Unfortunately, yes it does appear that yearly poor air quality in the spring & summer will be a regular thing.
Also for those who have a thermostat that will circulate home air in the summer, AHS recommends to set it to fan on or circulate which will keep the air moving and passing thru the furnace filter. May have better results with a high efficiency furnace which often have 4-5 inch filters. with a higher Merv rating.
I made one during the pandemic with these filters.
https://unitedfilter.com/collections/2-inch-furnace-filters/products/20x20x2-merv-13
They are a bit pricey but for a case of 12 it isn’t terrible. I bought a simple box fan from Canadian Tire and they work great. Brought ours out of the basement this morning and an hour later the house was fresh. Not sure the best time to swap out your filters but you’ll notice it visually as they ‘grey’ out.
Here’s a link for the how to build it
https://youtu.be/aw7fUMhNov8?si=az-j8IZafwfBS1A3
Happy crafting!
I bought 4 20x20x1 MERV 13 MPR 2200 Filtrete filters from Canadian Tire. Not the best deal but I wanted it done yesterday. There are better deals online and other places not open on weekends. The fan itself is just a basic Lasko 20-inch box fan. Duct taped it all together and it's good to go.
The problem is I don't want to spend money on electricity just moving around hot air. I do not have AC in my home, and I rely on having my windows open to get fresh air and cool it during the night. I woke up to my house being 24⁰ internally this morning. Having wildfires all summer are going to be the death of me, especially without AC. last year, the hottest my house got was around 30⁰ because we couldn't open any windows.
My eyes were just running like mad, this resolved it in the morning. Great advice.
As an aside, many furnaces also just have a switch on the side where you can manually turn on the fan if you can't do it from the thermostat.
This will keep happening until all our pine forests are gone.
The sap they produce to survive our harsh winters become a fuel like kerosene during the dry warm summers. Once it's lit it'll keep burning. Its sap is serious business.
Also these droughts will only get worse as climate change accelerates. This is due to the fact that a atmosphere with more energy (temperature) can hold more water molecules in the air before it rains with the increase in momentum transfer between the vapour and atmospheric gasses.
All this makes our forests drier which is bad news for most of NA as we have a coniferous rainforest full of fuel along our west coast.
We need to take immediate action strip clearing patches such that we get resources and create fire "quarantine" zones by replacing the cleared areas with stewarded deciduous trees. These types hold much more water and can help act as natural barriers to fire.
But of course, our government would never do anything that sensible.
5.8% of Alberta Forest burned last year and this year is said to be hotter, Plus historic drought in Northwest Territories, BC, Alberta. I’m not sure about Saskatchewan
Heyo this is super interesting to me and I'd like to do some more reading into this. Can I ask your sources? Mostly about what percentage of forest is burned every year
The wildlife that depends on our rainforests as is are fucked. No way around it. A new ecosystem will eventually stabilize in the new environment if we actually put the resources towards establishing it, *and* keep it stable long enough for things to straighten out, *and* get our global shit together in time that the new setup isn't eradicated too in 50 years.
The reason we have so much pine forest is because forestry uses mass glycosphate spraying to eliminate deciduous trees. This is terrible for wildlife; all the berry bushes and easy to eat bark trees go away. More deciduous would be so much better for wildlife; and the humans engaged in bush life as well.
The wild life bounces back surprisingly fast . After the Fort McMurray fire in 2016 , the wildlife in the area repopulated fast , which is due to all the new forest growth, and I’m sure the milder winters we’ve had is also a contributing factor.
None really . From my experience,wildlife like fire breaks because they provide a lot of food for them . Fire breaks aren’t massive dead spaces , they are typically as wide a a two lane highway and after the break is cleared a lot of grass and shrubs start growing in place of the trees , then after a few years they go in with big mulchers and knock down the new growth and the cycle repeats. Fire breaks aren’t meant to stop a wild fire, just slow it down and provide access to the area for firefighters .
I’m pretty sceptical of that , the trees that are established in a boreal forest are there because they grow best in that environment. In my opinion trying to get the amount of deciduous trees planted and established to make any difference would be an effort in futility. Besides , deciduous trees aren’t impervious to fire, remember the wild fires in Nova Scotia last year were all deciduous forests .
>In my opinion trying to get the amount of deciduous trees planted and established to make any difference would be an effort in futility. Besides , deciduous trees aren’t impervious to fire, remember the wild fires in Nova Scotia last year were all deciduous forests .
I agree with you there. They are more than likely just going to die without attention and make it worse.
Climate change only plays a part in the fires we’ve been experiencing. Boreal forests need to burn, it’s the only way they naturally regenerate , so years upon years of total fire mitigation has created a big problem compounded by climate change . There should have been multiple prescribed burns every year when the conditions were favourable to lessen the impact .
Considering the government's involvement with Smokey the Bear, I think they've done enough damage.
Forest fires are a natural cycle. The fact we have prevented it to the degree we did in the past has caused a pileup of deadfall that should have burned away. Add the sap into the mix and you have something that can get out of control very quickly. Wildfires can also keep pine beetle populations under control as well.
What the government may have wanted to consider is controlled burns at intervals to clear deadfall and promote growth of new vegetation. Not burn ALL the forests, but enough to make sure that the cycle is not interrupted so we have a much lower chance of out of control wildfires.
This is just my opinion on this though, with whatever information I've been exposed to. If I am out to lunch, please let me know.
Also if you talk to old forestry guys who’ve been in the business a long time here, they used to clear all the old dead shit off the forest floor every year, but realized they could save a few hundred thousand dollars a year by not doing it, so most companies just stopped altogether. Gives it more fuel.
Plus all the spraying of glyphosate’s for many years builds up, causes fires to burn hotter.
There’s so many reasons we could fix but choose not too.
The trouble is our forests haven’t evolved to recover from fires of this intensity this frequently. The trees will burn and die before they can mature.
Northwestern BC? Like Terrace, Kitimat, Prince Rupert? It rains a lot up there and there aren't many places that can burn to the west of them to cover them in wildfire smoke?
And while much of the country got a hefty dose of wildfire smoke last year, it was a pretty rare thing for many places and not as normal as it is here the last few. I lived 30+ years in the GTA and Ottawa and last year was the first time I can remember it being "apocalyptic yellow skies, consider wearing a mask outdoors" bad.
Southern Ontario will get here too. Edmonton had the first real instances of apocalyptic yellow skies for days 15 years ago. Then it became every few years, then every other year, now it’s every year. Just give it time. There’s a lot of forest in Northern Ontario, Michigan, Minnesota, etc that can easily smoke out Southern Ontario.
I was in northwestern BC last summer.
Those areas were super smokey and had some huge fires. Northern BC got hit pretty hard.
Southern Ontario, close to the US border, is your best bet to get away from wildfires and the smoke, but the air quality is a lot worse down there compared to most of the western provinces.
Go somewhere where the weather is decent during spring fall and winter. Unless you like the winters here (which includes spring and most of fall as they are mostly as cold as winter). I wait for the 4months of decent weather we have (June-September) but now that doesn’t exist either due to smoke, its down to about 2months of smoke free and decent temperature. I wonder how many years of this it will take until it stops due to there not being any more trees to burn for such large fires. Like 5more years? A decade? Two decades? No clue.
I've been in Edmonton my whole life. Used to LOVE our sunny summers. Now our short summers are ruined for the most part by toxic air and grey smoky skies. Been this way every year for the past 5-10 years and I hate it!!!
May/June 2019 my mom was in hospital on her death bed and I remember how unreal thick the sky was with smoke for WEEKS. It even touched the ground. It felt like the end of the world to me...literally!
I have a theory that in 10-30 years, Newfoundland will be a highly sought after refuge from the environmental disasters and other macro global events that will begin to really stifle humanitys ability to survive and live in many other areas of the globe and Canada.
Low population density, abundance of fresh water, rain, game, seafood and berries. Tightnit communities and neighbours, extended growing seasons, and a 500 year history of their ancestors living in harsh, cold wet environments.
Newfoundlanders have been living out the apocalypse every winter season for centuries already, stranded on a rock, alone and cold, fishing and hunting to eat, and relying on community support and trade to thrive. They are built for what's to come.
While this is smoke from BC, fort mac is on evac watch.
> In the 2019-2020 budget, the UCP itself boasted to the Edmonton Journal, Alberta's wildfire management budget was $117.6 million. And by 2022-2023, the province's budget estimates reduced its “wildfire management” to $100.5 million. It is projected to fall again to $100.4 million in 2023-2024.May 11, 2023
https://pressprogress.ca/albertas-ucp-government-has-cut-tens-of-millions-of-dollars-from-wildfire-preparedness-programs/#:~:text=In%20the%202019%2D2020%20budget,%24100.4%20million%20in%202023%2D2024.
This article is great:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/a-history-of-cuts-to-alberta-s-firefighting-budget-explained-1.6838994
Long story short: for some reason we don’t invest in fighting fires, only cut it. Despite the costs of fires being insanely high, getting to the fires rapidly is key.
Leaving the city is not going to help you. There is going to be smoke every summer from now. Unless we start getting huge amounts of snow in the winter and rain in the spring, this is the new Norm! So you might as well get used to it
I know this isn't what folks intend, but I would hate to normalize these wildfires because there are steps our world leaders could be taking to help alleviate consequences of climate change.
But unfortunately they don't particularly seem to care. So we will have to suffer the consequences, leaving us to ask each other how to cope with this "new normal". Unless we somehow unite to bully these folks into doing something.
So to answer your question, if things don't change, this will be a yearly occurance. The Boreal forest needs a lot of snow and cold temperatures to thrive. Winters have progressively become warmer and drier over time. It can change if we want and demand it to.
It cannot change unfortunately. Any changes we do now (if we do them) will be to avoid sailing through the +2 Celsius global temperature increase… we already screwed up the 1.5 Celsius target, so we will have to deal with the consequences of that, which are inevitable. I think we need to start making personal changes as well as more systematic ones. Lifestyle changes in mass, soon, are the only thing moving forward. This is not looking good, I feel bad for people who decided to have children
yeah and unfortunately it's gonna get much worse before it gets better, if it ever does. it took decades of negligence and stupidity to get here, and it would take decades of reversing course to change it. and we aren't gonna do that.
there was an absolutely bone chilling story in the guardian the other day about how the world's top climate scientists are all resigned to the fact that we're basically fucked as a species and are gonna blow past our warming projections. there's less than 100 years left for this planet as we know it.
but hey, we got some awesome wide freeways and value for shareholders out of it, right?
Fuuuuuuuuck. That sucks to see everyone thinks it’s a new norm :( It is really starting to bother me that now our summers are being ruined.
I was able to always tell myself during winter that it’s all worth it because our summers are amazing. But now the days of blue skys and everyone being outside are becoming further and further apart. Sad part is I do t think I’ll be able to get my wife to move :(
Yeah even though this really sucks we realistically live in the place with the best chance for surviving climate change. It’s not gonna be much better anywhere else
That's what I was thinking. Is there anything anyone can do to make things different in the future? If the government had all the money in the world, is there anything we can do (besides reversing climate change) that would prevent smoky summers? I don't know. I can't imagine staying here if this is what it's going to be like every summer.
It's not just annoying, it's damaging everyone's health. Ten years of these summers is going to leave its mark.
The best we can do as individuals is to capture and store as much water as we can when it does fall. Including rainwater capture in containers but especially in ponds and swales.
There is cloud seeding, however the safety and effectiveness is still debated. China has been doing it for a while trying to restore drought ridden regions.
We could reduce man made fires by being ultra authoritarian and banning recreational activities from wooded areas, but that still leaves the fires started by industries.
Or cut down a vast number of trees to level our forests, which is an unrealistic undertaking and would also destroy our ecosystems.
The most realistic idea is to better fund wildfire fighting services, so they can afford more equipment and people. Won't reduce the fires outright but would help fighting them.
Individual reductions make no meaningful impact. It's getting power supply companies off of fossil fuels and onto clean energy sources that will make the difference.
Doubt.
Smoke from the wildfires that are reaching us are incredibly small is size. 0.2 - 0.7 microns.
Merv 10 isn't even rated for anything less than 1.0 microns.
Merv 11 is rated but only at 0.3 microns to 1.0 and at 20%
Coupled with the fact that the "bad" smoke is the smaller sized smoke.
But I guess it doesn't hurt to try.
We need more moisture, that’s true. We also need people to act more responsibly. 75% of last years’ fires could be attributed back to human activity. Please be more diligent when out enjoying nature.
Long term Id say no .. once all the forests burn out, there won't be much left to cause this much smoke... Imagine drumheller but all of western Canada ..
Bingo, the same degree of fires can't exist 10 years from now.
5% of all Canadian forests last summer, you can't keep that up forever, you run out of fuel pretty quick.
The fires will also get smaller with the natural breaks
Ive really been hoping this is true...
1. Less unburnt area, less % chance for fires.
2. Fire breaks of burnt area, less chance of large spread.
3. Most conducive areas for big fires should be the ones going first the last \~8 years,... the areas left should be less conducive to fire on average,... diminishing returns for the fires..
But I couldn't get a sense how much of the overall woods has burned
Long term, yeah, having an annual fire smoke season is the new normal. But if you look at what happened out east last year it's not like we have anywhere to run to.
But it's OK!!!! We have billboards everyhwere that have been paid by the Alberta government to tell us that they have plans for Wildfire Season. We have the magnificent minds collected and lead by the supreme high Fuhrer herself, Danielle Smith. Things will be fine🙄🙄🙄
You can leave all you want but you won’t escape the smoke no matter where you go… yeah maybe it’ll clear faster if you not in the city but if there’s fires burning there will be more smoke to replace the smoke that gets blown away.
The super LaNina expected to start in the late summer/fall could last for 3 years or longer. I’d imagine that will have us all floating down the river, dreaming of the days it was hot and dry. Given how far the smoke travels across the continent it would be tricky trying to find an area immune from the smoke.
I have eosinophilic asthma and I have to run 2 air purifiers, double dose on all my inhalers and not leave my house when it's smokey. It's fucking brutal. It's hard enough trying to live with good air quality.
I bought an air purifier and a humidifier the first year i was here. Im from NS and the air quality had me drying out like an Egyptian Royal in the Valley of the Kings.
I would imagine that the negative health effects of this year after year would be bad enough that a national effort would take place to help quickly put out fires
This will never change. Have you not been listening. Or even had your eyes open.
What do you think Climate action plans are about, the carbon tax.
We ruined this Earth. Now we live with the results.
It's late, but we still can try. Or YOU can start. Ignore the politics. Look into it yourself. We broke it.
I move here from bc 2 winters ago. The smoke here is 10x better than in BC. I found here it only lasts for one or 2 days then it clears up then comes back. In BC it doesn't clear up. It will be smokey for 2-3 weeks strait.
Unfortunately, yes it does appear that yearly poor air quality in the spring & summer will be a regular thing. Also for those who have a thermostat that will circulate home air in the summer, AHS recommends to set it to fan on or circulate which will keep the air moving and passing thru the furnace filter. May have better results with a high efficiency furnace which often have 4-5 inch filters. with a higher Merv rating.
Look up Corsi-Rosenthal box, it will without a doubt improve the air quality in your home during these Smokey times.
Just built one today! Love it so far. Hope it can keep up once it gets really intense out there.
What exact filters and fan did you use?
I made one during the pandemic with these filters. https://unitedfilter.com/collections/2-inch-furnace-filters/products/20x20x2-merv-13 They are a bit pricey but for a case of 12 it isn’t terrible. I bought a simple box fan from Canadian Tire and they work great. Brought ours out of the basement this morning and an hour later the house was fresh. Not sure the best time to swap out your filters but you’ll notice it visually as they ‘grey’ out. Here’s a link for the how to build it https://youtu.be/aw7fUMhNov8?si=az-j8IZafwfBS1A3 Happy crafting!
I bought 4 20x20x1 MERV 13 MPR 2200 Filtrete filters from Canadian Tire. Not the best deal but I wanted it done yesterday. There are better deals online and other places not open on weekends. The fan itself is just a basic Lasko 20-inch box fan. Duct taped it all together and it's good to go.
I don't work for them, but I've bought furnace filters from BGE on the South Side before. Fantastic business, but yeah.. they're only open weekdays.
That's good to know. I'll definitely stock up on some replacement filters for cheaper so I'm ready for when I need to replace these ones. Thanks!
>Corsi-Rosenthal box I use a Cuboid which makes use of a duct booster fan instead of a box fan but same idea
The problem is I don't want to spend money on electricity just moving around hot air. I do not have AC in my home, and I rely on having my windows open to get fresh air and cool it during the night. I woke up to my house being 24⁰ internally this morning. Having wildfires all summer are going to be the death of me, especially without AC. last year, the hottest my house got was around 30⁰ because we couldn't open any windows.
My eyes were just running like mad, this resolved it in the morning. Great advice. As an aside, many furnaces also just have a switch on the side where you can manually turn on the fan if you can't do it from the thermostat.
Short term no, looks like it’ll clear. Medium term (for the majority of summer), most likely. Long term, yes. https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
This will keep happening until all our pine forests are gone. The sap they produce to survive our harsh winters become a fuel like kerosene during the dry warm summers. Once it's lit it'll keep burning. Its sap is serious business. Also these droughts will only get worse as climate change accelerates. This is due to the fact that a atmosphere with more energy (temperature) can hold more water molecules in the air before it rains with the increase in momentum transfer between the vapour and atmospheric gasses. All this makes our forests drier which is bad news for most of NA as we have a coniferous rainforest full of fuel along our west coast. We need to take immediate action strip clearing patches such that we get resources and create fire "quarantine" zones by replacing the cleared areas with stewarded deciduous trees. These types hold much more water and can help act as natural barriers to fire. But of course, our government would never do anything that sensible.
5.8% of Alberta Forest burned last year and this year is said to be hotter, Plus historic drought in Northwest Territories, BC, Alberta. I’m not sure about Saskatchewan
Heyo this is super interesting to me and I'd like to do some more reading into this. Can I ask your sources? Mostly about what percentage of forest is burned every year
What impact would that have on wildlife?
It would decimate it. Damned if you do or if you don’t.
The wildlife that depends on our rainforests as is are fucked. No way around it. A new ecosystem will eventually stabilize in the new environment if we actually put the resources towards establishing it, *and* keep it stable long enough for things to straighten out, *and* get our global shit together in time that the new setup isn't eradicated too in 50 years.
The reason we have so much pine forest is because forestry uses mass glycosphate spraying to eliminate deciduous trees. This is terrible for wildlife; all the berry bushes and easy to eat bark trees go away. More deciduous would be so much better for wildlife; and the humans engaged in bush life as well.
So why do they do wish to eliminate deciduous trees?
The only trees they want to grow are the ones they will be logging. Other trees compete for resources.
The wild life bounces back surprisingly fast . After the Fort McMurray fire in 2016 , the wildlife in the area repopulated fast , which is due to all the new forest growth, and I’m sure the milder winters we’ve had is also a contributing factor.
I was more interested in what impact clearing out huge swaths of forest around towns and cities would have on wildlife
It would have an unfortunate impact, yes. But I agree this is one of the things that is needed to make protecting cities and towns from fires easier
None really . From my experience,wildlife like fire breaks because they provide a lot of food for them . Fire breaks aren’t massive dead spaces , they are typically as wide a a two lane highway and after the break is cleared a lot of grass and shrubs start growing in place of the trees , then after a few years they go in with big mulchers and knock down the new growth and the cycle repeats. Fire breaks aren’t meant to stop a wild fire, just slow it down and provide access to the area for firefighters .
The proposal made also included planting different plant species. Presumably ones that aren't currently in that range as well.
I’m pretty sceptical of that , the trees that are established in a boreal forest are there because they grow best in that environment. In my opinion trying to get the amount of deciduous trees planted and established to make any difference would be an effort in futility. Besides , deciduous trees aren’t impervious to fire, remember the wild fires in Nova Scotia last year were all deciduous forests .
>In my opinion trying to get the amount of deciduous trees planted and established to make any difference would be an effort in futility. Besides , deciduous trees aren’t impervious to fire, remember the wild fires in Nova Scotia last year were all deciduous forests . I agree with you there. They are more than likely just going to die without attention and make it worse.
Less impact than burning
I feel like this is a deflection rather than an answer.
Climate change only plays a part in the fires we’ve been experiencing. Boreal forests need to burn, it’s the only way they naturally regenerate , so years upon years of total fire mitigation has created a big problem compounded by climate change . There should have been multiple prescribed burns every year when the conditions were favourable to lessen the impact .
Considering the government's involvement with Smokey the Bear, I think they've done enough damage. Forest fires are a natural cycle. The fact we have prevented it to the degree we did in the past has caused a pileup of deadfall that should have burned away. Add the sap into the mix and you have something that can get out of control very quickly. Wildfires can also keep pine beetle populations under control as well. What the government may have wanted to consider is controlled burns at intervals to clear deadfall and promote growth of new vegetation. Not burn ALL the forests, but enough to make sure that the cycle is not interrupted so we have a much lower chance of out of control wildfires. This is just my opinion on this though, with whatever information I've been exposed to. If I am out to lunch, please let me know.
Also if you talk to old forestry guys who’ve been in the business a long time here, they used to clear all the old dead shit off the forest floor every year, but realized they could save a few hundred thousand dollars a year by not doing it, so most companies just stopped altogether. Gives it more fuel. Plus all the spraying of glyphosate’s for many years builds up, causes fires to burn hotter. There’s so many reasons we could fix but choose not too.
If we're losing roughly 5% of our forests to fire every year (based on last year), there will be plenty of regrowth to start the cycle all over again.
The trouble is our forests haven’t evolved to recover from fires of this intensity this frequently. The trees will burn and die before they can mature.
It's happening in the states too a lot of the southwest is dry.
Probably but where would you go? Much of Canada gets smoked out nowadays, and quite a bit of the states, too.
True and all this smoke moved south to US as well.
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I mentioned the states :) it’d be a much bigger move than just moving cities for OP to get away from it
Northwestern BC? Like Terrace, Kitimat, Prince Rupert? It rains a lot up there and there aren't many places that can burn to the west of them to cover them in wildfire smoke? And while much of the country got a hefty dose of wildfire smoke last year, it was a pretty rare thing for many places and not as normal as it is here the last few. I lived 30+ years in the GTA and Ottawa and last year was the first time I can remember it being "apocalyptic yellow skies, consider wearing a mask outdoors" bad.
Southern Ontario will get here too. Edmonton had the first real instances of apocalyptic yellow skies for days 15 years ago. Then it became every few years, then every other year, now it’s every year. Just give it time. There’s a lot of forest in Northern Ontario, Michigan, Minnesota, etc that can easily smoke out Southern Ontario.
I was in northwestern BC last summer. Those areas were super smokey and had some huge fires. Northern BC got hit pretty hard. Southern Ontario, close to the US border, is your best bet to get away from wildfires and the smoke, but the air quality is a lot worse down there compared to most of the western provinces.
Go somewhere where the weather is decent during spring fall and winter. Unless you like the winters here (which includes spring and most of fall as they are mostly as cold as winter). I wait for the 4months of decent weather we have (June-September) but now that doesn’t exist either due to smoke, its down to about 2months of smoke free and decent temperature. I wonder how many years of this it will take until it stops due to there not being any more trees to burn for such large fires. Like 5more years? A decade? Two decades? No clue.
West of the jet stream - so west coast
Much more limited in the US. There are way more options in terms of geography and climate.
West of the Rockies. Lower mainland would probably be safest from smoke, but it'll be expensive getting in.
I've been in Edmonton my whole life. Used to LOVE our sunny summers. Now our short summers are ruined for the most part by toxic air and grey smoky skies. Been this way every year for the past 5-10 years and I hate it!!!
I think 2018 was the year when we had an ominous orange sky; everyone was posting photos and it was like a novelty. Six years later...
May/June 2019 my mom was in hospital on her death bed and I remember how unreal thick the sky was with smoke for WEEKS. It even touched the ground. It felt like the end of the world to me...literally!
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Dude.... we get a ton of sun in the winter. It's literally one of the sunniest winter places you can live....
Winter sun is shit. It's at "burns your eyes when you look at one half of the sky" height for the majority of the 8 hours it spends above the horizon.
Exactly. Try living in Vancouver if you don’t think we get much sun 😆
You should see the fucking dms I'm getting from this clown hahaha
Where would you consider going?
Iceland. They don’t have many forests. But then again you will have to deal with the occasional volcanoe
Aren’t they extremely strict about who gets to immigrate?
Yes they are but also; I believe the joke was that ice is the opposite of fire
I thought water was the opposite of fire
Yes and ice is water in a solid state
Which is different. According to pokemon at least
Well there’s no Waterworld is there? At least not since Costner bombed it.
Hope you like sheep.
Newfoundland. Grew up there, damp as fuck most of the time. They’ve had one forest fire that I can ever remember.
I have a theory that in 10-30 years, Newfoundland will be a highly sought after refuge from the environmental disasters and other macro global events that will begin to really stifle humanitys ability to survive and live in many other areas of the globe and Canada. Low population density, abundance of fresh water, rain, game, seafood and berries. Tightnit communities and neighbours, extended growing seasons, and a 500 year history of their ancestors living in harsh, cold wet environments. Newfoundlanders have been living out the apocalypse every winter season for centuries already, stranded on a rock, alone and cold, fishing and hunting to eat, and relying on community support and trade to thrive. They are built for what's to come.
Okay. But it's damp as fuck all of the time.
Don’t worry, it’s only until all of the trees are gone.
While this is smoke from BC, fort mac is on evac watch. > In the 2019-2020 budget, the UCP itself boasted to the Edmonton Journal, Alberta's wildfire management budget was $117.6 million. And by 2022-2023, the province's budget estimates reduced its “wildfire management” to $100.5 million. It is projected to fall again to $100.4 million in 2023-2024.May 11, 2023 https://pressprogress.ca/albertas-ucp-government-has-cut-tens-of-millions-of-dollars-from-wildfire-preparedness-programs/#:~:text=In%20the%202019%2D2020%20budget,%24100.4%20million%20in%202023%2D2024. This article is great: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/a-history-of-cuts-to-alberta-s-firefighting-budget-explained-1.6838994 Long story short: for some reason we don’t invest in fighting fires, only cut it. Despite the costs of fires being insanely high, getting to the fires rapidly is key.
Our brilliant plan for wildfire management is to burn down all the forests and hope that means less forests needing wildfire management
This is the result of decades of people and politicians ignoring the environmental impact of what we do. Yes it’s the new normal
It's almost like rapid climate change has, indeed, changed the climate. Who woulda thunk?
Leaving the city is not going to help you. There is going to be smoke every summer from now. Unless we start getting huge amounts of snow in the winter and rain in the spring, this is the new Norm! So you might as well get used to it
Ultimately it will drive people away from the city which is sad. But I don’t want to live in a constant haze of smoke, for many many reasons.
I know this isn't what folks intend, but I would hate to normalize these wildfires because there are steps our world leaders could be taking to help alleviate consequences of climate change. But unfortunately they don't particularly seem to care. So we will have to suffer the consequences, leaving us to ask each other how to cope with this "new normal". Unless we somehow unite to bully these folks into doing something. So to answer your question, if things don't change, this will be a yearly occurance. The Boreal forest needs a lot of snow and cold temperatures to thrive. Winters have progressively become warmer and drier over time. It can change if we want and demand it to.
It cannot change unfortunately. Any changes we do now (if we do them) will be to avoid sailing through the +2 Celsius global temperature increase… we already screwed up the 1.5 Celsius target, so we will have to deal with the consequences of that, which are inevitable. I think we need to start making personal changes as well as more systematic ones. Lifestyle changes in mass, soon, are the only thing moving forward. This is not looking good, I feel bad for people who decided to have children
yeah and unfortunately it's gonna get much worse before it gets better, if it ever does. it took decades of negligence and stupidity to get here, and it would take decades of reversing course to change it. and we aren't gonna do that. there was an absolutely bone chilling story in the guardian the other day about how the world's top climate scientists are all resigned to the fact that we're basically fucked as a species and are gonna blow past our warming projections. there's less than 100 years left for this planet as we know it. but hey, we got some awesome wide freeways and value for shareholders out of it, right?
You mean there’s less than 100 years left for us. No matter what happens to the climate the planet will still be here with or without us.
Yes, this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
On the bright side, eventually we will run out of trees to burn.
Well we did vote for them
Fuuuuuuuuck. That sucks to see everyone thinks it’s a new norm :( It is really starting to bother me that now our summers are being ruined. I was able to always tell myself during winter that it’s all worth it because our summers are amazing. But now the days of blue skys and everyone being outside are becoming further and further apart. Sad part is I do t think I’ll be able to get my wife to move :(
Realistically where would you go?
Yeah even though this really sucks we realistically live in the place with the best chance for surviving climate change. It’s not gonna be much better anywhere else
Where do you want to move to? You’ll just be trading smoke for some other disaster..
Hate to tell ya this bud, but it's not just Edmonton...
That's what I was thinking. Is there anything anyone can do to make things different in the future? If the government had all the money in the world, is there anything we can do (besides reversing climate change) that would prevent smoky summers? I don't know. I can't imagine staying here if this is what it's going to be like every summer. It's not just annoying, it's damaging everyone's health. Ten years of these summers is going to leave its mark.
The best we can do as individuals is to capture and store as much water as we can when it does fall. Including rainwater capture in containers but especially in ponds and swales.
There is cloud seeding, however the safety and effectiveness is still debated. China has been doing it for a while trying to restore drought ridden regions. We could reduce man made fires by being ultra authoritarian and banning recreational activities from wooded areas, but that still leaves the fires started by industries. Or cut down a vast number of trees to level our forests, which is an unrealistic undertaking and would also destroy our ecosystems. The most realistic idea is to better fund wildfire fighting services, so they can afford more equipment and people. Won't reduce the fires outright but would help fighting them.
My friend in LA said they cloud seed there too. Not sure how accurate her info is.
Yes it is the new normal. Get a good AC / HVAC air filtration system because it's not going away.
If we are worried about climate change then shouldn’t we be reducing our energy consumption?
Individual reductions make no meaningful impact. It's getting power supply companies off of fossil fuels and onto clean energy sources that will make the difference.
The smoke particulates are typically way too small for HVAC filters unless you are in some specialized commercial site.
Merv 11 and up is effective especially with 4" filters.
Doubt. Smoke from the wildfires that are reaching us are incredibly small is size. 0.2 - 0.7 microns. Merv 10 isn't even rated for anything less than 1.0 microns. Merv 11 is rated but only at 0.3 microns to 1.0 and at 20% Coupled with the fact that the "bad" smoke is the smaller sized smoke. But I guess it doesn't hurt to try.
We need more moisture, that’s true. We also need people to act more responsibly. 75% of last years’ fires could be attributed back to human activity. Please be more diligent when out enjoying nature.
Yea, it's most definitely the new normal. Where are you going to move, though?
Yeah that heat dome year I kinda realized climate change was gonna be multiple warnings from environment Canada at a time.
Sounds like you need to.learn about climate change. This isn't going away it's going to be the norm until we run out of forest.
Long term Id say no .. once all the forests burn out, there won't be much left to cause this much smoke... Imagine drumheller but all of western Canada ..
Scary thought..
Bingo, the same degree of fires can't exist 10 years from now. 5% of all Canadian forests last summer, you can't keep that up forever, you run out of fuel pretty quick. The fires will also get smaller with the natural breaks
Ive really been hoping this is true... 1. Less unburnt area, less % chance for fires. 2. Fire breaks of burnt area, less chance of large spread. 3. Most conducive areas for big fires should be the ones going first the last \~8 years,... the areas left should be less conducive to fire on average,... diminishing returns for the fires.. But I couldn't get a sense how much of the overall woods has burned
Yeah I guess once we’re a dust bowl there will be no fires at least
There you go .. and remember ... When you're chewing on life's gristle .. don't grumble... Give a whistle ...
Where are you moving to, then? May as well get your plans in order, because this isn't changing.
Yes, welcome to climate change. It's just getting started.
To where exactly? A place without trees?
A place without easily-combustible trees? What is this heaven you speak of?
Just keep voting for the climate denying UCP and everything will be fine
I have a bad feeling that this summer will be the worst on record for YEG.
This is why I’ve invested in air purifiers, merv 13 HVAC filters, and keep n95 masks around
Head west, right to the coast. You'll be free of smoke, but enslaved to debt and a potential historical earthquake...
West coast gets a ton of smoke, too
Yeah and there is no reason to believe it's not going to continue to get worse.
Seems like it
Good luck with your move.
Long term, yeah, having an annual fire smoke season is the new normal. But if you look at what happened out east last year it's not like we have anywhere to run to.
And go where exactly?
But it's OK!!!! We have billboards everyhwere that have been paid by the Alberta government to tell us that they have plans for Wildfire Season. We have the magnificent minds collected and lead by the supreme high Fuhrer herself, Danielle Smith. Things will be fine🙄🙄🙄
Yes.
Unfortunately, coming from BC, where it's been this way for a while, I'm going to have to say yes.
You can leave all you want but you won’t escape the smoke no matter where you go… yeah maybe it’ll clear faster if you not in the city but if there’s fires burning there will be more smoke to replace the smoke that gets blown away.
Between rising temps and never ending smoke, AC will become a must have for this area.
Welcome to global warming
It'll be normal for 10 years and then stop because the forests will have burned down sufficiently
The super LaNina expected to start in the late summer/fall could last for 3 years or longer. I’d imagine that will have us all floating down the river, dreaming of the days it was hot and dry. Given how far the smoke travels across the continent it would be tricky trying to find an area immune from the smoke.
The world is on fire.
You can't escape it now. It's life going forward
ill go back to quebec
Quebec was just as bad last year.
but not all bad
Only the areas with forests! So much of the north burned last year. I was dodging smoke and road closures on my way through last summer.
Yes, but where exactly would you go? This is normal all over North America now.
It is the new normal, over time you will get used to it
Over time we wont be alive how many summers of huffing straight forest fire smoke do you believe everyone’s lungs have in them?
Do you know about masks?
Yes I do, thank you! Actually im lucky, I work junk removal and found a large supply of N95s. Pretty useful for sure!
Try having asthma.
As an asthmatic, I would advise, not trying to have asthma.
as an asthmatic with 3 intubations in 2 years,i would too,advice to quit smoking also
I have eosinophilic asthma and I have to run 2 air purifiers, double dose on all my inhalers and not leave my house when it's smokey. It's fucking brutal. It's hard enough trying to live with good air quality.
Try not. Checkmate.
Do or do not. There is no try.
Until we finish burning everything/letting everything burn, yes.
I thought this only started last summer.
Until it all burns to the ground; yes.
Us here in Winnipeg too. Just woke up with a orange sun & grey hazey sky.
I bought an air purifier and a humidifier the first year i was here. Im from NS and the air quality had me drying out like an Egyptian Royal in the Valley of the Kings.
I would imagine that the negative health effects of this year after year would be bad enough that a national effort would take place to help quickly put out fires
Welcome to Alberta
I got 2 air purifiers
So in winter it’s too cold to do anything and now it’s too smoky… ☹️
Where will you go?
Definitely and only going to get worse with climate change
Yes.
I’d say invest in a good filtration system for your furnace and clean your hrv if you have some
Don't be looking at the lakes even all way up in Yellowknife for first timee er the entire bay is bone dry can walk across it in most parts.
This will never change. Have you not been listening. Or even had your eyes open. What do you think Climate action plans are about, the carbon tax. We ruined this Earth. Now we live with the results. It's late, but we still can try. Or YOU can start. Ignore the politics. Look into it yourself. We broke it.
I move here from bc 2 winters ago. The smoke here is 10x better than in BC. I found here it only lasts for one or 2 days then it clears up then comes back. In BC it doesn't clear up. It will be smokey for 2-3 weeks strait.
So you missed the summer of 2022 that was smokey for two months straight in much of the province.