fun under King Ralph when he was balancing the budget. But it had to be done. We elected him for the job, and he did it. Imagine that! A politician who did what he was elected to do. Some people hated him for that, but most of us loved him!
+1000 Jeff in Calgary. Now back to hockey.
For more than 20 years in Australia the greenies stopped any preventative actions to limit bush fires, because they wanted to protect the natural environment. But finally, after some devastating fires, Royal Commissions made recommendations to implement regular controlled burns to protect both humans and wildlife. So now we have regular controlled burns again, which local firefighters always knew was the right approach, but ignorant inner city greenies thought they knew better.
It doesn’t get simpler than that, it doesn’t take a genius or a group of bureaucrats to figure it out, it just takes money and a lack of stupidity
I’m amazed at the mini-“debate” over the “tar” sands moniker, in the comments above. Completely off-topic. But it does reveal the state of the debate over climate. And whether YMM’s minuscule global contribution to CO₂ could be in any way responsible for the “climate change” that “led to” this monumental testament to poor forestry practice. It happens every El Niño year. Can the buffoonery. Note that without fossil fuels, this would have become an insurmountable disaster injecting millions of tons of soot, ash, and CO₂ into the atmosphere.
What also comes to mind is the suspiciously slow response by the Alberta Government, itself famous for its revulsion to the “Tar” sands. Their silence was deafening, although they have now begun to respond, spending our tax dollar on the refugees. But they could have spent a tenth of that in a quick response to the nascent fire, itself suspicious in its location and timing…and prevented this exodus and its 100-million-dollar outlay, which they no doubt will try and take credit for.
Watching the debate over whether it’s tar, or bitumen, or heavy oil, or proto-fakking-gilsonite is like watching a bunch of first-graders argue nuclear physics.
The YMM fire was a botch job from the get-go, and climate trolls are really just not welcome in the debate about its cause. Go sit on your unicorn’s forehead.
That was great, Mike. Real classy. Whether you think so or not, it is an important distinction, on many levels. Sniping from the sidelines is also a playground tactic.It was also not off topic, unless you are running this blog now.
The brand-new NDP Premier and her band of yoga teachers and baristas that make up her new Cabinet reduced the fire-fighting budget from $500 million to $87 million in her first budget last October (?), and she got rid of the water-bombers who were on stand-by. This, in the face of the Slave Lake fire that caused so much devastation.
90,000 people are displaced. 90,000 people can never go home. 90,000 people are homeless.
@Mike Bromley the Kurd,
You can kvetch all you want, but it’s Oil Sands. And has been for decades. How you know someone has never set foot in Alberta to verify the facts: they use the words Tar Sands.
it may be regional disdain, but it’s like some waterfall expert showing up north of Fresno and calling the national park he’s standing in, Yozamight.
Look what happened to Cruz in Indiana for calling it a Basketball Ring. Finished.
The enormous damage from the Fort McMurray fire was caused by lack of preparation. Alberta had adequate warning, notably from the fire that destroyed about 400 homes in the town of Slave Lake in 2011.
The Fort McMurray fire has destroyed over 1600 structures and severely damaged the economy of the greatest wealth-producing region of Canada.
Recent Alberta governments, whether PC or NDP, have been seriously incompetent, especially about energy policy and forest fire control.
The PC’s utterly botched electricity deregulation. They also embraced costly and intermittent wind power, which the rest of the world is finally realizing is not green and produces little useful energy. Recently they installed an unneeded and costly DC power line that further drove up costs. Having adopted sound fiscal (Royalty and Tax) terms for the oilsands circa 1997, they completely messed them up circa 2008.
The NDP energy policy is to replace our cheap, reliable coal-fired power plants with even more intermittent wind power. This cannot work, due to the fatal flaw of intermittency of wind power.
I have worked in the Athabasca oilsands since 1977, and have a strong affinity to Fort Mac and the good people who work there. This past Wednesday, in about 20 minutes I arranged for over 100 free hotel rooms for those who are displaced, and yesterday I arranged for more resources.
What can you do to help?
Donate to the Red Cross – the feds and the Province are matching funds. Dig deep – many young families have lost everything.
https://donate.redcross.ca/ea-action/action?gclid=CNrV7b65xswCFQYIaQodJg8FDw&ea.client.id=1951&ea.campaign.id=50639
Thank you, Allan
Agreed Alan. I already donated as have thousands of others across Canada and from abroad. There are a lot of good people helping out.
With limited resources, I donated money. I do have lots of time, and hope to latch up with a cleanup detail.
Thank you Gentlemen.
Wonderful man. My hat off to you for your efforts. Truly. I live in the US but I have family in Alberta. No one down here, or in eastern Canada, understands how Alberta is in the vanguard on the North American continent protecting the environment and has been since old Premier Manning Père days (1949). For example, you can’t take a damn thing out of the ground from ore to oil to water, or even placing a gas line, without restoring the ground to the same or better conditions. And god help you if you sully the air. You’re fined and you can go to jail. No other province in Canada has that rule. Americans have no clue what that even is. They call it socialism down here and sneer. Of course, know-nothings like Bill McKibben and James Hansen know nothing about this.
Air Canada is gouging the refugees from this fire $4000 to fly to Halifax? And their response to the public outcry is to reduce this outrageous one-way fare by 1/2?
Will. Never. Use. That. Airline. Ever. Again.
Not. Ever. Shame.
Westjet is supplying free planes to get people marooned and destitute north of Fort Mac to safety.
@Allan MacRae,
Isn’t Air Canada the federal government airline, or am I wrong?
Used to be but it is a public company now, trading as AC.TO on the TSX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada
http://www.csagroup.org/documents/testing-and-certification/product_areas/forest_products_marking/CAN_CSA_Z809-02O_English.pdf
CAN/CSA-Z809-02 Sustainable Forest Management: Requirements and Guidance A National Standard of Canada (approved May 2003) : Demonstrates a process-centric policy, light on objectives.
Similar documents seen with Alberta Forest Management Planning Standard
http://wildfire.alberta.ca/fire-smart-landscapes/documents/ABForestMgmtPlanStandard-2006.pdf
Canadian authorities appear to have have a legendary talent to proscribe process ad nauseam.
From, https://www.firesmartcanada.ca/images/uploads/resources/chapter8.pdf
Fire Smart – Chapter Eight. Communities Taking Action – Templates for Success
“Wildfire is a common occurrence in the region, from within the city limits and from large uncontrolled wildfires advancing towards the city. Wildfire has threatened homes in Fort McMurray several times in the past. Fires within the city limits in 1980, 1986, and 1995 threatened buildings and resulted in joint fire suppression action between Alberta Environment, Land and Forest Service and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo Fire Department.”
“The Fort McMurray Wildland/Urban Interface Plan assesses sites at risk for interface fire within the city limits and identifies priorities for mitigation.
The plan makes many recommendations that, if followed, will help Fort McMurray develop into a FireSmart community. Some, such as the fuels modification and interagency cooperation, have already been implemented successfully and have put the Fort McMurray initiative well on the way to becoming a success.”
Written by bureacrats for bureaucrats, and not unlike:
CANADIAN WILDLAND FIRE STRATEGY: BACKGROUND SYNTHESES, ANALYSES, AND PERSPECTIVES http://www.ccfm.org/pdf/cwfs_Analysis_EN_web.pdf
“Successful community-wide FireSmart programs have been initiated in Fort McMurray, Kamloops, Hinton, and Banff (Partners in Protection 2003).”
“FireSmart programs rely on public education, with the responsibility for implementation left to communities
or individual property holders, on a largely voluntary basis.”
“Dorothy Whitaker, addressed the Northwest Fire Council (Whittaker 1988): ‘What we are lacking are very specific rules for fire prevention under the Municipal Act. Some of the specific rules that are so desperately needed are such things as (1) insurance that a secondary access is created; (2) regulations that no shake roofs be used in subdivisions that are out in the forested area; and; (3) at the building permit stage, an inspection to find out whether the property owner has cleaned out his property so that there is not miscellaneous material lying around which would add fuel to any potential fire.’
Fuels Management
Most provinces do not have fuel management or mitigation programs, and the few that do exist are in the early stages of development, with limited funding. In some cases there may be regulatory barriers to fuels management, such as a requirement that forest plantation stocking levels be maintained following forest management activities on Crown land or that timber cut during fuel treatments be included in the annual allowable cut.
The sex and hockey guidelines are actually pretty good though! Watch those skate blades!
Indeed JH, you aren’t referring to a meaningful synchronization of process and delayed self-gratification are you? I’m certain our friends will have guidelines and bureaucratic rules that cover all activities, real and imagined. Their French inheritance is very special.
A few thoughts re wildfire prevention and damage mitigation:
Firebreaks:
We have the largest heavy equipment in the world at Fort McMurray, including dozers with blades over 20 feet wide. We can build fire breaks wide enough to stop most fires, preferably BEFORE a fire starts…
Fireproof structures:
Concrete-shelled homes have survived even major wildfires.
Here is one such product – I designed, patented it and brought it to production decades ago and it works really well – I am no longer involved in any way, so this is NOT a commercial plug.
http://www.advantageicf.com/homeowners/advantage_system.html
Add concrete (or similar) roof tiles, concrete floor and ceiling decks, non-flammable siding and insulated steel shutters and these houses will survive almost any natural disaster including a tornado strike or major flood – and they do not cost much more than conventional stick-built homes.
Donate to the Red Cross – please.
https://donate.redcross.ca/ea-action/action?gclid=CNrV7b65xswCFQYIaQodJg8FDw&ea.client.id=1951&ea.campaign.id=50639
Thank you, Allan
Done. They do incredible work in Alberta, and they’re honest.
I have seen this meme many times before. The fact of the matter is that both climate change and forest management can influence fire severity. In this case both may be involved but it is clear that the warm, dry conditions are clearly contributing to the size and severity of this fire. Long-term trends indicate that fire size and severity are increasing with time across the western United States, Alaska, and the boreal forest of Canada. Face it, climate change is leading to more fires and more severe fires across much of North America.
Wrong!
Clearly you and your family haven’t lived in the West since the 1850s. Those of us who have have seen far worse forest fires under cooler conditions.
The whole “climate change” scam is based upon the supposed water vapor feedback mechanism, ie more rain as a result of allegedly man-made global warming, not drier conditions.
More moisture means worse forest fires because of more fuel. Mismanagement of public lands is to blame. The solution is, as usual, private ownership.
This was El Nino combined with a Loon Leftie regime in Alberta. The only upside is that the loons are now liable to be tossed out, unless Center and Right voters again engage in a circular firing squad.
Take a look at the science, increases in wildfire activity is driven by warmer temperatures.
?width=800&height=600&carousel=1
From Westerly et al 2006 Science.
Western United States forest wildfire activity is widely thought to have increased in recent decades, yet neither the extent of recent changes nor the degree to which climate may be driving regional changes in wildfire has been systematically documented. Much of the public and scientific discussion of changes in western United States wildfire has focused instead on the effects of 19th- and 20th-century land-use history. We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt.
Link
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/313/5789/940.full
No Luke. Period. There is no correlation. You and a million others are just repeating YOUR meme.
“Face it, climate change is leading to more fires and more severe fires across much of North America …”.
====================================
http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/delaware/biotrends/trends33.JPG
(USDA Forest Service).
“… the Canadian fire record prior to the early 1970s is incomplete, as various regions of the country (particularly in the north) were not consistently monitored during this period. For example, the Yukon and Northwest Territories have only reported burned areas since 1946, while the province of Newfoundland began reporting in 1947. It is expected that incomplete records are much more of a problem prior to 1950, and the advent of satellite coverage in the early 1970s has resulted in a virtually complete record over the past 3 decades …”:
http://www.horizons.gc.ca/sites/default/files/uploaded_media/img0184_06-eng.jpg
Given the US trend graph above it’s reasonable to infer that over the post-WW2 years the response to wildfires has lessened the risk greatly so here is a question for Luke:
If your statement:”… climate change is leading to more fires and more severe fires across much of North America ..” were true, what would be the more rational use of available national wealth?:
(a) invest in more and better firefighting resources, better inspection, monitoring and quicker response capability and the like … or …
(b) build many more windmills?
Similar questions would apply to the many other climate risks beloved of alarmists
I would expect that forest fires have been allowed to burn in Canada to a larger extent than in the U.S. Larger area,less threat to people and more difficult access dictate that approach.
Yeah but no! A warm dry year is not climate change! It’s weather! There were dry years in the early 2000s, the 90’s, the 80’s, the 60’s; am I boring you yet? The 30’s and the 1880’s and I probably missed a few. Today’s headlines DO NOT describe the world as it has always been!
Sinister Voice
Luke, you can destroy carbon emissions. I have foreseen this. Join me — together we can control the Earth’s climate!
Nonsense, Luke. Face it, you need to quit drinking the Kool Ade. Makes you even dumber (if that’s possible).
Remember Yellowstone? Same deal here. Suppress fire for long enough and mother nature will give you a spanking!
You haven’t kept up with the literature. Lodgepole pine forests are not ponderosa pine forests. Large crown fires are the norm in lodgepole.
Jeff and Wayne, I agree – there should have been real firebreaks, not in terms of meters, but in terms of at least a mile. That would have certainly prevented this tragedy. Moreover, the timber thus cleared could have been used effectively, so it would not have been a waste of trees, either.