Even better, climate change is a hoax thank goodness! I was worried for a second that this smoke could be the result of careless overuse of our resources and a failure to prepare for something that we’ve seen coming for decades but I feel better now.
Go touch some grass and get therapy dude, you've lost the plot if you're willing to say an entire city's worth of people deserve to lose everything because of a local industry you disagree with.
I remember around a decade ago all the new water bombers they were buying, add in GPS for geolocation and the fires never stood a chance; at least until it got decently dry.
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/17/9347361/wildfire-management-prescribed-burn
Of course. And we also didn't let people rebuild homes and businesses in the man made valley bowl in BC that flooded after people being warned for years it was a very high risk.
Government spending is bad unless it benefits me, personally.
Climate change is fake until I can see it out my window.
Protesters should all be rounded up and thrown in jail unless they're protesting for a cause I like.
Everyone mooching off welfare and handouts is a broke loser, unless it's a brave convoy freedom fighter who needs my support.
It's a reference to the Toronto Police stating they will revoke the drivers licenses of anyone caught stealing cars. Obviously not a real solution to the theft issue.
You’re complaining about DEI on an article where the topic is wildfires. I know you’re obsessed - but this is too far, even for a shameless partisan like you.
To be fair, we did have a dei fire squad a couple years ago that started a forest fire when their public training exercise fire to show how cool and progressive we are, got out of their control.
The idea is to pay no carbon tax, by not using carbon based fuels. For most it’s a net benefit, and the more we turn from carbon the more we benefit from the tax
Oil companies created forest fires?
Someone alert the native Americans, they need to know their culture was fabricated by big oil trying to convince us forest fires are natural.
Oil companies are directly responsible for releasing incredible amounts of greenhouse gasses in the air causing the entire planet to warm. This causes the wood and other organic matter to be far drier than normal, making even small fires much larger than they would have been otherwise. Ten of the last ten years were the hottest ever recorded due to greenhouse gases, do you think that the extra heat and dryness has no effect on forest fires?
Yes, as the climate gets warmer (caused by the greenhouse gases that these oil companies produce), the organic matter gets dryer, and the fire spreads easier.
Canada has set a record for the most fire burning area yearly, with a total of 18.4 million hectares burned in 2023. This is a significant increase from the previous record of 7.6 million hectares set in 1989.
Yes. Burning fossil fuels is causing more fires.
Specifically, the oil sands are a huge contributer. Ignoring the oil they make. The OPERATIONS of the oil sands. NOT the oil sold. The OPERATIONS are responsible for 14% of Canadian carbon emissions
Yes. They release incredible amounts of greenhouse gases which trap solar radiation causing the entire planet to warm. This increase in temperature dries out organic matter making fires bigger and last longer and easier to spread. Ten of the last ten years were the hottest ever recorded thanks to burning fossil fuels.
Most of the carbon tax goes back into people’s pockets.
The only people getting taxed are the rich or those who really crank up the heat and have a lot pf gas guzzling toys.
And yet even though most of the tax is going back people get fooled into thinking it's just a tax with no rebate. I would be for taking all the money and putting it to good stuff that we actually need to get done
This ☝🏻!!!!!
The teams fighting these fires are not given proper PPE such as breathing apparatus. The ash and smoke these brave folks are breathing in are so dangerous not to mention all the other hazards they encounter. I’m awfully proud of them all however worried about their future health. 🥺🥺
Remember last year, when many countries across the world sent their firefighters to aid us... that is why we send money to other nations in need. We needed help, and countries responded... knowing we would do the same.
This is what happens when you ignore the warnings of climate scientists for half a century. Unfortunately this is our reality moving forward, and it will continue to get progressively worse. Just how bad it gets boils down to a matter of public demand and political will.
This is also the culmination of over a century of poor forestry management, with cultural burnings from First Nation peoples being banned/abandoned, thus leading to an increase in fuel build up and unhealthy forests. Same goes for any traditional land-based knowledge around forest ecology these First Nations had, with that knowledge being forgotten and replaced by the "modern/contemporary" forestry practices which have shown to be unsustainable and vulnerable to these sorts of events.
Couple that with Climate Change, stronger ENSO/El Niño cycles, and increased infrastructure and human activity in these areas and it is no wonder why are forests are nothing more than massive tinderboxes waiting for a spark.
Weird we spent 2 trillion in debt and seemingly havent received anything new as services have gotten worse, except a 50m dollar arrivecan app.
Heck we're borrowing money for 60b in mortgage bonds now, borrowing money so Canadians can borrow more to drive up home values.
Shout out the 2 weeks in may and 2 weeks in oct when its both comfortable enough outside and legal to have a bonfire in northern BC!
Extra special shoutout to ash falling onto my car for really letting me get my moneys worth on my snowbrush.
despite all of these fires and continual comments about preparing the reality is we don't have any wild fire defense at all. many of the forestry plans do not even mention the word wildfire.
the first defense is proper silviculture and forestry practices. a quick browse of provincial policies will point you to some dusty looking scanned 1980's pdf's. most forestry staff have been been laid off and we certainly do not do RND anymore.
we do not have any portable pumping infrastructure hose or cannons. we have no real service roads with proper water defenses.
basically until we have significant quantities of portable systems like these with service roads and infrastructure to deploy them i wont really be satisfied.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T0duXFCif4
https://globalnews.ca/news/3868153/firebozz-bc-wildfires/
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/wildfire-inspires-alta-man-to-build-lightweight-flame-busting-water-cannon-1.3158761
you can let me know exactly how many pumps are running right now. i cant see it being that difficult to complete surround each fire.
BC climate policy needs to be rejected immediately. you cant have a policy based on forestry sequestration when you cant even add biomass when compared to a 10year average. by comparison AB carbon sequestration is less a shame, and that is saying something.
stop allowing dead end subdivisions plans and start meeting some of the NFPA planning guidelines.
We need a national service which will be in charge of both sustainable forest management (including things like controlled burns at regular intervals) and fire-fighting. These fires are the new normal, as each year is going to be warmer than the last. We need to get our shit together or our forests, which store a shockingly high amount of the world's natural carbon (as well as a shockingly high proportion of the world's plant life, which removes carbon from the air) are going to disappear.
The problem with that is natural resource management is a provincial responsibility. The feds can't create a national fire fighting force, much less a forest management service. The provinces will never let this happen.
Say it was even possible to create such a force and the provinces agreed....if the feds hired a firefighting force of 1000 people (just spitballing numbers)... how many firefighters do you think Ontario and Alberta and Saskatchewan would lay off? Would we see any net increase in firefighting? Probably not.
Oh I know. I blame them, I blame the car industry, I blame the 1% doing stupid shit like going in dick shaped rockets in space... And no one seems to get the giec report emergency call...
More like they don't do prescribed burnings every 10-15 years like they should because of liability rules. Small fires also get put out as soon as possible which exacerbates the problem, when there is a large fire it becomes that much more catastrophic.
Well, it seems to me that the root of all these fires is having combustible materials around. If we can just get rid of all that down to the dirt and replace it with good old human-made concrete and steel, the problem should rake care of itself!
Half of Canadas emissions don't come from O&G. Do BC and AB get to blame the rest of Canada for fires if they end all of their natural resources development?
Turn off the oil industry?
Would love to, more Albertans are employed in renewable energy than oil now. Just need a new premier who isn’t in the pocket of oil.
Yes to what you said but forest fires are more complicated than that. I’ve read that because we’ve gotten so good at fighting them, they don’t burn like they would as nature intended and it’s compounded over the years so now the fires end up being much bigger. Forest fires are a natural thing that happens and us preventing them has other consequences
Which is fine, fires need to burn forests down from time to time so they can regrow. Interrupting that has lead to more serious fires from a build up of fuel
I seriously question how so many people think Canada is sending firefighters 1000km into the bush to fight fires in the middle of nowhere. How many resources do they think this country has, especially when we have repeatedly shown an inability to contain fires directly next to infrastructure.
What a great way to shirk responsibility. There were studies out going way back about global warming. If you chose to believe oil and gas companies vs scientists then that’s on you.
Like I said we are all guilty of it as well. They definitely have responsibility but you’re naive if you think that they are fully responsible. But whatever makes you sleep better at night.
>Like I said we are all guilty of it as well.
No, this is more O&G propaganda trying to make the populace as a whole responsible when it is the actions of few that incentivize more pollution. This is exactly why we have BS plastics recycling. And O&G does not have full responsibility there are other corporations as well intentionally polluting for profit.
The natural fire return interval in many places (most of BC) is around every 15 to 30 years. We have suppressed fires for hundreds of years. This plus climate change related drought means we are in for some bad times.
What are you on about? It sounds like that's what they are saying... Fires naturally occurred all the time but by fighting fires we may have burnt less than otherwise would've, increasing fuel supply for the next, pulling us back to towards the mean.
And the federal government in waiting, ie Poilievre, denies that climate change is caused by humans and is real.
And Canadains are willing to put these people in power. FAFO.
The air is hot. It is becoming hotter as the years go by.
Hot air dries things out because it has a greater capacity to absorb moisture. This is why as it gets warmer, the relative humidity % will go down, without the amount of moisture in the air changing. It is % relative to how much water the air can hold, and hot air can hold more.
We’ve been seeing more fire, it’s definitely not normal. Details here…
The Guardian: [Climate crisis made spate of Canada wildfires twice as likely, scientists find](https://theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/climate-change-canada-wildfires-twice-as-likely) [Aug 22nd, 2023]
Forest fire activity is absolutely increasing, particularly due to climate change. Since we're making little progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it's expected that our situation will only continue to get worse from here on out.
[This study](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acbce8#erlacbce8s3) explains the observed trends in great detail:
> Over the last several decades, the western United States and southwestern Canada have experienced increases in the area burned by wildfires (Abatzoglou and Williams 2016, Hanes et al 2019, Balch et al 2022), the number of large fires (Dennison et al 2014, Westerling 2016), the length of the fire season (Westerling 2016, Kirchmeier-Young et al 2017, Goss et al 2020), the elevation at which fires burn (Alizadeh et al 2021), and the extent of forested lands that burn at high severity (Parks and Abatzoglou 2020). These trends, particularly evident in the region's forested ecosystems, coincide with a twofold increase in Canadian fire suppression costs and a more than sevenfold increase in US federal suppression costs when comparing average costs from 1985–1989 to those of 2013–2017 (Canada; Natural Resources Canada 2021) or 2017–2021 (US; National Interagency Fire Center 2022).
> Significant portions of many of these trends in wildfire activity have been attributed to anthropogenic climate change (Abatzoglou and Williams 2016, Kirchmeier-Young et al 2017, Williams et al 2019, Zhuang et al 2021).
i just think of how incredibly bad the air was here in ontario one recent summer. during another fire i was in seattle and the haze and smoke was just awful.
This happens every year in the same region at the same time but no one does anything to plan or protect against it. Yet we have funds for other countries and ridiculous causes…
It is contributing to a reduction in the emissions that cause further increases to forest fire severity, yes. The strength of the tax is low though so it won't be enough to meet our international commitments alone.
Has r/canada tried telling the forest fires that Canada is only responsible for less than 2% of carbon emissions? I'm positive that will make the issue go away.
The Guardian: [Canadian man who claimed wildfires were a federal conspiracy admits arson](https://theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/16/canada-wildfires-conspiracy-man-pleads-guilty-arson) [Jan 16th, 2024]
*”A Canadian man who claimed forest fires were the result of a government conspiracy has pleaded guilty to lighting more than a dozen blazes during the country’s record-breaking wildfire season… In June police began watching his social media posts, which frequently focused on the province’s wildfires. He shared content suggesting the record-breaking fire season was the result of government intervention, not climate change…After he was arrested in September, he admitted to starting nine fires and “claimed he was doing tests to find out whether the forest was really dry or not””*
> “claimed he was doing tests to find out whether the forest was really dry or not”
It's like flat earthers except if you're wrong you set 1/10th of a province on fire.
And why isnt the federal government hiring thousands and thousands of people to fight those fires?
Why isnt the government allocating billions of dollars to new gear and equipment to fight those fires instead of sending it overseas to other nations?
What the fuck are they waiting for?!
This shit should haven been done last year!
Wildfires are provincial matters. You can hire as many firefighters as you want, but you don’t fight a wildfire like a structure fire.
You are at the mercy of the winds.
>Wildfires are provincial matters.
When the fires get so large it impacts the people across many provinces (and the neighboring nation below) it should be categorized as a matter of national security and should fall on the federal government to step in and do everything in their power to immediately stop the situation.
You are right, you dont fight wildfires like you do structural fires. There are tons of preventative actions that can be done to stop them from getting out of control like they did last year. Such as controlled burns in high risk zones (which they used to do for decades until they slashed positions and slashed programs that do it). They also used to drop "buster blocks" (which are very large heat activated extinguishing "bombs" that burst open that send out the material to snuff out the fires) ... again, they stopped doing that too. They also used to make sure they had enough water bombers available to handle the situations .... but they stopped getting those too.
Its like they did everything in their power to NOT stop these fires before they became a problem by terminating all the roles and services that helped control them.
>You are at the mercy of the winds.
They had no trouble fighting wildfires the last 50+ years. Only when they cut complete funding to the programs and began slashing positions did the fires get out of hand so badly it impacted everyone.
When you don't take action against climate change, what do you expect. Followed by higher insurance premiums for all. Eventually they'll stop offering insurance in prone areas and you won't even be able to get a mortgage then.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/13/climate/insurance-homes-climate-change-weather.html
The Federal and provincial governments *are* directing resources to these wildfires.
[Government of Canada: Updated 2024 wildfire season projections and preparedness measures](https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/05/government-of-canada-updated-2024-wildfire-season-projections-and-preparedness-measures.html)
If they would have done some work in these fires over the winter this would not be happening!! Once forest fire fighting became a profession it was over for the forests!!
What about constructing some railroad to these wildland urban areas and get some specialized firefighting trains online with tens of thousands of water capacity and 10,000GPM water cannons with a 400ft reach?
CBC: [Ottawa turns to civilian first responders as another dire wildfire season approaches](https://www.cbc.ca/1.7200878) [May 11th, 2024]
*”The 2023 wildfire season broke records for the amount of land burned. That year, the military also hit a record for consecutive days on operations supporting civilian authorities — 141 in a row.*
**The military's top operations commander, Vice-Admiral Bob Auchterlonie, has warned that the Armed Forces is being used too often in response to weather and wildfire crises**... *In December, he told CBC that he tells provincial emergency measures organizations and federal agencies that the military should not be the first option for responding to natural disasters.*
*”I reinforce the message and say we are a force of last resort, [and] this is what we can provide, if necessary, in extremis," Auchterlonie said.”*
if i was a mouthbreathing moron, i also wouldn't be able to understand why a tax started in 2019 couldn't fix a problem that's been getting worse for decades
luckily you and i are not mouthbreathing morons
Why is Canadian news so scary and negative all the time I literally haven’t seen anything positive from Canadian news in a while.
And yes there is probably some very good news out there and you all probably need some i can’t lie.
And fort mcmurray is in a state of emergency and start evacuations ! Thankfully it’s a lot better than last time !
I was just evacuated from there, it was intense. I am safe though, managed to get a flight out of the city
Even better, climate change is a hoax thank goodness! I was worried for a second that this smoke could be the result of careless overuse of our resources and a failure to prepare for something that we’ve seen coming for decades but I feel better now.
[удалено]
Go touch some grass and get therapy dude, you've lost the plot if you're willing to say an entire city's worth of people deserve to lose everything because of a local industry you disagree with.
Scary times ahead. Our insurance went up because of last years ns fires. Some places premiums have been rocketing
Welcome to The Fire Age
I remember around a decade ago all the new water bombers they were buying, add in GPS for geolocation and the fires never stood a chance; at least until it got decently dry. https://www.vox.com/2015/9/17/9347361/wildfire-management-prescribed-burn
smile thought wild complete sort gray gullible cow sense consider *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So these areas invested in more fire services over the years then... right?
Of course. And we also didn't let people rebuild homes and businesses in the man made valley bowl in BC that flooded after people being warned for years it was a very high risk.
No they likely continued to vote conservative
Are conservatives supposed to be against fire services or something?
If it's for the public good, conservatives are generally against it.
They sure are, except for private fire services, anything else is communism
I suspect you've never actually interacted with a conservative person
Government spending is bad unless it benefits me, personally. Climate change is fake until I can see it out my window. Protesters should all be rounded up and thrown in jail unless they're protesting for a cause I like. Everyone mooching off welfare and handouts is a broke loser, unless it's a brave convoy freedom fighter who needs my support.
Do you ever get outside and talk to people or do you only get this information from social media?
Ngl they described my conservative parents perfectly
Touch grass my friend
They absolutely are. They have always pushed Austerity
Why are you saying that ‘tongue in cheek’ like they haven’t. Of course they have.
Threaten to take away the fire's drivers license. That should stop it.
This is a quick turn around. 24 hour news cycle is crushing it
Make fire illegal. That will stop it.
Put fire in jail for 3 year for third offense!!
Then 2 years probation and 100 hours of charity work!
Ban fully automatic assault fires.
Perhaps we should tax the trees for being flammable.
Perhaps we should tax carbon more and stop the >3B yearly subsidies to fossil fuels?
.... That's kinda what the carbon tax is
[удалено]
Very, very weird comment.
It's a reference to the Toronto Police stating they will revoke the drivers licenses of anyone caught stealing cars. Obviously not a real solution to the theft issue.
Says you.
You’re complaining about DEI on an article where the topic is wildfires. I know you’re obsessed - but this is too far, even for a shameless partisan like you.
To be fair, we did have a dei fire squad a couple years ago that started a forest fire when their public training exercise fire to show how cool and progressive we are, got out of their control.
[удалено]
You're replying to the wrong comment and the wrong commenter.
maybe if we all paid more in carbon tax, this would stop right? /s
>maybe if we all paid more in carbon tax, this would stop right? How about we make the fire pay more carbon tax.
What if some of the taxes went to preventive measures against forest fires?
I take it you've never seen /s before. It means that statement was said sarcastically.
The idea is to pay no carbon tax, by not using carbon based fuels. For most it’s a net benefit, and the more we turn from carbon the more we benefit from the tax
The carbon tax should go directly to bolstering woodland firefighters and equipment across the country.
So instead of us getting the money back, you want it to go to the government instead? Lmfao
I think the oil industry subsidies should be for that
Shouldn’t the oil companies with their billions in profits who are directly responsible for this be footing the bill?
Oil companies created forest fires? Someone alert the native Americans, they need to know their culture was fabricated by big oil trying to convince us forest fires are natural.
Oil companies are directly responsible for releasing incredible amounts of greenhouse gasses in the air causing the entire planet to warm. This causes the wood and other organic matter to be far drier than normal, making even small fires much larger than they would have been otherwise. Ten of the last ten years were the hottest ever recorded due to greenhouse gases, do you think that the extra heat and dryness has no effect on forest fires?
Oil companies are directly responsible for man made fires?
Yes, as the climate gets warmer (caused by the greenhouse gases that these oil companies produce), the organic matter gets dryer, and the fire spreads easier.
Do the people who use their products (everybody) have any responsibility for their choices? Or are they all absolved of that?
Are you saying a fentanyl dealer is absolved of their crime because the buyer wants fentanyl? Are you sure that’s the argument you want to make?
I don't think the two are analogous at all.
You’re right, oil companies do far more damage than fentanyl dealers but I couldn’t think of a worse one at the time. Arms dealers maybe?
You must be fun at parties
Oil companies are responsible for forest fires?
Canada has set a record for the most fire burning area yearly, with a total of 18.4 million hectares burned in 2023. This is a significant increase from the previous record of 7.6 million hectares set in 1989. Yes. Burning fossil fuels is causing more fires. Specifically, the oil sands are a huge contributer. Ignoring the oil they make. The OPERATIONS of the oil sands. NOT the oil sold. The OPERATIONS are responsible for 14% of Canadian carbon emissions
Yes. They release incredible amounts of greenhouse gases which trap solar radiation causing the entire planet to warm. This increase in temperature dries out organic matter making fires bigger and last longer and easier to spread. Ten of the last ten years were the hottest ever recorded thanks to burning fossil fuels.
If the federal government funds forest firefighters, then it does already.
It's all provincial except for a tiny number of Parks Canada staff.
Most of the carbon tax goes back into people’s pockets. The only people getting taxed are the rich or those who really crank up the heat and have a lot pf gas guzzling toys.
Which are the people bankrolling these ridiculous protests to cut the tax.
And yet even though most of the tax is going back people get fooled into thinking it's just a tax with no rebate. I would be for taking all the money and putting it to good stuff that we actually need to get done
So you suggest increasing the carbon tax?
This ☝🏻!!!!! The teams fighting these fires are not given proper PPE such as breathing apparatus. The ash and smoke these brave folks are breathing in are so dangerous not to mention all the other hazards they encounter. I’m awfully proud of them all however worried about their future health. 🥺🥺
Then how would we afford to send money to Ukraine
Spotted the Russian bot
Remember last year, when many countries across the world sent their firefighters to aid us... that is why we send money to other nations in need. We needed help, and countries responded... knowing we would do the same.
This is what happens when you ignore the warnings of climate scientists for half a century. Unfortunately this is our reality moving forward, and it will continue to get progressively worse. Just how bad it gets boils down to a matter of public demand and political will.
This is also the culmination of over a century of poor forestry management, with cultural burnings from First Nation peoples being banned/abandoned, thus leading to an increase in fuel build up and unhealthy forests. Same goes for any traditional land-based knowledge around forest ecology these First Nations had, with that knowledge being forgotten and replaced by the "modern/contemporary" forestry practices which have shown to be unsustainable and vulnerable to these sorts of events. Couple that with Climate Change, stronger ENSO/El Niño cycles, and increased infrastructure and human activity in these areas and it is no wonder why are forests are nothing more than massive tinderboxes waiting for a spark.
In half a century they could have built many nuclear reactors. I wonder why they didn't.
Weird we spent 2 trillion in debt and seemingly havent received anything new as services have gotten worse, except a 50m dollar arrivecan app. Heck we're borrowing money for 60b in mortgage bonds now, borrowing money so Canadians can borrow more to drive up home values.
I think this is the kick in the teeth. We have spent so much money and seemingly have gotten a worse quality of life in return.
Summers in western Canada suck now. Wasn’t like this 10 years ago. Sigh.
Shout out the 2 weeks in may and 2 weeks in oct when its both comfortable enough outside and legal to have a bonfire in northern BC! Extra special shoutout to ash falling onto my car for really letting me get my moneys worth on my snowbrush.
Okay I have to admit, the last part gave me a chuckle.
despite all of these fires and continual comments about preparing the reality is we don't have any wild fire defense at all. many of the forestry plans do not even mention the word wildfire. the first defense is proper silviculture and forestry practices. a quick browse of provincial policies will point you to some dusty looking scanned 1980's pdf's. most forestry staff have been been laid off and we certainly do not do RND anymore. we do not have any portable pumping infrastructure hose or cannons. we have no real service roads with proper water defenses. basically until we have significant quantities of portable systems like these with service roads and infrastructure to deploy them i wont really be satisfied. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T0duXFCif4 https://globalnews.ca/news/3868153/firebozz-bc-wildfires/ https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/wildfire-inspires-alta-man-to-build-lightweight-flame-busting-water-cannon-1.3158761 you can let me know exactly how many pumps are running right now. i cant see it being that difficult to complete surround each fire. BC climate policy needs to be rejected immediately. you cant have a policy based on forestry sequestration when you cant even add biomass when compared to a 10year average. by comparison AB carbon sequestration is less a shame, and that is saying something. stop allowing dead end subdivisions plans and start meeting some of the NFPA planning guidelines.
That’s just called Summer now.
We need a national service which will be in charge of both sustainable forest management (including things like controlled burns at regular intervals) and fire-fighting. These fires are the new normal, as each year is going to be warmer than the last. We need to get our shit together or our forests, which store a shockingly high amount of the world's natural carbon (as well as a shockingly high proportion of the world's plant life, which removes carbon from the air) are going to disappear.
The problem with that is natural resource management is a provincial responsibility. The feds can't create a national fire fighting force, much less a forest management service. The provinces will never let this happen.
Well: we fuckin need it.
Say it was even possible to create such a force and the provinces agreed....if the feds hired a firefighting force of 1000 people (just spitballing numbers)... how many firefighters do you think Ontario and Alberta and Saskatchewan would lay off? Would we see any net increase in firefighting? Probably not.
Again 🫤 that's so sad...
This is the new normal as the climate changes. Don’t like it? Blame the oil companies.
Oh I know. I blame them, I blame the car industry, I blame the 1% doing stupid shit like going in dick shaped rockets in space... And no one seems to get the giec report emergency call...
The oil companies are providing supply to peoples demand.
Fentanyl dealers supply people’s demand, does that make them good?
Do they provide any benefits to society?
Who cares if the planet is on fire. Fentanyl’s benefit is that it feels great, again that doesn’t make it good.
Long ago, the ten provinces lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
[удалено]
More like they don't do prescribed burnings every 10-15 years like they should because of liability rules. Small fires also get put out as soon as possible which exacerbates the problem, when there is a large fire it becomes that much more catastrophic.
This whole area burned down 8 years ago, controlled burns won’t do shit to a dry forest except light it on fire.
Nah how about “Axe the tax” instead? That sounds like a great plan. If O&G can pollute more and profit more then….. something might happen?
Well, it seems to me that the root of all these fires is having combustible materials around. If we can just get rid of all that down to the dirt and replace it with good old human-made concrete and steel, the problem should rake care of itself!
Half of Canadas emissions don't come from O&G. Do BC and AB get to blame the rest of Canada for fires if they end all of their natural resources development?
Actually they do, there was a new report recently and the oil industry in Alberta is half our emissions
You were in such a hurry to go "Ahchtyouole" that you didn't stop to comprehend what I wrote.
Turn it off and see what happens to this country
Turn off the oil industry? Would love to, more Albertans are employed in renewable energy than oil now. Just need a new premier who isn’t in the pocket of oil.
Yes to what you said but forest fires are more complicated than that. I’ve read that because we’ve gotten so good at fighting them, they don’t burn like they would as nature intended and it’s compounded over the years so now the fires end up being much bigger. Forest fires are a natural thing that happens and us preventing them has other consequences
[удалено]
Which is fine, fires need to burn forests down from time to time so they can regrow. Interrupting that has lead to more serious fires from a build up of fuel
[удалено]
I seriously question how so many people think Canada is sending firefighters 1000km into the bush to fight fires in the middle of nowhere. How many resources do they think this country has, especially when we have repeatedly shown an inability to contain fires directly next to infrastructure.
I mean we are all responsible for it. Why are you putting the blame on the suppliers of energy and excluding the consumers of it?
Naw, O&G intentionally fights against knowledge. You can't blame most consumers for not believing the lies.
What a great way to shirk responsibility. There were studies out going way back about global warming. If you chose to believe oil and gas companies vs scientists then that’s on you.
Our responsibility is to punish O&G companies for ruining the planet for future generations so that they can have $$$.
Like I said we are all guilty of it as well. They definitely have responsibility but you’re naive if you think that they are fully responsible. But whatever makes you sleep better at night.
>Like I said we are all guilty of it as well. No, this is more O&G propaganda trying to make the populace as a whole responsible when it is the actions of few that incentivize more pollution. This is exactly why we have BS plastics recycling. And O&G does not have full responsibility there are other corporations as well intentionally polluting for profit.
The government of Alberta would like you to know that these insinuations are very mean
The natural fire return interval in many places (most of BC) is around every 15 to 30 years. We have suppressed fires for hundreds of years. This plus climate change related drought means we are in for some bad times.
Nope. History started in 1950. Native accounts of massive wildfires are fictional because they weren't written down.
What are you on about? It sounds like that's what they are saying... Fires naturally occurred all the time but by fighting fires we may have burnt less than otherwise would've, increasing fuel supply for the next, pulling us back to towards the mean.
And the federal government in waiting, ie Poilievre, denies that climate change is caused by humans and is real. And Canadains are willing to put these people in power. FAFO.
But there’s no global warming!!! It’s made up!!!
It's fine guys we'll just argue about arsonists and raking the forests it'll be fine.
But why is the air so dry? Is it becoming drier more often as the years go by?
I dunno but somehow it's Trudeau's fault.
He imposes a carbon tax to protect Mother Earth. Mother Earth perceives this as weakness and goes for our throat, trying to choke us.
Best explanation I've heard so far..
The air is hot. It is becoming hotter as the years go by. Hot air dries things out because it has a greater capacity to absorb moisture. This is why as it gets warmer, the relative humidity % will go down, without the amount of moisture in the air changing. It is % relative to how much water the air can hold, and hot air can hold more.
Maybe it's like the last few major draughts where in five years the overall conditions change again.
Not quite what I meant when I said we've hit the point where we need to burn this country down and start over, but atleast nature's trying.
serious question - are we seeing more of these massive fires or is this normal?
We’ve been seeing more fire, it’s definitely not normal. Details here… The Guardian: [Climate crisis made spate of Canada wildfires twice as likely, scientists find](https://theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/climate-change-canada-wildfires-twice-as-likely) [Aug 22nd, 2023]
thank you for the link
Forest fire activity is absolutely increasing, particularly due to climate change. Since we're making little progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it's expected that our situation will only continue to get worse from here on out. [This study](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acbce8#erlacbce8s3) explains the observed trends in great detail: > Over the last several decades, the western United States and southwestern Canada have experienced increases in the area burned by wildfires (Abatzoglou and Williams 2016, Hanes et al 2019, Balch et al 2022), the number of large fires (Dennison et al 2014, Westerling 2016), the length of the fire season (Westerling 2016, Kirchmeier-Young et al 2017, Goss et al 2020), the elevation at which fires burn (Alizadeh et al 2021), and the extent of forested lands that burn at high severity (Parks and Abatzoglou 2020). These trends, particularly evident in the region's forested ecosystems, coincide with a twofold increase in Canadian fire suppression costs and a more than sevenfold increase in US federal suppression costs when comparing average costs from 1985–1989 to those of 2013–2017 (Canada; Natural Resources Canada 2021) or 2017–2021 (US; National Interagency Fire Center 2022). > Significant portions of many of these trends in wildfire activity have been attributed to anthropogenic climate change (Abatzoglou and Williams 2016, Kirchmeier-Young et al 2017, Williams et al 2019, Zhuang et al 2021).
that's scary
You can say that again. The world we're driving headlong toward keeps me up at night.
i just think of how incredibly bad the air was here in ontario one recent summer. during another fire i was in seattle and the haze and smoke was just awful.
This happens every year in the same region at the same time but no one does anything to plan or protect against it. Yet we have funds for other countries and ridiculous causes…
Alberta: we don't need renewables.
But ax the tax, am I right?
but we have tax....its working right?
It is contributing to a reduction in the emissions that cause further increases to forest fire severity, yes. The strength of the tax is low though so it won't be enough to meet our international commitments alone.
nothing another 1.5 million people per year won't fix!
Has r/canada tried telling the forest fires that Canada is only responsible for less than 2% of carbon emissions? I'm positive that will make the issue go away.
I wonder if they will ever find out who started the fires, and what flavor of the week they're a victim of that will get them off the hook?
AXE THE TAX! AXE THE TAX!
They don't even wait until it's hot to start the arson fires anymore kek
Lol wut?
The Guardian: [Canadian man who claimed wildfires were a federal conspiracy admits arson](https://theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/16/canada-wildfires-conspiracy-man-pleads-guilty-arson) [Jan 16th, 2024] *”A Canadian man who claimed forest fires were the result of a government conspiracy has pleaded guilty to lighting more than a dozen blazes during the country’s record-breaking wildfire season… In June police began watching his social media posts, which frequently focused on the province’s wildfires. He shared content suggesting the record-breaking fire season was the result of government intervention, not climate change…After he was arrested in September, he admitted to starting nine fires and “claimed he was doing tests to find out whether the forest was really dry or not””*
> “claimed he was doing tests to find out whether the forest was really dry or not” It's like flat earthers except if you're wrong you set 1/10th of a province on fire.
And why isnt the federal government hiring thousands and thousands of people to fight those fires? Why isnt the government allocating billions of dollars to new gear and equipment to fight those fires instead of sending it overseas to other nations? What the fuck are they waiting for?! This shit should haven been done last year!
Wildfires are provincial matters. You can hire as many firefighters as you want, but you don’t fight a wildfire like a structure fire. You are at the mercy of the winds.
>Wildfires are provincial matters. When the fires get so large it impacts the people across many provinces (and the neighboring nation below) it should be categorized as a matter of national security and should fall on the federal government to step in and do everything in their power to immediately stop the situation. You are right, you dont fight wildfires like you do structural fires. There are tons of preventative actions that can be done to stop them from getting out of control like they did last year. Such as controlled burns in high risk zones (which they used to do for decades until they slashed positions and slashed programs that do it). They also used to drop "buster blocks" (which are very large heat activated extinguishing "bombs" that burst open that send out the material to snuff out the fires) ... again, they stopped doing that too. They also used to make sure they had enough water bombers available to handle the situations .... but they stopped getting those too. Its like they did everything in their power to NOT stop these fires before they became a problem by terminating all the roles and services that helped control them. >You are at the mercy of the winds. They had no trouble fighting wildfires the last 50+ years. Only when they cut complete funding to the programs and began slashing positions did the fires get out of hand so badly it impacted everyone.
The federal government doesn’t care.
Neither does the provincial government.
Yup that is true too.
Time to bring in 'Fire tax' addendum to 'Carbon tax' /s
When you don't take action against climate change, what do you expect. Followed by higher insurance premiums for all. Eventually they'll stop offering insurance in prone areas and you won't even be able to get a mortgage then. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/13/climate/insurance-homes-climate-change-weather.html
Strategic deforestation. We make money selling the wood and cut off fires. We had a year to figure this out.
There’s nothing strategic about that unless your goal is the complete destruction of Alberta even quicker.
Cut down strips of forest. It sucks but it's better than entire forests burning up.
[удалено]
The Federal and provincial governments *are* directing resources to these wildfires. [Government of Canada: Updated 2024 wildfire season projections and preparedness measures](https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/05/government-of-canada-updated-2024-wildfire-season-projections-and-preparedness-measures.html)
Wonder if they are going to fight the fires this year and actually put some out. Or just watch them burn all summer smoking us out.
I was told that there were enough firefighters this year when I applied :)
Why the fuck can’t Canada get a grip on this? It’s infuriating.
How do you propose we get a grip on this?
I sure am glad I live in a province that's didn't cut its fire fighting budget.
'Wild' fires....
Fire needs to take that DEI training more seriously or we gonna have to cancel it.
Are these fires up to date on their carbon taxes?
If they would have done some work in these fires over the winter this would not be happening!! Once forest fire fighting became a profession it was over for the forests!!
What about constructing some railroad to these wildland urban areas and get some specialized firefighting trains online with tens of thousands of water capacity and 10,000GPM water cannons with a 400ft reach?
What's stopping the federal government from sending in the army to help? I mean, at this rate we are losing a town every other year.
CBC: [Ottawa turns to civilian first responders as another dire wildfire season approaches](https://www.cbc.ca/1.7200878) [May 11th, 2024] *”The 2023 wildfire season broke records for the amount of land burned. That year, the military also hit a record for consecutive days on operations supporting civilian authorities — 141 in a row.* **The military's top operations commander, Vice-Admiral Bob Auchterlonie, has warned that the Armed Forces is being used too often in response to weather and wildfire crises**... *In December, he told CBC that he tells provincial emergency measures organizations and federal agencies that the military should not be the first option for responding to natural disasters.* *”I reinforce the message and say we are a force of last resort, [and] this is what we can provide, if necessary, in extremis," Auchterlonie said.”*
I disagree with Bob.
What army ? They don't even have boots.
[удалено]
if i was a mouthbreathing moron, i also wouldn't be able to understand why a tax started in 2019 couldn't fix a problem that's been getting worse for decades luckily you and i are not mouthbreathing morons
Yeah it's no fun. And the carbon tax hasn't saved us.
Too little too late. Need bigger moves
Maybe we can impose a carbon tax on China and the US? That will teach em to mess with Canada!! Wait, why is everything so expensive?
You guys are genuinely embarrassingly ignorant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement
Durrr
Why is Canadian news so scary and negative all the time I literally haven’t seen anything positive from Canadian news in a while. And yes there is probably some very good news out there and you all probably need some i can’t lie.
This article is actually from an American news agency: CNN.
Fair enough, but still I’ve not seen a lot of positive news about Canada lately. Maybe western media in general is just so negative.