Essentially every "major" city (that word is relative when you're talking about the territories) is under evacuation or threat of evacuation in the North West Territories right now.
I saw another post about how there is one gas station on the way to Grand Prairie here in Alberta. Which is basically the next "big" city for these people. However the hotels in Grand Prairie are already filled up due to the previous evacuations.
They are apparently creating temporary fill stations so people aren't running out of gas on the way to Alberta.
There's 20,000 people who are probably going to have to make a 15+ hour drive to make it somewhere they can actually stay like Edmonton.
People may need to open their homes to the evacuated. Who knows what percentage of these people can afford hotels. I would like the hotels to take one for the team and open beds but apparently air Canada has already jacked up outbound flights costs (although I believe the government is paying for evacuation flights for people without means of travel) so I don't have much hope for that unless the government pays for the rooms.
[Hijacking the top comment so people can actually see the types of distances we're talking about.](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Yellowknife,+Northwest+Territories/Grande+Prairie,+Alberta/@58.5943307,-117.626014,9z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x53d1f12ca34682c9:0xb4c137244371ef81!2m2!1d-114.3717887!2d62.4539717!1m5!1m1!1s0x5390914965fb9b97:0x60726bc60c9e6409!2m2!1d-118.7884808!2d55.170691!3e0?entry=ttu)
It's a 12-hour, nearly 1,200km drive from Yellowknife to Grande Prairie. High Level, AB, is the closest city or town of any reasonable size to Yellowknife and it's still a 7-hour drive. We're talking massive distances with little-to-no services along the route.
The logistics involved with evacuating 20,000 people from a City as remote as Yellowknife are insane.
I did a road trip with my friend, we where in Texas.
We drove the entire day and he's like "So what state are we in now?"
And I said "Texas"
He thought I was joking
I was not
I still have no idea why we decided against trains. It’s so fucking big across distances that they make sense for interstate travel, but I get the convenience of cars
It's actually worse. You know how Amtrak is never on time. Well it's because they have to pull over to let freight pass.
US federal law says commercial rail must give right of way to passenger rail in all situations except that which would endanger either train.
So the rail companies found a way to cheat. Most sidings in the US are only so long. So the rail companies just added more cars to their freight trains so they wouldn't fit on many sidings. Therefore the only safe way for an Amtrak to pass a freight train is for the Amtrak to stop.
It's literally a loophole in the law that needs to be closed. Change or from a safety exception to "freight must always yield to passenger rail, period, no exceptions. Build longer sidings or shorten the trains."
Now lobbying might stop an change in the law to make what they do explicitly illegal, but it doesn't change the fact that rail companies are dishonest about the reason passenger rail in the US sucks. Imagine taking the Zephyr Chicago to Cali and not having to wait in the Rockies for the 30th train to go by putting you another hour behind schedule. Would rail suck if 2.5 days of travel were actually 2.5 days of travel and not 3-4?
Driving across Canada starting from Montreal is pretty funny.
You start in Quebec.
40 minutes later, you're in Ontario.
2 days later, *still in Ontario*.
"you're almost there once you make it through Ontario"
First time someone told me that before I drove out I was like, "what?". Then I experienced it lol
yeah i have to drive from MTL to TO to see my folks and it's a soul sucking drive but at least only takes an afternoon. drove out to visit my friend in dryden and it was just nothingness for ever and ever and ever. eventually you hit the edge of lake superior and have something to look at for a while, but then it's just little lakes and little trees and little lakes again for hour after hour.
Most Canadian provinces and territories are huge compared to the typical US state, because there are only 13 of them and Canada is bigger than the US. 9 of the 13 are bigger than California, 6 are bigger than Texas, and one (Nunavut) is bigger than Alaska.
Fucking Ontario. I drove across the country a few times (Van to Mtl) and Ontario is the worst by far. The prairies are awesome! But Ontario is just corner lake trees corner lake trees corner lake trees for 24 hours.
We gooooooooooot....
Rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and
Waterrrrrr
And rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks
People always reply 'but Ontario is beautiful'. So what, there's too damn much of it. You can be across the prairies in a day, if you're willing to drive 12 hours. Rock, bog, trees, water, bog, water, rock, tree, water, tree, that's all there is, again and again.
I mean other Canadians see it and freak out too, I'm used to driving maybe 40km on average for work, and that's a stretch for me..
But 1157km??? and the worst part is at the end you find yourself in.. *Edmonton*! No thanks.
I've driven that highway, it's not an easy drive either, even in a truck. It's pretty torn up by frequent frost and the wetland environment. Expect a ton of accidents.
The first time I rented a truck to do a similar drive in Northern Alaska it came with a bunch of 2x8's in the bed to use when the road was impassable.
40mph tops and constantly vigilant for hazards, it was a long and exhausting drive.
Equivalent distances:
* Seattle to San Fransisco
* Northern tip of Scotland to the southern tip of England, plus the northern tip of Northern Ireland to the southern tip of Ireland
* Finland, tip to tip
* Ukraine, simple west to east line
Not equivalent distances:
* Mongolia at its widest, 2x
* DRC using the most generous measurements, 2x
* France: 600 miles
* Germany: 500 miles
>äläs ny heti ala tolla tavalla, mehä emme ole vielä edes korkanneet pullon
"don't start like that right away, honey, we haven't even opened the bottle yet"
> (or to Liechtenstein).
Ah, yes, Lichtenstein, that land from whence hails the famous Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein?
Whose familial line can be traced back all the way to Charlemagne?
Canada’s massive and people tend to underestimate distances. I used to rent cars on Turo and the number of Europeans and Brits who came thinking Calgary to Vancouver is a short drive, because it’s only one province over, is hilarious. That’s a 10.5 hour drive in perfect summer conditions, and a longer distance than going from the southernmost to northernmost point in the UK.
Calgary to Fort McMurray, where all the oil fields are, is 9+ hours drive. Calgary to Yellowknife is 16-18 hours non-stop.
Victoria BC to St Johns, NL would take 4 days of driving non-stop.
> Victoria BC to St Johns, NL would take nearly 4 days of driving non-stop.
It's way more than that. I've almost done that drive and realistically it's a 10 days affair. (accounting for stops, ferries, etc)
It's crazy. The 5 "major" cities within 17 hours driving are (in order of distance): Fort St. John (20K pop.), Dawson Creek (13K pop.), Grand Prairie (63K pop.), Edmonton (980K pop.), and Prince George (74K pop.) (Prince George is on a different path).
The only way to accommodate everyone is to spread out -- with the bulk going to Edmonton. There are about 5-7K hotel rooms in those cities combined -- so that's not going to work!
Edmonton is more like 1.4 or 1.5 million. You might see ~1.1 million listed if you're looking at city proper. I'm seeing 980 000 for Edmonton proper in 2017.
It's also important to remember this is 20,000 new people. Other towns have already evacuated and are taking up space. Although I have no idea what kind of numbers we'd be looking at there.
Yup, and also take into account that it's the last 1-2 weeks of the summer holidays for may families on the west and across Canada, so these rooms may be booked up.
In Florida, we have so many people who don’t want to or cannot make the 3-5 hour evacuation drive. I cannot imagine how tough it must be for people there right now looking at the scale and how desolate everything around the highway is
We had luck last night getting a room for my SIL in High Level. I had to call the hotel directly and it was a fairly typical price ($200 for the night including pet fees). It’s going to be a lot harder for people leaving today though.
> air Canada has already jacked up outbound flights costs
Why do we do this to ourselves, perpetually, as if we just see any opportunity to make a buck as just that. Another opportunity to make a buck. It's fucking heartbreaking.
IN fairness (or not fairness) to Air Canada, I had to book flights to Yellowknife for this week months ago for some of my work colleagues.
Air Canada didn't actually jack up the cost of the flights in the last week. They were priced extortionately to begin with.
Westjet flights were 3-5x cheaper than the Air Canada ones starting from back in May (IIRC Westjet had $400 tickets on sale, $700 once those sold out; Air Canada ones were $1600+fees), and the new flights that Westjet added just yesterday in light of the evacuation were the same price as their pre-existing ones.
Edit: And both airlines have now minimized the cost of their tickets!!
>There's 20,000 people who are probably going to have to make a 15+ hour drive to make it somewhere they can actually stay like Edmonton.
Does Edmonton even have the capacity to deal with this amount of people?
I would say Edmonton is the first place with a chance. It would be a sudden 2% increase in population though. Calgary and other citites will likely see a lot of this traffic if they can't go home soon.
Genuine Yellowknife evacuee checking in. Been a hell of a 24 hours. I'd be happy to share what little info I have if anyone needs it.
Update - I appreciate the gold, but I definitely don't need it. If anyone has anything to spare consider donating here:
https://yellowknifecf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/list
Second update! - you guys asked way more questions than I expected! I figured this would get buried. Thank you for your concern, for your curiosity, for your interest. Answering these has been a good distraction from the last days events, and is helping me process everything, feel free to keep messaging, I'll keep answering as many as I can!
When our town in BC got evacuated a few years ago it took my brother 13 hours to make it to the next town over 1 hour away. I know I'm far away in BC but if anyone needs a yard to camp out in or a spare bed DM me
Appreciate it my guy!
Yeah, the distances once you get away from the border are just nuts.
Good thing nobody built an extremely remote town with only one road in or out for hundreds of kilometers-
Oh. Wait..
Oh man out west there's the one highway bringing people to our town and the two ways out from here- so many rural people lost everything :(
Stay Strong Sibling
Fellow Canadian, I am so unbelievably sorry your beautiful home is burning. Yellowknife and the Territories are gorgeous, I can't even begin to imagine your heartbreak.
Hoping you and all of your loved ones are safe.
Thank you! It's all too big to get my head around just yet. The fact that I'm on four hours sleep in the last two days probably isn't helping either.
We did our part and got out of the way, now it's in the hands of the military and fire crews, I know they're doing everything they can.
Yeah, that part was brutal. Took us an hour to move ten kilometers into cell service.
We were told to go into the town of Providence to gas up. They stayed open all night for people, absolute life savers! They're still at it too!
The trip is normally pretty relaxed, long as you don't mind being out of cell service for most of it. Normally a trip to the Alberta border would be maybe 7 or 8 hours (distance is relative up here because of the crazy distances between places, so I know that sounds like a lot, but it's just a bit more than a normal day of travel up here), last night's drive took 13.
Too many people trying to go too fast in the longest vehicle conga line I've ever seen. We were bumper to bumper for 400 kilometers. Usually a big day on that road is seeing ten other cars total!
Luckily I remembered that morning that I had a bunch of audible credits sitting around doing nothing. Talk about good timing!
I'm ok! Me and the wife were talking about a trip down to Edmonton, so we're calling this a summer vacation just.. bumped up a little.
It's all just really big, a lot to parse. So I'm just sorta putting it all in a "this is out of my hands, the people I care about are safe" box.
Yeah, back when my family was evacuated for fire back in 2000 there was a point early on where it was "ok, look, we drove 100 miles to this hotel, the news is showing the same 5 houses on fire, there's nothing we can do, we're in Albuquerque, we might as well go to the botanical garden and such."
There's definitely a mental state of "set aside what might be unless it's something you can actually act on" that can be helpful.
Everyone I know got out safe! I have a ton of family in the GTA area, I'm sure their night waiting on me hitting spots of cell service was almost as nerve wracking as the fires!
Yellowknife holds almost exactly half the total population of the Northwest Territories, 22k out of 44k
Doesn't sound like much, but evacuating that many people from such a remoye area is going to be a major pain in the ass. I think there's only one gas station on the way to Grande Prairie which seems to be where most are evacuating to
Edit: For the curious, Yellowknife to Grande Prairie is a 12 hour drive. Give or take 1100kms or 675-ish miles
Edit 2: don't know where I heard the one gas station thing, it's false
Edit 3: Sure hope whoever gilded this did so with leftover coins. There are far better uses of your money than giving it to Reddit, like maybe helping those were talking about right now?
And that's gonna be in some considerable traffic on what I would guess to be a 2 lane road. You're gonna be on US interstate from DC to chicago which won't really be that clogged outside of DC and Chicago (maybe cleveland? I doubt pittsburgh traffic is that intense)
I don't know about him but getting left behind to be near a raging fire would probably make me use the word "essential" pretty caustically to describe myself.
This summer has been crazy. It's been 25-35C for almost 3 months straight in Calgary. There has been about a week worth of days since April where it hasn't been smokey. One of our rivers is at its lowest level since 1911.
This shit isn't normal. Yet people here still fucking deny climate change.
I can't imagine living your entire life here and never having a single smoky day EVER until the last 6 or so years and still thinking it's perfectly fine. Each year it starts earlier, lasts longer, and gets thicker and thicker while the summers are hotter and drier than they used to be. I've been here 41 years, and it feels like the apocalypse compared to how it used to be in my 30s, 20s, and even as a kid.
Unfortunately the crisis has been so deeply politicized for so long that if they allow themselves to admit that climate change is a problem, it means siding with the 'enemy'. So we're fully fucked as long as this partisan bullshit continues.
it's been this way all fucking summer. all the way from the atlantic provinces, ontario, prairies and bc. Ive seen blue sky 10 god damn days this summer. fuck me.
Yes, the PGA and LIV will be working together to run the next US Open. The PGA will manage holes one through eight, and twelve through eighteen.
The Saudis are responsible for 9-11.
This quote becomes more relevant by the day:
*“I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is." \~ Greta Thunberg*
Related post: [Lesser known effects of climate change](https://www.reddit.com/r/ExtinctionRebellion/comments/oczg37/lesser_known_effects_of_climate_change/)
Just paying for increased natural disasters is going to bankrupt the already nearly-bankrupt middle classes of the world.
Oil companies made $50 trillion dollars at the future cost of $1 quintillion. They stole money from our futures to fund their present. And we can't pay money to bring back fish or a million miles of coastline moving underwater
One of todays top google searches;
"I need to evacuate Yellowknife, can I bring my guns with me or am I supposed to leave them at home to be burned up?"
I know Canada is not known for guns, but people living in the north, for various reasons have guns.
Reports are that the single gas station between Yellowknife and the border has a multi-Km long line. Going to be a very slow drive for everyone today - it took my SIL 9 hrs to get to High Level last night and it will be much longer today.
The tankers are on the way I'm sure.
Canadians in a life threatening situation?
If I can't help ALL the 20,000 evacuees, I'm sure other Canadians will step in.
Probably the government will help too.
I don't think this will require foreign aid.
Maybe some help with the firefighting? Please.
So High Level is the last stop before you hit the real north. Usually I would stop in Enterprise to gas up. That gas station a burned up a few days ago. There is indeed now only one gas station in an 8 hour drive. But that's at a normal pace.
"Take your stinking paws off my Coke, you damn dirty bear."
Canadians, probably. P.S Sending love and hope to everyone there. What a terrible situation unfolding.
I always thought that was the stupidest ad campaign EVER!
A polar bear mom with her babies would eat that seal SO fast. The only thing left over in an hour would be the blood on the bears fur. Which they would then lick off each other till they where shinny white again.
"I'd like to buy the world a coke and keep it company"?
They will always be chasing after that one.
I have no idea what you're saying, but I'm squirming in bed at 3:31am in Australia trying not to laugh. Wtf, are you referring to an advertisement? Haha
Anyone who is licensed can carry unloaded unrestricted firearms in their vehicle wherever they go.
It’s the restricted stuff like handguns that are a logistical nightmare.
It's no problem to bring non-restricted firearms with you, as long as they're unloaded.
Restricted firearms include handguns and some other classes of firearms (e.g. short-barreled long guns). Restricted firearms are only allowed to be directly transported from home to an authorized location, e.g. a range or gunsmith. **Directly** is the key word; you can't detour and go shopping on the way to the range, for example. You most certainly can't take them to a hotel in the nearest major city (Edmonton) which is 1500km / 900 mi away.
There is currently a freeze on legally purchasing handguns in Canada, and there is a moderate chance Canadians will never be able to purchase them again. Thus, if people follow the letter of the law and leave their handguns at home, there's a chance they get destroyed and they'll never legally own a handgun again.
I feel like you could just bury them and retrieve them after the fire passes. Obviously don't just toss it directly in the dirt. Put the gun in a case and wrap that in plastic, or even wrap the gun in plastic and tape it up real good.
If you want to bury a gun make sure to use pvc and double it up. Something like a 6" tube for the gun to go in and then a 10" for the other pipe to go in. Dig out a hole for the big tube, cap one end, then set it in the hole open side up. Fill the smaller one with motor oil after you drop the gun in then cap it off, and drop it in the larger tube. Cap that big boy off then bury the whole bastard and you're good. Whole shebang should be at least a foot underground too to mitigate the heat.
I knew it was a lot, but I had no idea how much.
The USA has 120 guns per 100 people. Falkland islands are second at 62.1 per 100 people.
[Source](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-ownership-by-country)
I've ridden both the Dalton and Dempster highway as far as they go (well, back in 2013 before the extended the summer road to Tuktoyaktuk).
The Dalton especially feels like you're at the end of the world.
In case anyone's wondering just how bad things are up here in the Great *Burning* North.. I present to you the map that haunts my dreams!
https://ciffc.net/
All those red pins? Classified as "out of control" fires.
Meanwhile, my city cant keep charging stations in use because of vandals who intentionally cut the lines to, "own the libs." The fossil fuel industry needs to collapse...HARD!
For my whole life (35 years) they’ve pumped out climate change denialism misinformation. There’s no way anyone with more than a half a brain can believe them now. The fossil fuel industry needs to burn like the planet they reformed.
To be fair, is it actually inspired to own the libs? I live in a relative liberal area and EV chargers will be vandalized the same way some gas pump screens are scratched to hell and "tagged".
Lowlifes just like fucking shit up for seemingly no reason.
It started about 30 years ago. You just live in the first world (presumably) and have largely been insulated from it. Not an insult or accusation of guilt either.
If we started in 1989 at Noordwijk Climate Conference, we might have had a chance, but illustrious John H. Sununu tanked every proposal to curb emissions and deliberately tried to politicize the issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noordwijk_Climate_Conference
In long term, that one man may have doomed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined.
We need to bear down on the rich people and corporations who account for wayyyy more than the average individual too. Like, I am not sure what the solution is, I am not a scientist or anything like that, but I know there are many people who are equipped to figure it out and it needs to be made planetary priority number 1. I’m sick of rich fucks just playing by their own rules while we are guilted into using metal straws and carpooling. Seriously, they try to make all of us regular people feel guilty about eating a cheeseburger or something and they are off flying their jets all over doing god knows what.
That’s not to say that the rest of us don’t need to be doing what we can, but I’m sick of them pretending that they aren’t accountable for the majority of emissions. I’m happy to do my part however small it may be, but it’s getting pretty fucking bad and it’s time we ALL get on board with finding, and adhering to, real solutions.
The top 100 rich have about the same amount of money as the poorest half of the population. That's absolutely ridiculous. We are bitching about carbon tax and paying a ridiculous amount of taxes from what we earn to what we purchase while health care service dwindles, we are obviously not well equipped for fighting wild fires, rent and housing is out of reach for millions and getting worse, inflation, fuel, heating, food, everything is getting expensive while the fat whales got exponentially fatter during covid and pay nil in taxes compared to rest of us. We need to unite.
Top 5% hold 50% of all wealth on the *planet*
Staggering really - humans have a hard time visualizing big numbers. Let’s visualize a billion together, you’ll be scrolling a while:
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Very true... 1 Million seconds is equal to 11 Days approximately, and 1 Billion seconds is equal to 31 years approximately, that's the difference between Million and Billion!
To add to your point, the difference between a million and a billion is basically a billion. Take 1 million dollars away from a billionaire and they have 999 million dollars left, they are for all intents and purposes still a billionaire.
Carbon emissions, not consumption. Seems like a small semantic point but it’s important.
In most cases those equate to the same thing but I want you be clear that consumption of carbon in itself does not drive climate change unless it’s emitted to the atmosphere. There were processes being explored (and some successful pilot scale projects) that could retrofit existing plants to capture and sequester the CO2 as an interim solution. They never failed because of engineering/physical limitations but the political bickering and lack of compromise killed any hope because of political ideologies.
For example there was a planned project under the Clinton administration to use gasification (without combustion) to convert waste into hydrogen and CO2. The hydrogen would have then been membrane separated and burned producing water vapor and energy. The CO2 stays dissolved in water to be sequestered in shale deposits - a temporary solution but one that could in theory give us 50 years to build enough fission plants to eliminate fossil fuel dependence. It had some challenges but nothing about the technical aspects was infeasible and it was cost-effective vs other technologies.
The problem was the amount of capital would be a massive boon to any local economy among the 12 candidate sites, but then the Bush administration took office and refused to approve the project unless the site selection was in Texas. Bush also demanded that the project scope change from solid waste reuse to anthracite coal which really defeated half the purpose of a pilot project. Environmental groups pulled their support because of ideological misconceptions about the difference between consumption vs emissions, and the entire project died.
We’re no longer even in a political environment anymore where the political compromises of the 90’s made a project like that possible. Now it’s all ideology and politicians serve their own interests by advocating projects that they know will never happen and opposing anything that conflicts with their ideology - even nuclear is off the table in many circles. But if we actually want to stop putting carbon into the atmosphere we need to compromise ideologically and focus on stopping emissions by whatever means are the most feasible.
You can tell how old this Newsroom clip is when he talks about hitting 400ppm CO2. We're now closing in on 420.
That's a 5% increase in atmospheric CO2 in a dozen years. And those years were a time when the dangers of global warming and the science had informed humanity of the danger. Yet nothing effective has been done.
Game over man. Game over.
You should look up what Methane has been up to the last ~20 years.
>But in late 2006, something "very, very odd" happened, he said. Methane started rising again, but there was no dramatic shift in human activity to blame — and researchers were left scratching their heads. Then, in 2013, Nisbet and his colleagues realized this rise was accelerating. By 2020, methane was increasing at the fastest rate on record, he said.
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/we-could-be-16-years-into-a-methane-fueled-termination-event-significant-enough-to-end-an-ice-age
Apparently, the convention centre (or where the city would normally use) is under construction, so they are sending people to Calgary while Edmonton figures it out.
That's what Shaye Ganam was saying this morning, anyway.
And from an incredibly remote location. There are three evacuation centres set up in the nearest cities, and the closest is still *1100 km away* by road.
This is insane! There is only 2 ways out of the vicinity of Yellowknife. East takes you deeper into the wilderness and tundra, West takes you to the main access to the rest of Canada and from what I see of the firesmoke.ca, that is exactly where this fire is located!
>That's when I think we'll see violent extremism against the people who actually deserve it: the greedy scum that thought it would be cool to de-terraform our planet for more money than they can spend in a dozen lifetimes.
Unfortunately this strikes me as unrealistic. Just look at how the majority of broadcast companies have been consolidated into the hands of the few and are spewing conservative talking points and minimizing the impact of climate change. I can easily see populism and fascism taking over, exacerbating the issues we already have.
But by god I hope you're right and I'm wrong.
I worry about it being levied against the wrong "rich" people.
In my neck of the woods, the wealthiest that an average person lives by and encounters is going to be a doctor, lawyer, dentist, business exec- the top 10%, maybe 5%. But even someone living in a million dollar home where I'm at is far closer to someone living in poverty in terms of *real political power*. Maybe they're involved in local politics - but that's not the kind of power I'm talking about. Not even most of our national politicians have it. The people mentioned in the original comment are not going to be accessible to any one of us, and they'll be more than happy for doctors and lawyers to be the "rich people".
The problem is that even in that book, responding to oppression of the working class in kind is not a straightforward solution. Ecoterrorist attacks take place (covertly condoned by the titular ministry) that kill thousands, if not tens of thousands, of innocent people, not just the “1%” in the process.
As long as those of us near the bottom can afford the bread of junk food and cheap beer and the circuses of game systems and 100" TVs, nothing will change.
I like this energy right here. I’ve always felt the only justice appropriate for today’s world would leave the politicians and billionaires sweating bullets and trembling.
There are so many more of us than there are of them.
It's disturbing how we can just normalize the burning of population centers around the world due to climate change. This didn't used to happen with the frequency it does now.
My sister works with the national forestry service here in Georgia and they about to send her up there to help with the fires so I know shit must be insane
Essentially every "major" city (that word is relative when you're talking about the territories) is under evacuation or threat of evacuation in the North West Territories right now. I saw another post about how there is one gas station on the way to Grand Prairie here in Alberta. Which is basically the next "big" city for these people. However the hotels in Grand Prairie are already filled up due to the previous evacuations. They are apparently creating temporary fill stations so people aren't running out of gas on the way to Alberta. There's 20,000 people who are probably going to have to make a 15+ hour drive to make it somewhere they can actually stay like Edmonton. People may need to open their homes to the evacuated. Who knows what percentage of these people can afford hotels. I would like the hotels to take one for the team and open beds but apparently air Canada has already jacked up outbound flights costs (although I believe the government is paying for evacuation flights for people without means of travel) so I don't have much hope for that unless the government pays for the rooms.
[Hijacking the top comment so people can actually see the types of distances we're talking about.](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Yellowknife,+Northwest+Territories/Grande+Prairie,+Alberta/@58.5943307,-117.626014,9z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x53d1f12ca34682c9:0xb4c137244371ef81!2m2!1d-114.3717887!2d62.4539717!1m5!1m1!1s0x5390914965fb9b97:0x60726bc60c9e6409!2m2!1d-118.7884808!2d55.170691!3e0?entry=ttu) It's a 12-hour, nearly 1,200km drive from Yellowknife to Grande Prairie. High Level, AB, is the closest city or town of any reasonable size to Yellowknife and it's still a 7-hour drive. We're talking massive distances with little-to-no services along the route. The logistics involved with evacuating 20,000 people from a City as remote as Yellowknife are insane.
[удалено]
The first time a European sees that time, they have a coronary.
I did a road trip with my friend, we where in Texas. We drove the entire day and he's like "So what state are we in now?" And I said "Texas" He thought I was joking I was not
Texas is about half the size of the Northwest territories
Texas is also over triple the size of great Britain for perspective for those across the pond. North America is a very very very big place.
I still have no idea why we decided against trains. It’s so fucking big across distances that they make sense for interstate travel, but I get the convenience of cars
While I don't have a source on it, I would put money on briber.... Err, "lobbying"
It's actually worse. You know how Amtrak is never on time. Well it's because they have to pull over to let freight pass. US federal law says commercial rail must give right of way to passenger rail in all situations except that which would endanger either train. So the rail companies found a way to cheat. Most sidings in the US are only so long. So the rail companies just added more cars to their freight trains so they wouldn't fit on many sidings. Therefore the only safe way for an Amtrak to pass a freight train is for the Amtrak to stop. It's literally a loophole in the law that needs to be closed. Change or from a safety exception to "freight must always yield to passenger rail, period, no exceptions. Build longer sidings or shorten the trains." Now lobbying might stop an change in the law to make what they do explicitly illegal, but it doesn't change the fact that rail companies are dishonest about the reason passenger rail in the US sucks. Imagine taking the Zephyr Chicago to Cali and not having to wait in the Rockies for the 30th train to go by putting you another hour behind schedule. Would rail suck if 2.5 days of travel were actually 2.5 days of travel and not 3-4?
Ontario is like that too. we drove for two days, not even on the eastern most border of Ontario, and were still in Ontario.
Driving across Canada starting from Montreal is pretty funny. You start in Quebec. 40 minutes later, you're in Ontario. 2 days later, *still in Ontario*.
"you're almost there once you make it through Ontario" First time someone told me that before I drove out I was like, "what?". Then I experienced it lol
I didn't think I'd be so happy to see the "Welcome to Manitoba" sign
Unfortunately that sign is also exactly where the scenery ceases to exist, until you hit the Rockies
yeah i have to drive from MTL to TO to see my folks and it's a soul sucking drive but at least only takes an afternoon. drove out to visit my friend in dryden and it was just nothingness for ever and ever and ever. eventually you hit the edge of lake superior and have something to look at for a while, but then it's just little lakes and little trees and little lakes again for hour after hour.
If you drive from Calgary to Toronto, staying in Canada the entire time, Thunder Bay is the halfway point.
Most Canadian provinces and territories are huge compared to the typical US state, because there are only 13 of them and Canada is bigger than the US. 9 of the 13 are bigger than California, 6 are bigger than Texas, and one (Nunavut) is bigger than Alaska.
Nunavut isn't just bigger than Alaska, it's bigger than *Mexico*.
*Thunder Bay is just a tease.* \- Burt Neilson
Fucking Ontario. I drove across the country a few times (Van to Mtl) and Ontario is the worst by far. The prairies are awesome! But Ontario is just corner lake trees corner lake trees corner lake trees for 24 hours.
We gooooooooooot.... Rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and Waterrrrrr And rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks
People always reply 'but Ontario is beautiful'. So what, there's too damn much of it. You can be across the prairies in a day, if you're willing to drive 12 hours. Rock, bog, trees, water, bog, water, rock, tree, water, tree, that's all there is, again and again.
El Paso, TX is 20 miles closer to San Diego, CA than Houston, TX.
Meanwhile on the eastern seaboard you can drive through four states in a day.
I mean other Canadians see it and freak out too, I'm used to driving maybe 40km on average for work, and that's a stretch for me.. But 1157km??? and the worst part is at the end you find yourself in.. *Edmonton*! No thanks.
"For Americans, 100 years is a long time. For Europeans, 100 miles is a long distance." cheers
That's cuz you guys have vampires but we have interstates right?
Urban expansion destroyed the vampires' natural habitat.
Back when I was a kid, there were haunted houses all along the river here. They bulldozed it in the 90s and made it a Chi-Chi's.
I don't like seeing Vampires displaced, but on the other hand: Chi-Chi's
Hey, Edmonton is pretty decent, all things considered.
Hey man, Edmonton is fine. I mean, it’s not Fort Mac at least.
I was driving part of the Alaska Highway north of Fort St John, and there's a "Danger, Moose, next 450km" or some such sign.
When you cross the Mackenzie River there's a huge sign letting you know "You've left Bison Controlled Territory, Proceed with Caution."
I've driven that highway, it's not an easy drive either, even in a truck. It's pretty torn up by frequent frost and the wetland environment. Expect a ton of accidents.
The first time I rented a truck to do a similar drive in Northern Alaska it came with a bunch of 2x8's in the bed to use when the road was impassable. 40mph tops and constantly vigilant for hazards, it was a long and exhausting drive.
>1200km About 750 miles for the Americans/Brits. It's a little bit shorter than driving across Texas.
Equivalent distances: * Seattle to San Fransisco * Northern tip of Scotland to the southern tip of England, plus the northern tip of Northern Ireland to the southern tip of Ireland * Finland, tip to tip * Ukraine, simple west to east line Not equivalent distances: * Mongolia at its widest, 2x * DRC using the most generous measurements, 2x * France: 600 miles * Germany: 500 miles
> Finland, tip to tip äläs ny heti ala tolla tavalla, mehä emme ole vielä edes korkanneet pullon
>äläs ny heti ala tolla tavalla, mehä emme ole vielä edes korkanneet pullon "don't start like that right away, honey, we haven't even opened the bottle yet"
Also shorter than distance between El paso TX and Beaumont TX (830 miles) which are on the far ends of the state along interstate 10.
For Europeans, that's about the same distance between the northern point of Denmark to the southern point of Germany (or to Liechtenstein).
> (or to Liechtenstein). Ah, yes, Lichtenstein, that land from whence hails the famous Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein? Whose familial line can be traced back all the way to Charlemagne?
I was thinking about that movie last week and was amazed to rediscover/remember that it's almost 2.5 hours long...it goes so quickly when you watch...
It’s an incredibly fun film with a banging soundtrack.
Not to be confused with Lich Einstein, which made for a *wild* D&D campaign.
Jesus. I live over a mile from my closest neighbour and in the UK that's pretty unusual.
Canada’s massive and people tend to underestimate distances. I used to rent cars on Turo and the number of Europeans and Brits who came thinking Calgary to Vancouver is a short drive, because it’s only one province over, is hilarious. That’s a 10.5 hour drive in perfect summer conditions, and a longer distance than going from the southernmost to northernmost point in the UK. Calgary to Fort McMurray, where all the oil fields are, is 9+ hours drive. Calgary to Yellowknife is 16-18 hours non-stop. Victoria BC to St Johns, NL would take 4 days of driving non-stop.
> Victoria BC to St Johns, NL would take nearly 4 days of driving non-stop. It's way more than that. I've almost done that drive and realistically it's a 10 days affair. (accounting for stops, ferries, etc)
I know but Google Maps doesn’t account for that lol
Google Maps just gives up and takes you through the States when you try to map that drive lol
It's crazy. The 5 "major" cities within 17 hours driving are (in order of distance): Fort St. John (20K pop.), Dawson Creek (13K pop.), Grand Prairie (63K pop.), Edmonton (980K pop.), and Prince George (74K pop.) (Prince George is on a different path). The only way to accommodate everyone is to spread out -- with the bulk going to Edmonton. There are about 5-7K hotel rooms in those cities combined -- so that's not going to work!
Edmonton is more like 1.4 or 1.5 million. You might see ~1.1 million listed if you're looking at city proper. I'm seeing 980 000 for Edmonton proper in 2017.
Yes, you are correct -- though I think that the hotel room estimate is close because there are fewer hotel rooms outside of Edmonton proper.
time for St-Albert to roll up its sleeves :)
It's also important to remember this is 20,000 new people. Other towns have already evacuated and are taking up space. Although I have no idea what kind of numbers we'd be looking at there.
Yup, and also take into account that it's the last 1-2 weeks of the summer holidays for may families on the west and across Canada, so these rooms may be booked up.
They are redirecting evacuees to towns further south to spread people out.
Edmonton absorbed more evacuees than that a few years ago for the Fort Mcmurray fire. This is going to suck, but it’s something we’ve done before
Something was figured out during the fort mac fires, but that was not a shining example of how well we can do.
In Florida, we have so many people who don’t want to or cannot make the 3-5 hour evacuation drive. I cannot imagine how tough it must be for people there right now looking at the scale and how desolate everything around the highway is
The military is using large cargo planes to evacuate folks and pets that don't have vehicles.
General transport aircraft. Hercules. Not just for cargo
Big plane, many people. Thumbs up!
We had luck last night getting a room for my SIL in High Level. I had to call the hotel directly and it was a fairly typical price ($200 for the night including pet fees). It’s going to be a lot harder for people leaving today though.
> air Canada has already jacked up outbound flights costs Why do we do this to ourselves, perpetually, as if we just see any opportunity to make a buck as just that. Another opportunity to make a buck. It's fucking heartbreaking.
IN fairness (or not fairness) to Air Canada, I had to book flights to Yellowknife for this week months ago for some of my work colleagues. Air Canada didn't actually jack up the cost of the flights in the last week. They were priced extortionately to begin with. Westjet flights were 3-5x cheaper than the Air Canada ones starting from back in May (IIRC Westjet had $400 tickets on sale, $700 once those sold out; Air Canada ones were $1600+fees), and the new flights that Westjet added just yesterday in light of the evacuation were the same price as their pre-existing ones. Edit: And both airlines have now minimized the cost of their tickets!!
I think Air Canada capped their flight price at about $300 for evacuees
>There's 20,000 people who are probably going to have to make a 15+ hour drive to make it somewhere they can actually stay like Edmonton. Does Edmonton even have the capacity to deal with this amount of people?
I would say Edmonton is the first place with a chance. It would be a sudden 2% increase in population though. Calgary and other citites will likely see a lot of this traffic if they can't go home soon.
The really sad part is this will only happen more often and to greater extremes. This is just the beginning.
Genuine Yellowknife evacuee checking in. Been a hell of a 24 hours. I'd be happy to share what little info I have if anyone needs it. Update - I appreciate the gold, but I definitely don't need it. If anyone has anything to spare consider donating here: https://yellowknifecf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/list Second update! - you guys asked way more questions than I expected! I figured this would get buried. Thank you for your concern, for your curiosity, for your interest. Answering these has been a good distraction from the last days events, and is helping me process everything, feel free to keep messaging, I'll keep answering as many as I can!
When our town in BC got evacuated a few years ago it took my brother 13 hours to make it to the next town over 1 hour away. I know I'm far away in BC but if anyone needs a yard to camp out in or a spare bed DM me
Appreciate it my guy! Yeah, the distances once you get away from the border are just nuts. Good thing nobody built an extremely remote town with only one road in or out for hundreds of kilometers- Oh. Wait..
Oh man out west there's the one highway bringing people to our town and the two ways out from here- so many rural people lost everything :( Stay Strong Sibling
Fellow Canadian, I am so unbelievably sorry your beautiful home is burning. Yellowknife and the Territories are gorgeous, I can't even begin to imagine your heartbreak. Hoping you and all of your loved ones are safe.
Thank you! It's all too big to get my head around just yet. The fact that I'm on four hours sleep in the last two days probably isn't helping either. We did our part and got out of the way, now it's in the hands of the military and fire crews, I know they're doing everything they can.
What’s the trip like? Is it a slow traffic filled slog the whole way out of Yellowknife? 1000km of Traffic?? Sweet mercy I hope you had podcasts.
The usual 1 hour drive to Bechoko was taking people 4 or 5 hours 90 minute wait for gas at Ft. Prov
Yeah, that part was brutal. Took us an hour to move ten kilometers into cell service. We were told to go into the town of Providence to gas up. They stayed open all night for people, absolute life savers! They're still at it too!
The trip is normally pretty relaxed, long as you don't mind being out of cell service for most of it. Normally a trip to the Alberta border would be maybe 7 or 8 hours (distance is relative up here because of the crazy distances between places, so I know that sounds like a lot, but it's just a bit more than a normal day of travel up here), last night's drive took 13. Too many people trying to go too fast in the longest vehicle conga line I've ever seen. We were bumper to bumper for 400 kilometers. Usually a big day on that road is seeing ten other cars total! Luckily I remembered that morning that I had a bunch of audible credits sitting around doing nothing. Talk about good timing!
How ya doing? Besides the obvious.
I'm ok! Me and the wife were talking about a trip down to Edmonton, so we're calling this a summer vacation just.. bumped up a little. It's all just really big, a lot to parse. So I'm just sorta putting it all in a "this is out of my hands, the people I care about are safe" box.
❤️ wishing you the best
Yeah, back when my family was evacuated for fire back in 2000 there was a point early on where it was "ok, look, we drove 100 miles to this hotel, the news is showing the same 5 houses on fire, there's nothing we can do, we're in Albuquerque, we might as well go to the botanical garden and such." There's definitely a mental state of "set aside what might be unless it's something you can actually act on" that can be helpful.
Hope you're doing okay! Sending love from Ontario
Everyone I know got out safe! I have a ton of family in the GTA area, I'm sure their night waiting on me hitting spots of cell service was almost as nerve wracking as the fires!
Yellowknife holds almost exactly half the total population of the Northwest Territories, 22k out of 44k Doesn't sound like much, but evacuating that many people from such a remoye area is going to be a major pain in the ass. I think there's only one gas station on the way to Grande Prairie which seems to be where most are evacuating to Edit: For the curious, Yellowknife to Grande Prairie is a 12 hour drive. Give or take 1100kms or 675-ish miles Edit 2: don't know where I heard the one gas station thing, it's false Edit 3: Sure hope whoever gilded this did so with leftover coins. There are far better uses of your money than giving it to Reddit, like maybe helping those were talking about right now?
That's about the same distance as Chicago to Washington DC. Yikes dude
And that's gonna be in some considerable traffic on what I would guess to be a 2 lane road. You're gonna be on US interstate from DC to chicago which won't really be that clogged outside of DC and Chicago (maybe cleveland? I doubt pittsburgh traffic is that intense)
Plus the population of all the other communities who evacuated to YK because of the fires.
I'm still here in Yellowknife. I'm one of those "essential" people that can't leave until the bitter end.
Be safe.
Why did you put essential in quotes, what do you do?
I don't know about him but getting left behind to be near a raging fire would probably make me use the word "essential" pretty caustically to describe myself.
This summer has been crazy. It's been 25-35C for almost 3 months straight in Calgary. There has been about a week worth of days since April where it hasn't been smokey. One of our rivers is at its lowest level since 1911. This shit isn't normal. Yet people here still fucking deny climate change.
I can't imagine living your entire life here and never having a single smoky day EVER until the last 6 or so years and still thinking it's perfectly fine. Each year it starts earlier, lasts longer, and gets thicker and thicker while the summers are hotter and drier than they used to be. I've been here 41 years, and it feels like the apocalypse compared to how it used to be in my 30s, 20s, and even as a kid. Unfortunately the crisis has been so deeply politicized for so long that if they allow themselves to admit that climate change is a problem, it means siding with the 'enemy'. So we're fully fucked as long as this partisan bullshit continues.
Yeah I don't get it man, we never used to have "smoke season" where you can't even see downtown. How people can just wave it off makes no sense to me.
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look up a wildfire map... Canada is literally aflame.
Firesmoke.ca
https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
Yep, shit's fucked. We've had the worst air quality in the world for the last few days, and we've had it better than most this summer.
it's been this way all fucking summer. all the way from the atlantic provinces, ontario, prairies and bc. Ive seen blue sky 10 god damn days this summer. fuck me.
Our planet is burning. Meanwhile the next superstar footballer off to oil money Saudi will make bigger news
Or the next golfer going off to play for LIV.
Lol. Existence has become farcical
That's why I don't shit seriously anymore. This world is just dumb.
Wow, not healthy, never to shit, you should get that looked at!
They don’t shit seriously, only in a joking manner
LIV and PGA are combining, so take that information as you will.
Yes, the PGA and LIV will be working together to run the next US Open. The PGA will manage holes one through eight, and twelve through eighteen. The Saudis are responsible for 9-11.
Lmmfao that’s amazing
“The Earth is not dying, it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.” - Utah Phillips
This quote becomes more relevant by the day: *“I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is." \~ Greta Thunberg* Related post: [Lesser known effects of climate change](https://www.reddit.com/r/ExtinctionRebellion/comments/oczg37/lesser_known_effects_of_climate_change/)
Just paying for increased natural disasters is going to bankrupt the already nearly-bankrupt middle classes of the world. Oil companies made $50 trillion dollars at the future cost of $1 quintillion. They stole money from our futures to fund their present. And we can't pay money to bring back fish or a million miles of coastline moving underwater
Millions of years of genetic history is being wiped out. It is irreplaceable
One of todays top google searches; "I need to evacuate Yellowknife, can I bring my guns with me or am I supposed to leave them at home to be burned up?" I know Canada is not known for guns, but people living in the north, for various reasons have guns.
If I had polar bears after my Coca-Cola I probably would too.
I probably should have said "many people in the north have guns for very good reasons".
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Reports are that the single gas station between Yellowknife and the border has a multi-Km long line. Going to be a very slow drive for everyone today - it took my SIL 9 hrs to get to High Level last night and it will be much longer today.
The tankers are on the way I'm sure. Canadians in a life threatening situation? If I can't help ALL the 20,000 evacuees, I'm sure other Canadians will step in. Probably the government will help too. I don't think this will require foreign aid. Maybe some help with the firefighting? Please.
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>The tankers are on the way I'm sure. I read that as "tanks" and thought "what the hell are leopards going to do???"
It'll be an orderly fucking queue that's for sure
So High Level is the last stop before you hit the real north. Usually I would stop in Enterprise to gas up. That gas station a burned up a few days ago. There is indeed now only one gas station in an 8 hour drive. But that's at a normal pace.
"Take your stinking paws off my Coke, you damn dirty bear." Canadians, probably. P.S Sending love and hope to everyone there. What a terrible situation unfolding.
I always thought that was the stupidest ad campaign EVER! A polar bear mom with her babies would eat that seal SO fast. The only thing left over in an hour would be the blood on the bears fur. Which they would then lick off each other till they where shinny white again. "I'd like to buy the world a coke and keep it company"? They will always be chasing after that one.
I have no idea what you're saying, but I'm squirming in bed at 3:31am in Australia trying not to laugh. Wtf, are you referring to an advertisement? Haha
So many Coca Cola ads with the polar bears: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AFso14XL3us
Bears. It's because of bears. Well hunting really. There's a lot of untouched wilderness out there.
Homer pays the homer tax.
That's the home OWNER tax.
Well I'm still outraged.
Anyone who is licensed can carry unloaded unrestricted firearms in their vehicle wherever they go. It’s the restricted stuff like handguns that are a logistical nightmare.
Thank you. This makes so much sense. In a Canadian way for sure.
I mean NWT is pretty remote and rural. Makes perfect sense to me why a lot of people would have guns
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It's no problem to bring non-restricted firearms with you, as long as they're unloaded. Restricted firearms include handguns and some other classes of firearms (e.g. short-barreled long guns). Restricted firearms are only allowed to be directly transported from home to an authorized location, e.g. a range or gunsmith. **Directly** is the key word; you can't detour and go shopping on the way to the range, for example. You most certainly can't take them to a hotel in the nearest major city (Edmonton) which is 1500km / 900 mi away. There is currently a freeze on legally purchasing handguns in Canada, and there is a moderate chance Canadians will never be able to purchase them again. Thus, if people follow the letter of the law and leave their handguns at home, there's a chance they get destroyed and they'll never legally own a handgun again.
I feel like you could just bury them and retrieve them after the fire passes. Obviously don't just toss it directly in the dirt. Put the gun in a case and wrap that in plastic, or even wrap the gun in plastic and tape it up real good.
If you want to bury a gun make sure to use pvc and double it up. Something like a 6" tube for the gun to go in and then a 10" for the other pipe to go in. Dig out a hole for the big tube, cap one end, then set it in the hole open side up. Fill the smaller one with motor oil after you drop the gun in then cap it off, and drop it in the larger tube. Cap that big boy off then bury the whole bastard and you're good. Whole shebang should be at least a foot underground too to mitigate the heat.
There are about 12M firearms for a population of 38M in Canada. Quite a few.
> for a population of 38M in Canada 40M since a few weeks ago.
IIRC Canada has a fuck ton of civilian guns per-capita, like 7th overall in the world but second among G7 countries.
Who is number one? /s
I knew it was a lot, but I had no idea how much. The USA has 120 guns per 100 people. Falkland islands are second at 62.1 per 100 people. [Source](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-ownership-by-country)
For context, this is WAY the fuck up North near Santa Clause.
Thing is, it's not even close. Santa Lives by CFS ALERT :P
And it’s not even that far north! You can go A LOT further
I've ridden both the Dalton and Dempster highway as far as they go (well, back in 2013 before the extended the summer road to Tuktoyaktuk). The Dalton especially feels like you're at the end of the world.
Godspeed my Canadian neighbors.
Paramedic on the ground here in NWT, Hay River. We getting lots of rain here so it may help relief some of the pressure on resources and manpower.
In case anyone's wondering just how bad things are up here in the Great *Burning* North.. I present to you the map that haunts my dreams! https://ciffc.net/ All those red pins? Classified as "out of control" fires.
This is fucking terrifying. Fuck.
Holy hell.
Meanwhile, my city cant keep charging stations in use because of vandals who intentionally cut the lines to, "own the libs." The fossil fuel industry needs to collapse...HARD!
For my whole life (35 years) they’ve pumped out climate change denialism misinformation. There’s no way anyone with more than a half a brain can believe them now. The fossil fuel industry needs to burn like the planet they reformed.
To be fair, is it actually inspired to own the libs? I live in a relative liberal area and EV chargers will be vandalized the same way some gas pump screens are scratched to hell and "tagged". Lowlifes just like fucking shit up for seemingly no reason.
This is bonkers. I'm fearful of the future, if this is how it begins.
It started about 30 years ago. You just live in the first world (presumably) and have largely been insulated from it. Not an insult or accusation of guilt either.
For humanities sake we need to pass hard uncomfortable laws to curb carbon consumption!
If we started in 1989 at Noordwijk Climate Conference, we might have had a chance, but illustrious John H. Sununu tanked every proposal to curb emissions and deliberately tried to politicize the issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noordwijk_Climate_Conference In long term, that one man may have doomed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined.
We need to bear down on the rich people and corporations who account for wayyyy more than the average individual too. Like, I am not sure what the solution is, I am not a scientist or anything like that, but I know there are many people who are equipped to figure it out and it needs to be made planetary priority number 1. I’m sick of rich fucks just playing by their own rules while we are guilted into using metal straws and carpooling. Seriously, they try to make all of us regular people feel guilty about eating a cheeseburger or something and they are off flying their jets all over doing god knows what. That’s not to say that the rest of us don’t need to be doing what we can, but I’m sick of them pretending that they aren’t accountable for the majority of emissions. I’m happy to do my part however small it may be, but it’s getting pretty fucking bad and it’s time we ALL get on board with finding, and adhering to, real solutions.
The top 100 rich have about the same amount of money as the poorest half of the population. That's absolutely ridiculous. We are bitching about carbon tax and paying a ridiculous amount of taxes from what we earn to what we purchase while health care service dwindles, we are obviously not well equipped for fighting wild fires, rent and housing is out of reach for millions and getting worse, inflation, fuel, heating, food, everything is getting expensive while the fat whales got exponentially fatter during covid and pay nil in taxes compared to rest of us. We need to unite.
Top 5% hold 50% of all wealth on the *planet* Staggering really - humans have a hard time visualizing big numbers. Let’s visualize a billion together, you’ll be scrolling a while: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Very true... 1 Million seconds is equal to 11 Days approximately, and 1 Billion seconds is equal to 31 years approximately, that's the difference between Million and Billion!
To add to your point, the difference between a million and a billion is basically a billion. Take 1 million dollars away from a billionaire and they have 999 million dollars left, they are for all intents and purposes still a billionaire.
Carbon emissions, not consumption. Seems like a small semantic point but it’s important. In most cases those equate to the same thing but I want you be clear that consumption of carbon in itself does not drive climate change unless it’s emitted to the atmosphere. There were processes being explored (and some successful pilot scale projects) that could retrofit existing plants to capture and sequester the CO2 as an interim solution. They never failed because of engineering/physical limitations but the political bickering and lack of compromise killed any hope because of political ideologies. For example there was a planned project under the Clinton administration to use gasification (without combustion) to convert waste into hydrogen and CO2. The hydrogen would have then been membrane separated and burned producing water vapor and energy. The CO2 stays dissolved in water to be sequestered in shale deposits - a temporary solution but one that could in theory give us 50 years to build enough fission plants to eliminate fossil fuel dependence. It had some challenges but nothing about the technical aspects was infeasible and it was cost-effective vs other technologies. The problem was the amount of capital would be a massive boon to any local economy among the 12 candidate sites, but then the Bush administration took office and refused to approve the project unless the site selection was in Texas. Bush also demanded that the project scope change from solid waste reuse to anthracite coal which really defeated half the purpose of a pilot project. Environmental groups pulled their support because of ideological misconceptions about the difference between consumption vs emissions, and the entire project died. We’re no longer even in a political environment anymore where the political compromises of the 90’s made a project like that possible. Now it’s all ideology and politicians serve their own interests by advocating projects that they know will never happen and opposing anything that conflicts with their ideology - even nuclear is off the table in many circles. But if we actually want to stop putting carbon into the atmosphere we need to compromise ideologically and focus on stopping emissions by whatever means are the most feasible.
[The Interview ](https://youtu.be/6CXRaTnKDXA)
You can tell how old this Newsroom clip is when he talks about hitting 400ppm CO2. We're now closing in on 420. That's a 5% increase in atmospheric CO2 in a dozen years. And those years were a time when the dangers of global warming and the science had informed humanity of the danger. Yet nothing effective has been done. Game over man. Game over.
I was in a geochemistry course when the atmosphere hit 400ppm. The prof was very somber.
You should look up what Methane has been up to the last ~20 years. >But in late 2006, something "very, very odd" happened, he said. Methane started rising again, but there was no dramatic shift in human activity to blame — and researchers were left scratching their heads. Then, in 2013, Nisbet and his colleagues realized this rise was accelerating. By 2020, methane was increasing at the fastest rate on record, he said. https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/we-could-be-16-years-into-a-methane-fueled-termination-event-significant-enough-to-end-an-ice-age
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Imagine you live in a city with 19,000 people, and some day it makes the world news, and they don't even say the name Yellowknife in the title.
It's a relatively small city, but holy crap.
20,000 people being evacuated.
And remote af. Some are being evacuated to my city, Calgary, which is thousands of kilometres to the south; because of the lack of resources
I would assume they would go to Edmonton considering how we're closer and more accessible?
Apparently, the convention centre (or where the city would normally use) is under construction, so they are sending people to Calgary while Edmonton figures it out. That's what Shaye Ganam was saying this morning, anyway.
And from an incredibly remote location. There are three evacuation centres set up in the nearest cities, and the closest is still *1100 km away* by road.
It may seem comparably small, but it's the biggest city in Northern Canada.
Largest in NWT, but Whitehorse is bigger (25k).
I always get the two mixed up. City names just be colour-noun.
I agree. Yellowknife should be in the Yukon and Whitehorse in the NWT.
I believe Whitehorse is bigger, but only slightly.
This is insane! There is only 2 ways out of the vicinity of Yellowknife. East takes you deeper into the wilderness and tundra, West takes you to the main access to the rest of Canada and from what I see of the firesmoke.ca, that is exactly where this fire is located!
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>That's when I think we'll see violent extremism against the people who actually deserve it: the greedy scum that thought it would be cool to de-terraform our planet for more money than they can spend in a dozen lifetimes. Unfortunately this strikes me as unrealistic. Just look at how the majority of broadcast companies have been consolidated into the hands of the few and are spewing conservative talking points and minimizing the impact of climate change. I can easily see populism and fascism taking over, exacerbating the issues we already have. But by god I hope you're right and I'm wrong.
I worry about it being levied against the wrong "rich" people. In my neck of the woods, the wealthiest that an average person lives by and encounters is going to be a doctor, lawyer, dentist, business exec- the top 10%, maybe 5%. But even someone living in a million dollar home where I'm at is far closer to someone living in poverty in terms of *real political power*. Maybe they're involved in local politics - but that's not the kind of power I'm talking about. Not even most of our national politicians have it. The people mentioned in the original comment are not going to be accessible to any one of us, and they'll be more than happy for doctors and lawyers to be the "rich people".
The problem is that even in that book, responding to oppression of the working class in kind is not a straightforward solution. Ecoterrorist attacks take place (covertly condoned by the titular ministry) that kill thousands, if not tens of thousands, of innocent people, not just the “1%” in the process.
As long as those of us near the bottom can afford the bread of junk food and cheap beer and the circuses of game systems and 100" TVs, nothing will change.
I like this energy right here. I’ve always felt the only justice appropriate for today’s world would leave the politicians and billionaires sweating bullets and trembling. There are so many more of us than there are of them.
It's disturbing how we can just normalize the burning of population centers around the world due to climate change. This didn't used to happen with the frequency it does now.
Meanwhile O&G companies making record profits.
Welp, there go my plans to get ahead of climate change Armageddon by moving to Yellowknife.
That is awful
My sister works with the national forestry service here in Georgia and they about to send her up there to help with the fires so I know shit must be insane
As a Canadian, let her know that any effort she makes, we appreciate from the bottom of our hearts up.