kEiThZ
Superstar
Ah yes. The scientists are all wrong. Did you lick doorknobs during COVID?
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The Climate Change Thread
- Thread starter afransen
- Start date
Irishmonk
Senior Member
Yeah, all that fuss about acid rain and the ozone hole was such a waste since those problems just went away by themselves. I mean, it's not like any corrective action was taken due to media attnetion and environmental activism at the time. But, hey, "scientists", pfft, what do they know?
afransen
Senior Member
In some ways things are turning out at the worst end of predicted outcomes. There is a huge, well-resourced and highly motivated contingent of misinformation generators trying to muddy the waters on climate change.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Why doesn’t this country have a national wildfire and forest fire control plan? Canada can’t really do anything about reducing climate change beyond virtue-signalling carbon taxes, but we can and should protect our housing from climate-induced fires. Instead, Ottawa has normalized wild fire “season” like it’s just something we must put up with.
www.canada.ca
In fact, reducing the carbon released by uncontrolled wildfires is perhaps the greatest contribution to reducing global carbon emissions that Canada could potentially make.
Government of Canada: Updated 2024 wildfire season projections and preparedness measures - Canada.ca
Today, Minister Harjit S. Sajjan, President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness, with Parliamentary Secretary, Sherry Romanado, Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, and Minister Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment...
In fact, reducing the carbon released by uncontrolled wildfires is perhaps the greatest contribution to reducing global carbon emissions that Canada could potentially make.
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AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Why doesn’t this country have a national wildfire and forest fire control plan? Canada can’t really do anything about reducing climate change beyond virtue-signalling carbon taxes, but we can and should protect our housing from climate-induced fires. Instead, Ottawa has normalized wild fire “season” like it’s just something we must put up with.
Government of Canada: Updated 2024 wildfire season projections and preparedness measures - Canada.ca
Today, Minister Harjit S. Sajjan, President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness, with Parliamentary Secretary, Sherry Romanado, Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, and Minister Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment...
At the same time, what are the provinces themselves doing? Did they not learn anything from last year?
AoD
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Whataboutism won’t get us anywhere. If Ottawa wants to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions and demonstrate moral leadership to the globe on the climate change issue, then preventing huge carbon-filled smog clouds spreading internationally from the country’s uncontrolled fires is a good place to start.
Canadian wildfire smoke could again impact US, experts said
With wildfires burning across Canada, meteorologists said conditions are stacking up for a replay of last year's fire season when skies over New York City turned orange.
abcnews.go.com
Satellite images show Canadian wildfire smoke over UK
It is likely to produce some dramatic sunrises and sunsets but is not harmful, the Met Office says.
www.bbc.co.uk
Other countries impacted by Canada’s wildfire emissions and smoke do not look to the individual provinces to do their part. No, they call up Ottawa and tell the national government to get it fixed. If the Feds need to involve the provinces, then do it.
Last winter the PM should have meet with all thirteen territorial and provincial leaders and said basically that" "we know the wildfires will return, so we must make an effort now before the fires begin, as the Feb gov't we're here to help in areas where the prov/territory has jurisdiction, and can take the lead otherwise, what do you need from us?"
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afransen
Senior Member
Is there much Canada can do, practically, to control the fires? The accumulated fuel needs to burn eventually. At most we can mitigate damage to property and loss of life. I am doubtful we can improve downstream air quality.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
IDK, but what we're doing isn't working. It's not about putting out all fires, as forest fires are part of nature, but they should be managed where necessary.
Fire management
Just as fire is an integral part of the forest, fire management is an integral part of forest management.
natural-resources.canada.ca
If Canada wants to be a leader on climate change, we must stop polluting the atmosphere with carbon every "fire season".
"Finland has one of the world’s most successful strategies to counter wildfires, and it is now being more closely examined in other nations recently struck by large-scale fires."
Yes, kneejerk contrarians will tell us that Finland is a small country with a centralized government, but that doesn't mean we can't scale up from their experience.
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afransen
Senior Member
My understanding is that best practice of forest management is not to prevent fires, as this allows for accumulation of fuel leading to large, uncontrollable fires. Instead management should encourage regular, if not prescribed, burns.IDK, but what we're doing isn't working. It's not about putting out all fires, as forest fires are part of nature, but they should be managed where necessary.
Fire management
Just as fire is an integral part of the forest, fire management is an integral part of forest management.
If Canada wants to be a leader on climate change, we must stop polluting the atmosphere with carbon every "fire season".
"Finland has one of the world’s most successful strategies to counter wildfires, and it is now being more closely examined in other nations recently struck by large-scale fires."
Yes, kneejerk contrarians will tell us that Finland is a small country with a centralized government, but that doesn't mean we can't scale up from their experience.
It's a bit misleading to characterize carbon in biomass as a problem for climate change. That carbon is all part of the active carbon cycle. We should probably be a bit more concerned about all the fossilized carbon we are releasing through resource extraction and our profligate lifestyles adding net new carbon to the carbon cycle.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Of course out of control and increasingly huge wild fires are a problem for climate change. I would not be surprised if the 2023 wildfires represented Canada's highest per capita carbon emissions of all time.
Copernicus: Canada produced 23% of the global wildfire carbon emissions for 2023 | Copernicus
atmosphere.copernicus.eu
Certainly regular forest fires are part of nature, but if they represent a large portion of our carbon emissions we should be managing fires as part of our carbon reduction strategies.
DirectionNorth
Active Member
While it's true that forest fires are a part of the natural cycle, very large wildfires like the ones we saw last year are not, and cause both property and ecological damage.
We should be doing prescribed burns, if for no other reason than to prevent expensive mass-evacuations and property damage. Forest management (eg. clearing the undergrowth) may be desirable near populated areas, like in Kelowna last year, though I'm just a person with an opinion
Northern Light
Superstar
Some of Finland's strategies are transferable (prescribed burns); some aren't or would be inadvisable (extensive backcountry roads and bush cuts that divide forests into 'compartments'). The latter has some adverse impacts ecologically, but it would also be prohibitively expensive in Canada given the size of our back country.
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Prescribed burns do have a place here, though it needs to be said, we simply can't carry them out on a super wide scale, the sheer size of our land mass is far too great, and the risk profile of starting a fire we can't contain is a real issue. So this would need to be a focused part of a strategy, near larger population centres or strategic infra.
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The biggest change we could make is one of how we managing logging forests.
Right now, Canada permits and forestry companies carry out the proactive application of pesticide on managed forests for the purpose of suppressing species of low timber value. (notably Aspen and Birch).
But Aspen, being deciduous are a potential natural firebreak. They are considerably slower to catch than coniferous species. Letting them get large and form material colonies can create natural compartments that reduce fire spread.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Because fighting forest fires is actually a provincial responsibility. As are natural and man made disasters that strike in their jurisdiction. The provinces suck at it and have gotten habituated to doing nothing but waiting for the disaster to be big enough to call in the military. This is something the military has been complaining about for years.
The federal government keeps threatening to bill provinces for federal aid and never does it. Because no MP what's to have to run on billing their province after a natural disaster. I hope the next government cracks down hard. The CAF should not be your firefighting force.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Since when does Ottawa and especially this federal government care about jurisdiction? If we can have federal ministers of health, housing, environment, and natural resources, all areas of provincial responsibility, why not a federal lead on wild fire management or at least intra-provincial cooperation? When wildfire smog impacts Canada distant neighbours it become a national and international matter.
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kEiThZ
Superstar
They might not, but the courts certainly do. See what the courts did to the federal government's attempt to tie up Highway 413 in Environmental Assessments. So while the government can incentivize behaviour with buckets of cash (which is what this government does), they most certainly can't just boss the provinces around in areas that are clearly within provincial donmain.