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The Future of Fire in Canada

July 5, 2021

The Future of Fire in Canada

We’re on the brink of a ‘runaway fire age.’ Here’s why. And how to respond.

TransCanadaHighwayWildfire.jpg
A motorist watches from the Trans-Canada Highway as a wildfire sweeps down a mountain near Lytton, BC, destroying the town on July 1. Photo by Darryl Dyck, the Canadian Press.

Five days after wildfire destroyed the town of Lytton in British Columbia killing two people and injuring several others, officials were still trying to account for some residents who were missing. No one apparently saw the fire coming. When they saw smoke, according to Mayor Jan Polderman, it took all of 15 minutes before the whole town was ablaze.

This was the third time in five years during Premier John Horgan’s time on the job in which catastrophic fires have taken their toll. “I cannot stress enough how extreme the fire risk is at this time in every part of British Columbia,” he said the day after the evacuation. “This is not how we usually roll in a temperate rainforest.”

Lytton is actually located in the drier, fire-prone montane forest which dominates most of the interior of B.C. Contrary to what Horgan said, this is exactly how things have been rolling since at least 2003 when more than 45,000 people were evacuated from Kelowna and Kamloops as fires tore through thick stands of forests filled with ponderosa and lodgepole pine, Douglas fir and Sitka spruce, trees that need to burn because heat from a fire is the most effective way of opening up enough cones to release the seeds they hold.

Hotter hells

The year 2003 was notable not for the amount of forest that was consumed, but for the number of people in the West who were in harm’s way…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Half a degree may make heat impact far worse

April 8, 2019

Half a degree may make heat impact far worse

The US south-west may have more drought and forest fires with 0.5°C more heat. Image: By RD Gray on Unsplash

Half a degree of warming doesn’t sound like much. But there is fresh evidence that it could make a huge difference to rainfall and drought.

LONDON, 4 April, 2019 − Japanese scientists have found new evidence that a global average temperature rise as small as half a degree could have a drastic effect.

They conclude that the world cannot afford to delay action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming to 1.5°C by 2100 – the “ideal target” enshrined in the promise by 195 nations to limit warming to well below 2°C above the long-term average for most of human history.

The evidence is this: a shift of even 0.5°C could make a dramatic difference to the risks of devastating droughts and calamitous floods.

If governments keep to the letter of the Paris Agreement of 2015 but not the spirit, and let warming rise to the maximum of 2°, then there will be more intense rainfall across North America, Europe and Asia, and more intense droughts around the Mediterranean.

And although the average intensity of each flood or drought would increase measurably, the intensity of the most extreme event could be even more intense: 10 times greater. That is: the worst imaginable floods 80 years from now would be ten times worse than the worst today.

“Such drastic changes between flood and drought conditions pose a major challenge . . . risks could be substantially reduced by achieving a 1.5°C target”

At the heart of research like this is a new way of looking at future climate projections devised – by researchers all over the world – on a range of possible outcomes for a planet that has recognised climate change, vowed to respond, but failed to take sufficiently energetic steps.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Who or What Is Really Responsible for the Huge Forest Fires in California?

November 18, 2018

Who or What Is Really Responsible for the Huge Forest Fires in California?

Who or What Is Really Responsible for the Huge Forest Fires in California?
Once again, faced with the failure of the “press” to educate us on an issue, we decided to go out and research the truth about what appears to be the significant increase in huge forest fires.  Once we did the research, we found out major differences in facts from the random barkings in the MSM.

Let us start with this simple aspect.  Forest fires are a normal thing.  Often caused by lightning or other natural causes, they are God’s way of clearing forests.  In those natural forest clearances, the wildlife that exists in them are threatened or their habitat is destroyed.  What has changed is mankind’s intervention in the natural process.  The question is, what other factors may be causing the change in the intensity of recent forest fires?

We also came armed with a thought.  If you believe that global warming is making life more challenging for forest management, then you should support proper forest clearance. Otherwise we will be left with even more intense fires.

For this column, other than reading everything available, we went to two sources: our national Forest Service and the Union of Concerned Scientists to get different perspectives.

Speaking with Chris French, the Acting Deputy Chief of Forest Service (FS), we received a primer on what is really going on with forest fires today.

When asked what he believes is the primary cause of the intense forest fires, Mr. French’s immediate response was “Forests are overstocked.  There are more trees than 100 years ago.”  He went on to say that part of the problem was the Forest Service’s good work in the recent past stopping forest fires. This meant, however, that their focus was largely directed away from forest maintenance, which caused the elements that fuel a fire like underbrush, dead trees or more density to occur.

The changes French would like to see would be more active forest clearance and clearance of the underbrush.   He also wants to do more controlled fires when the risks are minimized.  If you are wondering why they are not doing that now it is because of budget restraints.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Stunning News from the Memesphere: Forest Fires had no Effect on the Public’s Interest in Climate Change

September 9, 2018

Stunning News from the Memesphere: Forest Fires had no Effect on the Public’s Interest in Climate Change

In 2018, the fires in California and in other parts of the world have been especially devastating. But they had little or no effect on people’s perception of global warming and climate change. It seems that we are operating on the basis of a wrong model of governance: the bottom-up mechanism is simply not working.

This year, we had the largest forest fires ever seen in history in California. And we had terrible forest fires in Greece, Portugal, and Scandinavia. Climate scientists were quick in stating that these fires were made more likely and more severe by global warming, but you don’t need to be a climate scientist to understand that higher temperatures mean drier conditions and that favors fires.

Then, if you live, as I do, in a bubble in the memesphere where climate change is regarded as a serious and imminent problem, you surely had the impression that the tsunami of fires of this summer was an important factor in affecting the perception of the general public. All that sound and fury couldn’t signify nothing, right? I saw several self-congratulatory messages in the meme bubble stating something like, “now they will start understanding the problem of climate change!”

Alas, that’s not true. The results are stark clear: there is NO evidence of an increased public interest in global warming as a result of the fires. Here are the results of a search on Google Trends for the United States, these data record the number of times that a certain term was searched on the Google Search Engine.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Logging Can’t Restore Burnt Forests

March 6, 2018

Logging Can’t Restore Burnt Forests

Photo by USDA Forest Service Alaska | CC BY 2.0

Every time I drive up to Mount Bachelor in Central Oregon I pass the Deschutes National Forest’s logging and mastication projects. The Forest Service and the Deschutes Collaborative suggest they are “thinning” the forest to preclude large wildfires and to “restore it.” (The collaborative is a working group of various stakeholders who advise the Forest Service about management issues.)

Neither of these assertions is accurate. What they are creating is tree plantations of largely even-aged trees — all done in the name of “fixing” the forest.

The first myth they are selling to the public is that logging can preclude large wildfires. There is a host of research — much by Forest Service’s own fire researchers as well as other ecologists — that concludes that under “extreme fire weather” nothing stops a wildfire.

When you have high temps, low humidity, drought and high winds, wildfires are unstoppable. It does not matter how much “thinning” or other fuel treatment you have done; wildfires will charge through, over and around any “fire break.”

When it appears that a fire break has stopped a blaze, check again. Almost always, the weather has changed. It is weather change, not firefighting, that allows humans to stop large wildfires.

I just visited the Thomas Fire in Southern California, the largest blaze in recent California history. Despite thousands of firefighters, and numerous fire breaks along the pathway of the fire, including 12-lane freeways, the only fire break that halted the Thomas Fire was the Pacific Ocean!

The only way to protect Bend and other communities is through mandatory firewise regulations that include nonflammable roofs, removal of flammable materials from near homes, and planning for rapid evacuation in the event of a wind-driven blaze.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

With Climate Change, a Terrifying New Normal for Western Firefighters

August 11, 2015

With Climate Change, a Terrifying New Normal for Western Firefighters

In the last two decades, officials in Colorado have watched as massive, months-long wildfires have become a regular occurrence in their state. A Yale Environment 360 video goes onto the front lines with Colorado firefighters who describe what it’s like to continuously confront deadly blazes fueled by a hotter, drier climate.

To many people, climate change is a distant, abstract concept. But to the men and women who battle wildfires in Colorado and throughout the American West, evidence of a warming world is something they face on a daily basis. In recent years, these fire crews have fought blazes that are larger, more frequent, faster-moving, longer-lasting, and increasingly unpredictable — the result of rising temperatures, diminishing snowpack, and more frequent droughts.

This e360 video, “Unacceptable Risk: Firefighters on the Front Lines of Climate Change,” produced by The Story Group, focuses on the people battling to save lives and property in a rapidly changing environment.

It tells the story of dedicated professionals struggling to come to grips with a new and frightening breed of fire. Once known as the “asbestos state” because of its low incidence of big wildfires, Colorado is now experiencing huge, record-breaking fires almost every year.

“We’re being asked to battle fires that didn’t exist 20 years ago,” says veteran firefighter Don Whittemore. “We’re seeing a level of fire and an intensity of fire and a risk to firefighters that hasn’t existed in the past. On a day-to-day basis we’re being surprised — and in this business, surprise is what kills people.”

Watch the video.

Experts Make Case for Letting Canada’s Wildfires Burn

July 11, 2015

Experts Make Case for Letting Canada’s Wildfires Burn

Fires ‘reset the landscape to be less flammable,’ say researchers.

As climate change is fingered as a catalyst driving the early rash of forest fires across northern and western Canada, experts say the most prudent approach at this stage is to, whenever possible, let the fires burn.

Western Canada is now enduring one of the worst wildfire seasons on record, with hundreds of people fleeing homes in B.C. and more than 13,000 evacuations across Saskatchewan. But those studying the issue say the human costs of wildfire need to be balanced against research that suggests vulnerable forests are going to burn either way — especially given the mounting pressures presented by climate change.

Fire agencies in the Northwest Territories and British Columbia explicitly name climate change as a factor driving heightened fire risks. The federal ministry that oversees development of the oilsands predicts the amount of area burned by forest fires in previous decades could double during this current one.

”The question becomes, if we’ve got areas where fire can burn, the most responsible thing to do ecologically, fiscally and for long-term health is to let those fires burn,” said Toddi Steelman, executive director of the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan.

”If we don’t let them burn, we have to pay that account down the line… the forest will burn eventually.”

When boreal burns, less flammable trees grow back

 

Jill Johnstone has spent several yearsinvestigating the effects of wildfire on the boreal forests in Alaska and the Yukon and the Northwest territories. One of her discoveries is that in areas where forest fires burn severely and frequently -– a growing phenomenon in a warmer, drier climate — the typical black spruce trees that characterize much of the boreal are replaced by leafy deciduous species such as aspen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Missing from Canada’s Political Debate: Natural Security

June 3, 2015

Missing from Canada’s Political Debate: Natural Security

25-year review of Canada’s eco-stewardship reveals neglect across party stripes.

Canada’s prime minister is pre-campaigning with a strong-on-security message. His government is taking measures designed, among other goals, to protect energy infrastructure from what the RCMP has called “violent environmental extremists.”

As I write, enormous forest fires burning out of control across northern Alberta have done what no activist has accomplished: forced the suspension of oilsands operations.

These events capture a dimension missing from Canada’s security debate: our natural security.

Our natural security is physical. It provides the stable, productive environment that has allowed Canada to prosper. In the form of fields and lakes and forests, and in global exchanges of water and energy, natural security underwrites our economy, our health and our ability to maintain the institutions that serve and protect us.

Every one of Canada’s governments since 1989, including the present one, has expressed strong environmental principles and enacted impressive legislation to protect vulnerable species, defend Canadians against pollution and prevent development from devastating critical ecosystems.

Despite those laws, audits and independent assessments persistently warn us that our natural security is degraded, failing and increasingly undefended. And that should concern Canadians of all political stripes.

The wide gap between our aspirations and actions confronted me again and again as I sought an answer to an apparently straightforward question: “How well has Canada cared for our environment — really?”

The year-long search was commissioned by Tyee Solutions Society, an independent journalism production centre started by the founders of this publication and donor-supported. It collated events, laws, international developments and a wide range of public audits and independent assessments over a period in which five prime ministers from three parties occupied 24 Sussex Drive. All of that information is now available and searchable online.

 

 

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

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