For anyone getting an emotional response and willing to blame climate change deniers, here's some dry government statistics on Canadian forest fires [0].
The number of fires over the past 4 decades is trending down. The numbers for area burned looks like each time there's a peak, it burns out enough fuel to make subsequent years easier. There were a couple of peaks in 1980s/1990s, but nothing that big recently.
Also, notably, the area burnt is lowest during recession years and COVID lockdown year. So when people could not afford to go camping/ATVing, the amount of fires was drastically less. Climate change probably does play some role here, but so does the 20% population increase in BC over the last 2 decades.
So, the correct question to ask is "what can we do as a reasonable trade-off to reduce the number of fires in the future without compromising the quality of life?". And the correct answer is "educate people on how to spot hazardous terrain and contain the fires they accidentally started". Requiring fire extinguishers at campsites/ATVs could help. Doing some training would help. Doing controlled burns would help. Renaming Environment Canada to "Environment and Climate Change Canada| and closing down local production in favor of Chinese imports won't.
The graph shown in the link ends at 2021, with was apparently a somewhat bad year but not horrible, with 4 million hectares burned. Clearly, there were worse years in the past, like 1989 or 1995, when more then 7 million hectares were burned.
Since 1996 no year had more than 5M hectares burned, and the graph (if you squint enough) does look like it's slightly trending down.
Except, enter 2023 [1]:
> As of August 17, 5,765 fires had burned 13,749,167 hectares (33,974,932 acres), about four percent of the entire forest area of Canada and more than five times the long-term average of 2.38 million ha (5.9 million acres) for that time of the year.
Want to see what an updated graph looks like? Found one here [2] - scroll down to the bottom.
It seems misleading to cite a graph ending at 2021 when we're seeing the graph shooting off the chart right in front of us.
2023 is a first El Niño year after a long streak of La Niña years [0]. Which means, drier-than-usual summer after multiple wetter-than-usual summers. If we assume that wetter years accumulate the fuel, and drier years burn it, it would explain a single peak in 2023 followed by lower-than-average years later.
Except that the very graph in your link shows 2023 as an unremarkable year. "El Niño after a few years of La Niña" practically happens every decade or so. Similar thing happened in 2002 and 2009: 2002 was an average fire year and 2009 was close to minimal fire.
"There are complex reasons for our dire wildfires, but scientists say climate change plays key role" [0]
"Our forest management practices, they've been like this since about the '80s. So why is it we're seeing the bad fire seasons now? It's because the weather has gotten more extreme."
> The number of fires over the past 4 decades is trending down. The numbers for area burned looks like each time there's a peak, it burns out enough fuel to make subsequent years easier. There were a couple of peaks in 1980s/1990s, but nothing that big recently.
I think this is a misleading interpretation of two (pretty vague) statistics.
How have the mitigation strategies for fire changed over the last 30 years? The area burnt may not increase but the fires may be more fierce/more difficult to control, and the lack of change in these stats may be because of control techniques being different. The same can apply for the amount of preparatory work being done (/money spent) before fire season.
> So, the correct question to ask is "what can we do as a reasonable trade-off to reduce the number of fires in the future without compromising the quality of life?". And the correct answer is "educate people on how to spot hazardous terrain and contain the fires they accidentally started". Requiring fire extinguishers at campsites/ATVs could help. Doing some training would help. Doing controlled burns would help. Renaming Environment Canada to "Environment and Climate Change Canada| and closing down local production in favor of Chinese imports won't.
This is such a wild false dichotomy.
Unless you're saying climate change has nothing to do with it, or is making fires better, it's a strange thing to play devil's advocate about -- especially pre-emptively.
I accept the scientific consensus that climate change is making a lot of these natural disasters worse/different and more frequent, so addressing climate change and teaching people how to survive novel natural disasters are both important on different time scales.
Hmm. Do you have any more info about 2020? This is an interesting theory. I note a few things though
1. The number of fires is trending down, but
2. The area burned is trending up
3. The number of fires in 2020 wasn’t noticeably different. Down but on trend. But area burned was very low
Idly I wonder if some of the worst fires are started by humans through carelessness or on purpose, and this number of fires was down in 2020? Could also be a coincidence. Some years in the past had a very low area burned with a normal number of fires.
Provincial parks were outright closed for some time. And people in general were too spooked to go grilling on a forest campsite with the entire extended family.
Here is a gif of all of the years in sequence. If you look at https://firesmoke.ca, or https://smokebuddy.app, you can see the fire perimeter polygons for 2023 so far. I'm not sure about perimeters for 2022, but I think there was less burned than this year and 2021.
You know this is the same sort of fallacious reasoning the deniers make when they say it's been usually cold and snowy in their part of the world? You need to show there's a link between the lack of rain and the province being on fire. Is there historical precedence for these kinds of dry periods and fires?
There is simple physics: warmer air holds more moisture, pulling it from the ground and holding it longer. Explains drier conditions and more extreme rainfalls when they do occur
I wish the hyperbolic phrase "X is in fire" would stop.
The entirety of BC is not currently on fire (obviously). And if "BC is on fire" right now, then it would also be "on fire" when there is one single forest fire burning in the province.
Most of the major cities are inundated with smoke, and almost all of the cities are flooded with people fleeing the fires. The two major interior cities are completely surrounded by fire and subject to rolling evacuations.
warmer air holds more moisture, pulling it from the ground and holding it longer. Explains drier conditions and more extreme rainfalls when they do finally occur
A majority of the comments people leave on this site only make sense in the context of a room full of people in actionable positions. And of course no such room exists.
People love to act as though they were woken up at 4am by their chief of staff, and they’ve just been led to the war room where their invaluable expertise is needed, stat, for the good of humanity.
“Simple. We just need to change the behavior of every single person on the planet.” they say with a tinge of annoyance. “Are we done here?”
> I don't understand your goal. Why are you doing this sort of comment? Taking the time to dull peoples minds against whats happening to the world?
> Is it for yourself? Are you scared and it makes you feel better to try and control other peoples' perceptions and reactions? Do you believe you're doing a service and creating a nuanced worldview that helps people make better decisions? You're not. I don't understand you.
> Are you in a position that this com
ment is useful? Is this a place where it is useful? If it's not, is the purpose of the article to solicit the sort of response you've provided?
> You are going to die asking stupid questions in meetings.
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome.”
On the contrary, to be critical of what the media tells them, quantify problems, rank solutions and check for conflicts of interest.
This won't work though. The critical thinking in the U.S. culture has been replaced by obedience, and we are back to hunting heretics in the name of holy symbols. It's a stable societal structure - look a poor Muslim countries, for example. They are busy blaming infidels for all their misfortunes, and will never attribute their poverty to the power structures on top of them. Threads like this, though, are good for gauging the speed of the societal decline and deciding when to emigrate forward.
If you yourself haven't lived in a country where "greater good" was used to swiftly destroy the then-emerging middle class, you won't recognize the patterns, so you can ignore the whole thing.
The number of fires over the past 4 decades is trending down. The numbers for area burned looks like each time there's a peak, it burns out enough fuel to make subsequent years easier. There were a couple of peaks in 1980s/1990s, but nothing that big recently.
Also, notably, the area burnt is lowest during recession years and COVID lockdown year. So when people could not afford to go camping/ATVing, the amount of fires was drastically less. Climate change probably does play some role here, but so does the 20% population increase in BC over the last 2 decades.
So, the correct question to ask is "what can we do as a reasonable trade-off to reduce the number of fires in the future without compromising the quality of life?". And the correct answer is "educate people on how to spot hazardous terrain and contain the fires they accidentally started". Requiring fire extinguishers at campsites/ATVs could help. Doing some training would help. Doing controlled burns would help. Renaming Environment Canada to "Environment and Climate Change Canada| and closing down local production in favor of Chinese imports won't.
[0] https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha/nfdb