As flames from the massive forest fire in Jasper National Park ripped into the west side of the town of Jasper Wednesday night, Edmonton broadcaster Courtney Theriault plaintively tweeted that “we should probably have a grown-up talk about wildfires now.”
With catastrophic forest fires so big they create their own weather systems increasingly becoming a deadly summertime routine in Western Canada and the list of communities reduced to rubble increasing, indeed we should.
Don’t hold your breath, though, waiting for that to happen.
Even before the flames had devastated Jasper, political partisans on social media fell to blaming each other for the crisis in Jasper, often indicating a profound misunderstanding of how fire is managed in national parks, while politicians of all stripes in all parts of Canada lined up to say stupid stuff on social media.
This is not to say there isn’t plenty of blame to go around, or lots of useful lessons to be learned from the catastrophe that befell Jasper this week – or Slave Lake in 2011, or Fort McMurray in 2016, or Lytton, B.C., in 2021, or myriad other places in other recent years. Nor is it to say we don’t need to think about new forest fighting strategies, ways to fire-proof homes and communities, and so on.
But at the root of the growing crisis is the fact that this isn’t about provincial forest fire funding or federal forest fire fighting strategies – although both those things matter – but about global climate change.
Obviously it was dumb of the Alberta government under both the UCP and NDP to cut funding for forest fire fighting.
And, yes, in retrospect Alberta Forestry Minister Todd Loewen and Premier Danielle Smith sound like dopes chattering last spring about how all we really need to put the fire threat behind us is “a couple nice snowstorms like we had last weekend and a few nice rains in the spring” (Loewen) or how “we won’t always have a $2.9-billion disaster like we did last year” (Smith).
Guess again about that, Madame Premier!
You can argue if you wish that Parks Canada – which is fully responsible for fire management within park boundaries – should more aggressively have culled trees killed by the climate-change-driven pine bark beetle infestation – although, personally, I have more faith in the expertise that resides within Parks Canada than the far-right propaganda bots that infest Twitter with their conspiracy theories.
It is an indisputable fact, despite claims to the contrary by UCP-affiliated social media rage machine, that Parks Canada aggressively uses prescribed burns to manage the threat to park communities, despite occasional resistance from community residents.
This largely uninformed social media debate will not be helped, of course, by Premier Smith’s misleading inference during Thursday’s Alberta Government news conference that things would be better if only the province were leading the fight. “You can’t send in unmanned aerial vehicles which we use with infrared, can’t send in our helicopters with night vision, can’t send in waterbombers without being integrated with them,” she slyly complained.
In reality, whichever agency is taking the lead, backup is co-ordinated through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which is an obvious necessity for safety reasons, especially with large numbers of aircraft in a small area.
And Parks Canada employs some of the finest forest fire suppression teams in the world, which have been drafted to help out in similar situations in other provinces, California, Australia, and other countries that like Canada are increasingly afflicted by climate-change-driven fires.
Alas, even refined tactics and increased budgets won’t do much to prevent every summer in Western Canada from becoming a nightmare of smoke and destruction as long as we have governments, like Alberta’s in particular, whose climate policies are characterized by the Three D’s of Denial, Distraction, and Delay.
Rest assured that Ms. Smith and Mr. Loewen will be quite pleased if we continue to argue about tactics and budgets, even if that includes some criticism or their short-sighted budget cuts, instead of starting to have the grown-up conversation we need about the root causes of this accelerating annual crisis.
God forbid that should happen! It might mean more of us connect the dots between those huge bitumen-extraction holes in the ground in northern Alberta and the flames all around us!
In the meantime, though, there will be no shortage of thoughts and prayers for the poor people of Jasper – and the next town to burn, and the one after that.
“Three D’s of Denial, Distraction, and Delay.’’ Perhaps 4D add Danni.
The words UCP government and honest discussion do not belong in the same sentence.
There are a lot of foolish theories circulating in regards to why we are seeing wildfires like this. It isn’t helping. Extended periods of drought are making our forests bone dry. When wildfires happen, they get worse. Danielle Smith seems to put on a good act. She did that when the children contracted E-Coli in daycares in the province. Something seems off about that. When there were wildfires burning in Alberta previously, Danielle Smith was in British Columbia watching a hockey game. She’s not a leader.
OOOOOOOOHHHH… a swing and a miss!
That is going to leave quite the bruise!
Todd, sorry olde boy, but we’re on a long uphill path. The world of “alternative facts” is so often stripped of it’s delusions in a most brutal manner.
Queen Danielle and the UCP are NOT serious people.
Albertans, the stupidest people alive, handed the government to a bunch of thin-skinned, easily triggered, forever-angry, pinheads, who only have one motivation: to whine and complain about Ottawa and PMJT forever. They are not serious people, at all.
So, after the complete destruction of Jasper, the pointing started. The UCP believes that since it’s a national park, it’s a federal responsibility. Wrong. The province looks after the maintenance and fire management. Smith has been cutting funds from wildfire management (like Jason Kenney before her.) every chance she could get. Ottawa has consisted warned about the consequences, but to no avail. The UCP boneheads are incapable of being adults. It’s as simple as that.
Now that Jasper has been incinerated, Alberta now wants a centralized wildfire management program. Great idea. Except, Ottawa and Alberta have been unable to come to terms with how the command should world because … wait for it … Alberta refuses to talk about it. Now that the notion of the command looks more pressing than ever, Smith is strutting around acting like she came up with the idea (She didn’t) and Alberta wants to run it. (They can’t.) Ottawa has made it more than clear that the command must span all the provinces affected … so Alberta Uber Alles be damned. Alberta is not a serious place.
Now that Smith is content to be relieved in the fire’s aftermath by declaring that at least the Trans Mountain Pipeline was saved, she is unlikely to do anything else, apart from blame Ottawa for everything.
Albertans are NOT serious people.
Just: Federalism is, by definition, complicated. But within the borders of the National Parks, Ottawa has jurisdiction over firefighting. That is clear. There are differences in the approaches taken inside and outside National Parks, because generally speaking anything that is not part of the natural ecosystem is not used in the Parks Canada management – therefore, logging has not been used, and prescribed burns have been allowed. Beyond that, automobiles are still licensed by the province, provincial taxes are paid by residents, policing is provided by Ottawa, and so on. Too complicated to try to create a comprehensive description of how it works in a comment section like this. DJC
The biggest fire I saw with my own eyes was from the lookout hill near Lesser Slave Lake. I turned the ignition off on my trusty rattletrap bike, removed my helmet and turned to view twilight vista to the east: it was a 180º wall of flame, far in the distance but continuous, sickeningly deep red. Holy wow!—I yelped.
I’d just come from the pub where the entire crew my foolish boss employed to plant trees (all from Quebec, like him, and none with any tree-planting —or even camping experience—whatsoever, only admitting it to me, way out in the woods where I guess they presumed they couldn’t be so easily fired). I’d arrived a day early to sign for trees from the AFS and found no cook-trailer or cook, no dining tent, no first aid, no employer, no nothing…) The crew arrived in some rental trucks and we started to plant next morning. After I’d returned from taking one of their number all the way from Wabasca back to the Slave Lake hospital to treat her allergic reaction to one of the many species of biting insects, I discovered an AFS checker had visited in my absence and told this practically useless crew that they could get hired to fight fire at a parsimonious hourly rate—which was still more than they could hope to make stabbing plugs into the frozen ground while being gnawed on by noonday horseflies in sweltering summer heat.
As they abandoned the brand new tents and cooking kits they bought in Slave Lake which the boss (unbeknownst to me) said they could work off, I radioed the AFS to come pick up the stash of trees (reliving me of their survival on-site), and awaited the boss who arrived— just as the AFS cooler-truck was leaving with the trees— with a couple of old, white barflies from town and two native guys he picked up hitchhiking, supposedly to replace two-dozen planters. Realizing I was going to get stiffed for the work I’d already put in, I rolled up my DEET-soaked sleeping-bag and left, just far enough behind the cooler-truck to miss its dust.
Leaving the boss with the mess he’d created by commandeering the hiring and camp setup tasks from me (he was very touchy about who was perceived as “boss”) I found the crew celebrating their new employment in the pub at Lesser Slave Lake. Having myself fought fire before, I declined to join them and wished them well (the poor, innocent bastards). I retired to the windy lookout hill to escape mosquitoes for my overnight camp but when I saw the extent of the wildfire so frighteningly massive in the dusky east, I decided to head south right away. Short on gas, I coasted down every hill I could discern in the smoky, bug infested night. The fire didn’t make it all the way to Slave Lake but did burn down the small community of Red Earth. By that time I’d made it all the way back to Calgary and gotten another job falling trees along the TransAlta transmission line from Kananaskis down to Elkford, BC. (Very few big street bikes have crossed the Continental Divide on a hydro right-of-way road as many times as I did on my commutes to Elkford)
The last fire I was on was near Gunn Lake on the lee slope of the Coast Mountains west of Lillooet, late 80s. An old friend from high school back in Upper Canada visited last summer to relate how a wildfire at Gunn Lake had destroyed a number of summer cottages, fortunately his being spared. The difference between then and way back when I was there is that all the wildfires we ever dealt with were so-called “controlled burns” of logging slash which had jumped into adjacent timber and taken off. At least we knew where they were going to be. Today, wildfires are largely at the whim of lightning storms (although a large minority are still caused by human activity) which often strike in steep, inaccessible places.
Despite the stark contrast between then and now, attitudes are slow to change: people in the pyrotechnic pathways of wildfires still can’t believe it’s happening to them, where they live instead of some remote, northern place where nobody lives.
But cottages in the woods lost to wildfire are peanuts compared to conflagrations that roar into towns and cities, where public and private costs soar to heights as stratospheric as the self-energizing, cyclonic wildfire-smoke columns forming towering, high-altitude anvils which, to borrow from Rushde, stand like hammerheads along the horizon. Or, to paraphrase Dolly Parton, wildfires don’t care where they blow.
I take exception to go-fund-me FB sites that solicit money to save “imperilled rainforests” on BC’s Gulf Islands: I lived on a few of them over the years, can attest that all of them are in the lee of Vancouver Island and therefore much too dry to have rainforests. Yet I realized that the distinction I use to admonish ethical-relativist authors of these misleading funding sites is itself becoming less distinct: the definition of a rainforest—surprise, surprise!—is that there is no summer water deficit on the windward, west, or rainy side of the Big Island, not like there is every year in the markedly drier lee (indeed, cacti grow on the Gulf Islands; lake-bottom sediment cores reveal that pollen from ponderosa pine, the typical semi-desert tree species of BC’s south-central Interior, was abundant in the Salish Sea region only 5,000 years ago) so there is little history of wildfire in rainforests but centuries of discernible fire history in the drier, (Salish Sea) Coastal Douglas Fir Zone where these supposed “rainforests” are “imperilled”. Thus I’m obliged to conclude my corrective missives with the fact that wildfires, though so far few and small in comparison with those in the dry Interior of BC and the continent are now happening on the west coast of the Big Island. That’s so rare the attitude is they’re one-off, random, not-to-worry fires where almost nobody lives—the usual, anodyne standby for southern residents of Canada. But it truly is worrisome.
(Of course there’s a long tradition of pretending small indigenous communities allocated by the “Indian Reserve” system of the federal Indian Act, way back before climate change began producing so many big wildfires, —communities like Red Earth, east of Lesser Slave Lake—are supposedly where “nobody lives”.)
Such attitudes are not the result of persistent racial prejudices—at least not entirely or necessarily so—but rather sustained by a persistent notion that more-densely settled regions will somehow be spared. Or that by praying one’s house might be missed while others nearby, presumably where prayer wasn’t asked, will not be. It’s largely one of DJC’s “Ds”, that of “Denial”—although superstition, like prayer, could be counted as a Second-D, that of “Distraction”.
Since in reality it’s become impossible to distract from undeniable evidence that wildfires are now an annual scourge rather than an occasionally random, fated or inflicted one (for those who believe either Godetal or Mother Nature —or both—are mad at us eco-sinners), we arrive at wondering about the “Third D”, “Delay”. Now that we can almost set our clocks, or at least mark our calendars’ by the yearly arrival of wildfires and/or smoke at a place near any of us (and why not include grass and muskeg peat-fires, too?), how is it towns like Jasper and, of all places, Kelowna (which is again threatened this year even after hundreds of homes were consumed in two previous fires in 2003 and 2023) aren’t better prepared to meet the hazard with well-known abatement techniques?
With Denial and Distraction still in play—although with diminishing effect—many places are still incredibly unprepared and, when the worst happens, like in Lytton, BC, where the entire town was incinerated within an hour in June, 2021, a day of record-breaking heat in Canada’s traditional hotspot (from a grass fire), the Third-D becomes the ‘it-D’, “Delay”: not only was fire hazard abatement delayed, reconstruction is only just now beginning in Lytton, three years after the devastation. Imagine living in a motel for three years waiting for insurance adjustment, disaster relief, &c. We may legitimately ask, then, how long will it take for Jasper to recover?
Let us grant that there are jurisdictional complications. For example, since wildfire is ecologically natural, some parks try to mimic by allowing wildfire to burn and renew the forest, but since parks are merely small but highly valued recreational redoubts in a sea of a conflicting industrial/urban paradigm, the question of how much of the park should be allowed to burn and how much suppression money be spent on keeping the careless natural phenomenon inside the artificial park boundary becomes one with ready answers: irrespective of federal or provincial jurisdiction, humans, their livestock and infrastructures must be preserved and, if burnt over, losses must be remunerated and thereby restored. Given the vital danger, however the costs and inconveniences, each with its own critical aspects, it’s a logical conundrum why the Three-Ds still persist.
Jurisdiction must also ask about policy and politics. And since we’re talking Alberta where hyper-partisanship smothers most of the firefighting policy tools any jurisdiction should have, we must include (as one of the sage commenters does, above) Danielle Smith as the “Fourth-D”. Her government’s lackadaisical parsimony in wildfire protection (budgets are continuously reduced as the hazard increases) and her blubbering over Jasper might be counted lacriminating simony, the selling of government offices and favours to Big Bitumen while tearfully lamenting the razing of Jasper, seemingly too distracted from, or in denial of, that industry’s significant contribution to the very climate change which has accelerated the occurrence of wildfires around the world. Danielle’s Resort to the First-D is only somewhat checked, her reaction is as if she can’t believe this is happening, almost as if she herself is the victim—the Second-D, Distraction—and her Delay— the Third-D—are features we already know. But with Alberta in particular, home of one of the single-most polluting petro-works on the globe, she has earned a Fourth-D, “Danielle”, for her partisan chauvinism, geared to sustain all the Ds—including, naturally, her own—for as long as she can.
Another Fourth-D is the Dimension of space-time, where and when things appear as they do depending on the observers’ relative speed and viewpoint. With respect wildfires, public attitudes and approvals of firefighting costs are correlative to the Three-Ds since the worst most people experience is a few weeks of smoke. In Alberta of course there’s the Fourth-D, Danielle Smith. Let us add a Fifth-D—no, not the “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius”, but, to mangle the words of the Father of Relativity, Albert Einstein, Godetal (or Mother Nature, for that matter) does not play with loaded “Dice”—especially if the Forth-D does the loading.
The real nut to crack is the relativistic fact that even if all bitumen production were stopped today, the occurrence of wildfires will still increase, possibly for as long as humans have elevated atmospheric CO2 by burning fossil fuels —up to 200 years. While we’re at it, let’s add a Sixth-D for those who think that there’s thus no point in even trying to reduce the increase of bitumen production. Take your pick: “Dope”, “Dummy”, “Dunce”, “Dupe”, &c…
It seems that you can’t distinguish the forest for the trees.
Albertans and the Alberta Government are different things.
Making general assumptions that all Albertans are stupid lacks understanding about democracy and the facts.
Granted the citizens of Alberta elected the “can’t-do” raging Smith/Parker UCP government, but it is now facing the largest opposition ever in Alberta.
You also fail to recognize the efforts made by a large number of Albertans to confront climate change, with no support and even road blocks from the Smith Government.
You may wish to do better than the UCP Government by actually finding accurate information about the diverse forces in Alberta.
I want to start by saying this is the best comment on here and I also want to let you know half of us Albertans didn’t vote for this crap and we know they are uneducated, we have to deal with them in work environments, some social settings we went to school with them . We know !! For heavens sake our whole capital is Liberal voting , it’s the rural areas like I live in where there are more extremists then not I had teachers that told my kids Trudeau hates them. I feel very stuck here for many reasons. It’s not a fun place to be but it’s definitely not all of us and we do need help fighting the disinformation it’s a big problem
The UCP received 52.6% of the popular vote, the NDP only 44%. This would normally be considered a commanding majority.
Beds are burning. What happened to the pollinators? What will we eat when we can’t grow food in our future deserts and the rivers and lakes go dry? This week the world set a new record for its hottest day ever and broke the record the next day. Onward to disaster and extinction. Earth unable to support life. Dune.
It’s unbearable to consider. And so another town burns and developers run their hands with glee at the possibility of infilling with condos, shopping complexes and international luxury hotels. Greed, exploitation of natural resources, unsustainable consumption and hedonism ought to fix everything.
Happy Friday!
A NASA-verifiable fact about this time this year is that there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now than at the same time last year. At the same time next year, there will again be more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and so on and so on. Someone said to me the other day that they don’t believe in global warming, to which I replied “That doesn’t matter”. The look on their face asked me for an explanation so I explained that what matters is what the kids coming of age now through the next couple of decades choose to believe. If they choose to believe that everybody who came before them knew exactly what supporting fossil fuels and the governments that did the same meant, are a threat to their future and can only be dealt with in an absolute manner, kiss your ass goodbye. I still can’t say for certain if it sunk in at all.
Well said, David.
Now we’re seeing some of the early fruits of the Right’s decades-long program to prevent the recognition of anthropogenic climate change and their kneecapping of efforts to slow its progress.
I look forward to Pierre Poilievre’s explanation of how “Axing the Tax” will prevent future catastrophic wildfires.
It is amazing how effective a relentless 15 year campaign of lies can be…especially when a good 40% of the electorate are some combination of dumb, mean, racist, misogynist and craven.
When 46.63% of Forest Fires are caused directly by human activities, and 33.74% are caused by lightning, and 19.73% are still under investigation, how can you claim that there are “climate change” fires. You are bombastic other than in the facts department. Look at the data. Educate yourself. Then speak (or write). Not before.
Geo: As I was taught when I took the B.C. Forest Service fire boss course in the 1970s, 100% of all forest fires that are not caused by lightning have a human origin. Tautological and sort of obvious, I know, but worth stating. Since then, I’ve heard an argument that there are a few started by spontaneous combustion – basically a natural version of oily rags in stuffed in an enclosed space. None of this means, however, that people are running around intentionally starting more fires than they ever did. The point, though, is not that global climate changes causes fires, but that it makes the fires worse and harder to contain in a number of ways. The pine bark beetle, mentioned in passing in the post, finds it easier to survive and kill trees when winters are warmer, Extreme weather events – some with, yes, lightning – are more common. And so on. If you can’t see the logic of that connection, I’m afraid there’s not much hope for you. DJC
I was 26 years old when the movie Fried Green Tomatoes was released in 1991. And hell, yeah, I was cheering when Evelyn Couch (played by Kathy Bates) said: “Face it it girls. I am older and have more insurance.”
Thanks DJC, for having the “insurance” the knowledge and the patience to school those who are ignorant/and are lacking critical thinking skills. It is one reason why I deleted my Twitter account. I got tired of explaining 2+2 =4 to people like Geo, especially when Covid hit. There was no reasoning with people who once seemed reasonable. There are a two political blogs I follow. One is yours, the other is Lisa Young. So, thank you, again, for keeping *me* informed.
“…other countries like Canada are increasingly afflicted by climate-change-driven fires.” The blogger did not say there are “climate change” fires. Geo could use some self education in reading comprehension.
As an Albertan I’m so happy with these comments, people here need to ne educated alot don’t have critical thinking skills I’m talking rural Alberta they truly believe people run around lighting fires and I can assure you it didn’t help anything here when Pierre Polivere stood up in the House and said the same thing , these type of people believe him. Disinformation is the largest problem here and I assure you the media sadly doesn’t help
Oh Kayla, I too, live in freedumb convoy, anti-vax, **ck Trudeau, it was dry in 2002/-35 in January so climate change doesn’t exist, axe-the-tax rural Alberta. Born and raised. It is painful. Just last week, at a friendly gathering over beers, an acquaintance warned us about those people running around lighting fires – all in the name of sabotaging the oil industry. This was the same person who had no clue the Olympics were starting soon. “Oh??”, person X said, “The Olympics are happening?? In Paris?? I didn’t know that.”
I don’t think people understand the level of stupidity that exists in rural Alberta unless you hear it day after day – especially on Facebook. There is no possibility of reaching them. The UCP will forever be elected. I have said repeatedly, the hope lies in other parts of the province.
“Human activity” ≠ “all those fire were arson”. Trains throwing sparks from their wheels and brakes … off-road motor vehicles with hot exhausts … acreage owners’ burn barrels getting out of hand … cigarettes carelessly thrown out if passing car windows … and so much more, fall into that category of “caused by human activity”. Very few of the most destructive wildfires this century, and none of the biggest ones in Alberta – Slave Lake, Fort McMurray, and Jasper – were arson.
And, on top of that, the necessary legislative and regulatory enforcement to keep this kind of “human activity” from starting wildfires would of necessity be so restrictive that the libertarian right would be up in arms about “freedom”. I guess we can’t win.
Geo, you may very well be correct with regards to the cause of wildfires, but the cause is an irrelevant distraction. What is important is how climate change is creating burning conditions that cause a simple fire to grow into a monster. Before the fire broke out, Jasper had 11 or 12 days (one day is missing from the Environment Canada page) where the high was over 30 degrees, and only a half a millimetre of rain in the entire month of July. Combine that with a lot of dead trees as a result of the pine beetle infestation and intense winds (both a result of climate change) and the result was a forest ready to burn, regardless of how a fire starts.
It is important to realize that climate change denial is a multimillion-dollar industry – this has even been acknowledged by Jason Kenney’s war room. Unfortunately, the organizations that fund climate change denial are private, so we don’t know how they are using their funds; it is entirely possible the fire cause statistics you quoted were provided by a climate change group trying to distract you from the problem of climate change.
Whatever the role of climate change in lightning trends (ignitions) and the NUMBER of fires, climate change plays a far more significant role in the increasing intensity, severity, rapid spread, and EXTENT of fires (area burned).
In Canada, arson accounts for a tiny fraction of area burned:
Since 1990, lightning-caused fires account for the majority of area burned, in Alberta (88%), B.C. (84%), and Canada-wide (92%).
Man-made fires predominate in spring. The large lightning fires that account for most of the total area burned mostly occur in summer.
No correlation in Alberta between the number of fires — in particular, the number of man-made fires — and area burned.
In 2023, a record year for area burned in AB, the number of fires was well below the long-term average (since 1990).
By far the most significant correlation is between area burned and fire conditions: temperature, vapor pressure deficit (VPD) (≈relative humidity), fuel dryness, soil moisture, wind, and fuel load.
Climate change affects fire intensity, area burned, and length of fire seasons. No matter how a fire starts, fire conditions (weather and fuel load) determine its behaviour: spread, temperature, intensity, and destructive power.
Fire weather conditions and wildfire activity are highly variable from year to year, but the warming trend, more frequent extreme-heat events, and regional drying increase fire risk.
Nation-wide, the total number of fires has generally gone down (except in Alberta) while area burned has increased. Fewer man-made fires, particularly. But the number of large fires and area burned have increased. How to explain that?
Despite big anomalies in the 80s and 90s, between the two halves of NFDB’s wildfire record (1959-2021), area burned increased by 49% in Canada, 45% in Alberta, and 100% (doubled) in B.C..
Not counting the monster fire year in 2023…
5 of the top 10 fire seasons in B.C. (area burned, since 1950) occurred since 2010.
2018 was B.C.’s worst wildfire season on record. Breaking the record set in 2017.
Summer 2021 marked the third time in five years that B.C. saw more than half a million hectares burn in a wildfire season. In the 70 years prior to 2017, it only happened once.
B.C.’s forest management practices have not changed dramatically in the last 5 years. But the weather has.
Fire conditions are weather dependent. Area burned from year to year is highly variable and unpredictable because weather is highly variable and unpredictable.
Long-term fire trends are climate-dependent. Climate is defined by minimum thirty-year intervals.
A shift in the average does not mean that every year will be warmer than the last. Or that every year will see more wildfire than the last.
A shift in the average implies an even greater shift in extremes. Over time, more severe extreme heat events and dry periods spell more wildfire on the landscape, not less.
Fire weather conditions and wildfire activity are highly variable from year to year, but the long-term warming trend, more frequent extreme-heat events, and regional drying increase fire risk.
There can be little doubt that rising temperatures, warmer winters, more severe pine beetle infestations (feedback), more drought, mass tree mortality, increasing fuel load, more lightning, more heat waves, earlier springs, more rapid snow melt, more precipitation falling as rain and less snow spell more fire on the landscape, not less.
Simple – hotter weather (and Jasper burned right after the four hottest days ever in human history) makes fires hotter, more likely to start and spread faster. Fire is complicated but there are proximate causes and there are factors that make them less intense and more intense. Had we not had the hot dry weather caused by climate change it’s quite likely Jasper wouldn’t have burned. I don’t really think it’s that hard to understand. Do you?
Geo
You should be the one educating yourself. Data interpreted the way you did is exactly what you should not do with it.
No one calimed climate change fires. Climate change is causing more dangerous fires. You should read about that. Again if you are a climate change denier than it does not help because you people cannot change your minds. You just follow the leader and most of them are worse than Danielle Smith.
Climate warming makes more lightning fires, and makes both human and lightning caused fires bigger.
Now go peddle your disinformation somewhere else.
“In reality . . . (it is) . . . about global climate change.”
As the political PR representatives for the economic growth spin machine typically keep on spinning, the proverbial chickens are apparently coming home to roost ( “And ofte tyme swich cursynge wrongfully retorneth agayn to hym that curseth, as a bryd that retorneth agayn to his owene nest.”) , or roast as the case may be and the growing karmic/carbon debt cycle piper has yet to be fully reconciled with and then fully paid for.
These stark beginnings only foreshadow an even greater multiplicity of stresses and strains that are yet to unfold fully and completely. It remains to be seen how stubborn steadfastness and recalcitrance as a part of a largely non-negotiable economic dogma plays out and ages with both time and multiple negative spillovers of ever increasing intensity.
For example:
1. “The uninsurable world: what climate change is costing homeowners”
https://www.ft.com/content/ed3a1bb9-e329-4e18-89de-9db90eaadc0b
“. . . climate change will make parts of the world uninsurable. . . . In some areas, the question of whether the private insurance sector alone can handle the cost of extreme weather has already been answered. In the US, UK and other countries, a patchwork of state-backed insurers and national reinsurance schemes means that the taxpaying public is already sharing the cost of these risks.”
That is, as a well documented known known, the order of things and corporate/state business as usual practices dictate that profit remains private and personal; while , the associated risks are transferred to the public and become socialized. The state and its citizens become the de facto means of tail risk hedging for the ‘market’ and its shareholders. As in the past, so too in the future one supposes.
2. “What happens when climate change creates such great risks that insurers no longer want to insure certain parts of the world, or they have to raise premiums to such an extent that no one is willing to pay them? One such example is State Farm. The major insurance company has stopped selling insurance policies in California, citing the growing risk of catastrophes, steep construction costs and a challenging reinsurance market in the US state.”
https://www.dw.com/en/will-climate-change-make-insurance-too-expensive/a-69439449
Alkyl: Yes, the insurance component is a very important story. The governments of Alberta and B.C. may well have to open a subsidized government home and business insurance branch so that business can continue to be carried on in the provinces. DJC
I found some previous videos of Smith doing her crocodile tear act. One where she was praising HCW’s on tiktok and getting those crocs moving. The consistency is that when she is in trouble politically with sky boxes or false statements she likes to turn the media attention to herself and raise the sympathy bar for herself. It worked , the media headlines were all about her , not the poor people in Jasper who lost everything. But Smith knew the coverage she would get.
The mayor of Jasper and the volunteer firefighter who watched her own home burn who have not spent their life as a radio show pundit gave genuine reactions . Lets get the focus off Smith during these crises and focus on the people who need our attention the most.
Below is a word for word copy of an email I sent to a CBC Calgary reporter on September, 29, 2021 10:07 AM. Please note the date and the many events that have happened since then.
For context, I am a dual US/Canada citizen with a business degree from U. of Calgary; grew up in several provinces in Canada, spent my childhood summers in a southern, formerly Confederate US state; ethnicity and religion is very mixed, politics – Democrat in US and moderate left/progressive in Canada.
Here’s the letter-note the date, what was going on then and has transpired since.
Dear —,
I’m writing to provide you with a possible tip.
There seems to be a burgeoning attempt to reshape Alberta’s culture. The Calgary based Pawlawski brothers and Grace Life Church in Spruce Grove, Alberta, affiliated with Grace Life Ministries, founded in Texas by Charles Bing remind me of some organizations within the US Southern Baptist Convention. These organizations, over time, became more political than spiritual and wield considerable political influence in many, generally southern, states. It would be difficult for me to explain the general culture of small town rural south. John Grisham does a good job in several of his novels set in Clanton, Mississippi.
Why would Grace Life choose to open a church in Spruce Grove, Alberta? My southern relatives barely knew where Alberta was, and that’s only because I live here. Generally, world geography is not a strong suit in a small southern town.
Are the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms and the Buffalo Project related? These organizations are funded by money from somewhere, for some purpose.
I apologize if I’ve wasted your time, but I suspect if you follow the money, something interesting may arise.
End of copy of September 29, 2021 email to CBC.
At the end of the day, real, objectively provable facts will stand the test of time.
Danielle Smith, John Carpay, Viliam Makis, Adriana Lagrange, Arthur Pawlawski and other incompetent, unethical, corrupt and/or criminally convicted nincompoops exist and thrive because the rest of us whine and complain, then do nothing. While they wield political power, we pat ourselves on the back?
We can do one small thing to get rid of these people. Just vote, please.
Pay a little bit of attention and vote.
Vote in every election, no matter how inconsequential they may seem. The always creepy and forever smug David Parker and his UCP money plan a complete takeover of school board elections.
If you knew how difficult voting is for a non MAGARepublican in most southern US states, no election would ever be missed in Alberta.
As for the grown up talk about climate change, aint ever gonna happen if we keep electing people who deny theres a problem at all.
Well said. Thank you.
So which mainstream political party, anywhere on earth, is going to address the nature of the particular dominance hierarchy in which we live? Maybe Frederick Douglas was wrong and eight hundred years after Wat Tyler the elites will just hand the world over to the great unwashed.
Yes, we can continue to cast blame in a partisan way as there seems to be a lot of blame to go around. But that will not improve or fix things. This is like fighting over the deck chairs while the ship takes on water. Our society seems to know what the problems are, at least when we are not denying the obvious, but we seem paralyzed in trying to fix them. Until that changes, there will be more and more Jaspers.
I don’t know how bad it will have to get before this changes, but I realize denialism can be very entrenched. Fortunately most Canadians live in big cities that are not in the boreal forest, but some are uncomfortably close and there are a number of good sized communities surrounded by those forests.
In any event, we should not write off all those places. Last year it was Yellowknife and Kelowna that were threatened, before that Fort McMurray and Slave Lake were seriously damaged by fires. So if we want to keep the beautiful country we have, we all owe it to our country to somehow get past bickering about the causes of these increasingly common and devastating disasters and to start taking more real action to mitigate and prevent them.
First, my heart goes out to every person who lives and works in Jasper (be they a permanent resident/business owner or a seasonal worker) It is catastrophic what has happened. Jasper–Marmot Basin- is my favourite spot to camp/ski.
My next reaction to this wildfire: Politicians crying on national TV while sharing *her* memories (of Jasper) is as useless and meaningless as the GOP sending “thoughts and prayers” to victims of yet another school shooting. Like someone give DS a f***ing Oscar for that performance. And while I watched DS choke up on national TV my next thought (and I admit it was a facetious one) was: well, with no trees that will make it easier for all those “trophy hunters” to shoot and kill bears, thanks to Todd Loewen, the AB Minister of Forestry, making that vile sport legal in Alberta. I do, however, have to give credit where credit is due. Mike Ellis sounded like he was the only grown-up in the room during both news conferences. (I could be wrong, and will stand corrected if I missed something after switching off the news.)
Some political opinion columnists are already gunning for Trudeau’s throat As are some politically ill-informed Edmontonians. Example: I had a “skip-the dishes” delivery today, and the delivery person (a white female who isn’t much older than I am [60] sounded like a member of Diagolon, going off on a rant about Covid vaccines, how Trudeau and “lefties” and “non-white immigrants” are to blame for current state of affairs–inflation, shrinkflation, unemployment, wildfires and floods, here and abroad. She even went so far in her racism as to say the reason the Edm Elks* were losing games was because of the name change. My head was spinning, like I was watching some horror movie from the ’70s. ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘Carrie’ came to mind.
All that said, you nailed it, David, with this column…”Denial, Distraction, and Delay” is what the UCP is good at; it’s their playbook while they play victim at the same time. The real victims, however, are the people who are negatively affected by this government’s policies. But until Albertans (voters) take their heads out of the sand and take a good look around, I’m afraid much won’t change in this province. I hesitate to say, but perhaps we (AB/Canada) should make voting mandatory, like Australia. Perhaps it would make people* pay attention to municipal, provincial and federal politics.
*Those who are homed, have a good jobs, and don’t have to worry about paying the bills.
Suzanne— I have to agree with you about the performance tears: 1/2 hr late, no red eyes and turned off as soon as she stepped back; and my first thought was now that the beautiful views are gone, people won’t say anything about the coal mining. It seems that Marlaina has made cynics (realists)of us.
IMHO– Listening to Mike Ellis is like trying to read the headlines on CTV news, you get partial information but don’t expect me to repeat what he said or meant. He was reading like he had a plane to catch.
What has me “puzzled “,is that after watching the presser(CBC-National) with mainly the Mayor of Jasper I’m wondering if I was listening to a different take.
Mayor Ireland said he wasn’t expecting there to be cameras when he went in to do the tour with Mr Sangit(?). I give him full accolades for having to put front and centre, when his home was one of those destroyed; having the wherewithal to remain civil to the reporter who wanted all the horrific details of that destruction; who had his priorities in order when he said that he wanted to wait until they had a map that they could give to ALL the home owners in the affected area, so that they would know first ( he hoped they would be able to have something as early as Sat)— as in before the media, who have a tendency to ask some of the stupidest questions of people who are trying to deal with trauma. I gave him extra marks for that and saying I understand people looking for someone to ‘blame’, but now we have to work together for the future …..
BRAVO !!!Mayor Ireland. He excused himself saying he was tired and the Premier added something, then Sam Blackett, called an end to the presser.
An hour later I switched back to CBC and they’re showing video of the tour, what’s left of the mayor’s home, the Premier practicing on one of the simulators…..more video of destroyed & standing homes. WTF?
Did I get an AI version of the mayor’s statement, or is this just another Marlaina special of power ranking? ” I will decide when, where & how the information is going to be released “.
(Yosemite, press send.)
My heart goes out to the good people of Jasper who are going to find themselves used for media bait— please know that it wasn’t from lack of trying by your mayor. As he said, appropriately 20,000+ lives saved, a little bit of a silver lining.
DJC— if Yosemite starts making noise, tell him to check with Tony Clark and the Breakdown,
Just saying…..
Wildfire issues notwithstanding, having visited Jasper twice it breaks my heart that much of the beautiful town is reduced to ashes. Incomprehensible.
All this and yet nobody brought up the reality that the fires that destroyed so much land, including Jasper, were deliberately set. This has been going on for some time with the devastation that includes what took place in California and Hawaii with their fires. Certain climate change activists are so bent on ramming their agendas forward that they’ll do anything to prove a point.
I agree the financial cutbacks against the firefighting team were unwise, especially when climate change activists do have a connection to setting fires on purpose to make it look like a spontaneous wildfire.
I’ll bet the climate activists are responsible for melting the glaciers down the road too.
In Canada, arson accounts for a tiny fraction of area burned:
Since 1990, lightning-caused fires account for the majority of area burned, in Alberta (88%), B.C. (84%), and Canada-wide (92%).
“No large wildfires that threatened Alberta communities caused by arson: Ministry’ (EJ, 2023)
“Despite a preoccupation with criminal activity from Alberta’s United Conservatives…, provincial data shows that less than a fraction of a percentage of the land burned by wildfires in 2023 has since been attributed to arson.
“… Of a total of 1,121 wildfires counted as of Dec. 5, 91 were deemed by investigators to be caused by arson, affecting a total of 262 hectares. That represents about 0.01% of total affected land.
“This year, 8.4% of all wildfires were categorized as arson, which is slightly above the previous five-year average of 7.8%.
“‘None of the large-scale wildfires that threatened communities in Alberta this season were determined to be caused by arson. More than 70% of large wildfires were caused by lightning.’
“… UCP Premier Danielle Smith was asked whether she agreed with experts that climate change was playing an increasing role in the risk and severity of wildfires.
“Speaking on the Ryan Jespersen show in June, Smith deflected, saying she was ‘very concerned that there are arsonists,’ and was bringing out-of-province investigators to determine causes.”
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/what-we-know-and-dont-know-about-albertas-unprecedented-wildfire-season
“Arson generally accounts for between 1 and 4% of human-caused fires annually.”
“Lightning-caused wildfires burn the most area in Canada, and could be more common as the climate warms” (CBC, May 31, 2024)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/canada-wildfire-starts-1.7219681
“There is a small percentage of those wildfires that are considered ‘incendiary,’ an umbrella category for specific man-made fires like arsons, mischief, and industrial activities, among other sources. Of manmade fires in 2023, 11% were considered incendiary, compared to 8% so far in 2024.”
“Province prepares for wildfire season with increased hiring, education, and weekly updates” (EJ, Apr 18, 2024)
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/province-prepares-for-wildfire-season-with-increased-hiring-education-and-weekly-updates
Ann: Nice try, but there are no Jewish space lasers or demented arsonists setting fires. The fact is mother nature always bats last. Hot dry weather with lots of lightning strikes combined with 100 years of stupid fire suppression has resulted in a tinder box ready to go up. Ed Struzik, an eminent Alberta academic has an excellent article on this in today’s Tyee.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2024/07/26/Jasper-Grim-Warning-Canada-Wildfire-Failure/
Just as our children and grandchildren will have to deal with our stupidly burning too much fossil fuel, so we have to deal with our parents’ and grandparents’ dumb idea that forest fires were universally bad. It was fun while it lasted, but it is time to grow up. It is all about human caused climate change brought about by burning fossil fuels. Dani Smith and the juvenile and simple minded white trash surrounding her will just have to deal.
Geoffrey Pounder: Anybody who knows even a little bit about the topography of Canada, knows that there are vast areas of forest, which have no road access. Wildfires are happening in these areas. People can’t get into these places. Somehow, “climate change activists”, are starting these wildfires. Total rubbish.
Ms Spencer: Carl Sagan famously said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Your claim has absolutely zero evidence to back it up, and therefore is complete and utter bullshit.
Our host showed commendable commitment to freedom of expression in not taking down your comment on the basis that it is disinformation. If it were up to me, you’d be blocked from commenting here.
In the days leading up to the fires there were reportedly some 36,000 lightning strikes in alberta and British Columbia; including those seen by eyewitnesses that immediately preceded the outbreak of fire inside the park.
Understand that when you say nonsense like this, reasonable people roll their eyes at you and write off every damn word you just said. Feel free to do it but you’re just making yourself crazy, alienating your friends and loved ones, and convincing NO ONE OF THIS NONSENSE.
Ann Spencer: It’s best to not assume. If you assume, you should know what that does. What you did was absolute assumption. By your flawed logic, did climate change activists cause the severe floods, such as those that hit Toronto, and other parts of eastern Canada, not that long ago?
Love your last sentence. I agree 100%. I expect many more towns will burn to the ground before Batshit’s reign of terror ends, if it ever does. I keep asking myself, “What will it take. for people to vote properly in this province?” Then, to see her shedding crocodile tears on cue for the camera is just too much. More thoughts and prayers aren’t going to solve anything.
If you haven’t already, please read John Vaillant’s superb book, Fire Weather, about the 2016 Fort McMurray fire and the context within which it occurred.
A forester friend noted one interesting footnote from the Jasper fire this week: The “fire break” that protected most of the Jasper Park Lodge was its golf course. You would need to surround the whole town with that kind of cleared landscape to protect against a firestorm like Wednesday’s.
Parks Canada has been trying since the 1990s to “FireSmart” Jasper — thinning forests, removing trees killed by the mountain pine beetle, prescribed burning, and even some clearcutting — but it’s like building a three-metre levee to protect against a four-metre flood. There was still so much fuel in the forest and on the ground that nothing could stop a firestorm under the right conditions of temperature, wind, and humidity.
The Bragg Creek area west of Calgary is another area similarly unprepared for a “perfect storm.” Alberta won’t be able to blame Parks Canada when that landscape blows up.
Many years ago, we visited Jasper. From Connaught Drive I looked out across the railway tracks to the forest covered slopes. There were a few trees that had turned red, a result of the pine beetles that had moved up from the south and across the Rockies into the National Parks. Again, some years later, looking in the same direction, there were a majority of red trees now, and the infestation was moving further north in Alberta and B.C. These dead and dying forests are the most dangerous when struck by fire, as the flames run very quickly through the dead wood.
But who in Alberta has done much to mitigate the cause of this destruction? Certainly not O&G, nor any governments. Too much money in the offing for both, and many Albertans, to come up with plans and implementation of such to lessen all the destruction, the root cause of which is global warming.
So many of those who had to flee Jasper have pointed to the causation of this current tragedy. They ‘knew it was coming’! So many comments about the truth, not relevant to media and politicians of course, that “nature bats last, and always wins!”
So when are those who might actually make a difference realize that risks are only going to increase, and not just the risks of no more investment in more O&G? As bad as things are now with floods [not forgetting Calgary and High River!], the wildfires and the extreme heat events, it’s going to get worse. Climate change is irreversible! All levels of government need to treat escalating climate change-related natural disasters as the crisis they are, and quickly enact mitigation strategies as the results of heat, droughts, and fires get worse.
And then there is the racist act of the UCP: those in John D’Or Prairie, and Little Red River territories had to wait for 7 days before getting provincial monetary help after having to evacuate there homes, while those in Jasper had that waiting time waived!!!
John Vaillant delightfully compares our last premier to king Xerxes, who had a little tantrum and ordered a public whipping of the sea when it ruined his plans. I fear the current Premier will probably simply phone up the TMX pipeline to commiserate, hoping its feelings weren’t hurt by this nasty talk of climate change. Maybe she’ll declare the mountain pine beetle the most discriminated against bug ever and give a little sob. (Let us go then, you and I to rake the forests. Dare I eat a peach? Only there are none, not this year.)
From 2022, Parks Canada staff talking about the great work they are doing. And the risks of burning instead of logging.
They just needed another few years….
“Logging Jasper with David Argument, Landon Shepherd, Kari Stuart-Smith and Shelley Tamelin” – https://yourforestpodcast.com/episode-1/2022/7/18/124-logging-jasper-with-david-argument-landon-shepherd-kari-stuart-smith-and-shelley-tamelin
Not for nothing, I have seen almost no one make this point. The national parks were inhabited before they became national parks by indigenous nations who lived in harmony with a landscape they managed for hundreds of years, if not millennia. As with everything else, the arrogance of the settler colonial project demanded the removal, subjugation and silencing of these people in order to create the illusion of a pristine wilderness now safely preserved from savages who in their ignorance did not know the value of what they possessed or that it should naturally belong to the crown.
Took us what like a hundred years to destroy it ? Slow clap Canada.
Say whatever you want but I highly doubt there’s a way out of this until we give the land back to the nations that actually understand it.
“Climate change driven mountain pine beetle” Yes indeed, we need to have a grown-up talk. Pine beetle epidemics are not caused by climate change. ???!!!??? Yes, that is correct. Let’s begin. Lodgepole pine is a species that is very tied to fires. Their cones open after the stand has burned. Naturally, pine stands burn every 80 to 100 years. Unnaturally, humans have been extinguishing fires for the last ~120~ years. Yes, even in our beloved national parks. There are problems with putting out fires, viz. the trees get too old. Old pine trees are really not meant to be there. They were supposed to burn. Nature will find a way. Old pine trees are what pine beetles love best. The young, thrifty trees are more easily able to overcome the beetles and they are quite a bit smaller and do not provide space for them to multiply under the bark. Old trees (especially where there is a lot of them) are bigger and provide the perfect habitat for the beetles (which occur naturally in at endemic levels in the few big trees that the fires leave) to multiply until their population skyrockets to epidemic levels. These massive populations then wipe out vast areas of overmature pine that we have worked so hard to save from fire. These massive populations of beetles even attack smaller trees in an attempt to survive. Sorry, that wasn’t climate change. It was us though. The moment you put out a wildfire and keep it from doing what it was designed to do, that forest has become a managed forest. You have intervened and it was for a good reason. Public safety, towns, utilities, infrastructure and many other things give us good reason to put out fires. What we do not realize (or do not want to realize) is that our national parks are filled with very unnatural forests. With a few exceptions, fire has been kept out and we have grown accustomed to vast carpets of very old, even aged timber. Old trees are more susceptible to forest pests. Stands become too big and too old and there is too much fuel and we think this is natural because it is in the park. Go to the archives. Find pictures of the Athabasca Valley or the area around Banff Springs Hotel when it was being built. You will find that these photos show young stands, some of them even show the burnt remnants of the previous forest sticking out of a carpet of young trees. That was natural. We love our parks. We love things to stay the same. Static. Nature is dynamic. It is always changing. We had best work with nature instead of attempting to force our ideas upon it. If we want our parks to be natural, we are going to need to re-introduce fire. We may even need to do more mechanized treatments like thinning and fuel reduction. Allow small areas to burn instead of saving everything and inviting the beetles in and not dealing with them and now we are dealing with a disaster. So let’s blame it on climate change, pass the blame onto someone else as long as it wasn’t me. That has been what has brought us to disaster. If we are going to suppress fire, then we need to step up and manage the forests properly. That takes effort and money. So does rebuilding after a disaster.
Voice: “Temperature drives bark beetle physiological processes such as larval development and cold hardening, thereby directly tying temperature to population growth. In general, warmer temperatures result in higher survival and faster development … The strong role of temperature in population growth, and the role that reduced precipitation can play in host tree stress, suggest that climate change-associated shifts in temperature and precipitation will influence bark beetle populations in future forests.” https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/bark-beetles-and-climate-change-united-states
I would add that when I worked for the B.C. Forest Service, at the start of the pine bark beetle infestation, it was certainly the conventional wisdom that warmer temperatires were driving the spread of the beetle. DJC
The games,the harm,the bragging rights,and those chosen to receive no compensation so personal profits soar ,just another example of pride and arson
This is not a firefighting or climate change issue, This is clearly a forest management issue. Read my other post for elaboration.
yes, smith’s performance was not award worthy. She can’t even get that part right. What I did find interesting is when the federal minister and the Mayor of Jasper were speaking, she looked like she had a pickle up her butt.
smith looked angry, disinterested, wanting to be out of there. The cabinet minister was reading from notes and the Mayor of Jasper was good. Just gave the information, talked about the impact of the fire on the town. Perhaps Smith just wanted out of there because she was in the back row and the attention wasn’t on her.
My take on it is most politicians don’t care about forest fires or the people who live in the areas which burn. There aren’t enough voters in those areas to have a real impact on their positions. The other thing I noticed, and that started when I was a kid, if something didn’t impact people, most of them didn’t care. With politicians who don’t care, their line is, “we can’t afford it, its impossible to do, etc”. Then they hope things move along and people forget. Well surprise, surprise, not every one is moving along because those fires keep happening. When the first fire hit Kelowna, I hadn’t seen anything like it before and I’ve been in B.C. in 1951. The only large fire most of us were familiar with was the Hope Princeton Highway fire and I think that took place prior to the highway being built. After the Kelowna fire 1, the Premier, el gordo, had a former premier from the praires who was an engineer write a report with recommendations. Read parts of it and it was good. Too bad el gordo never implemented any of it and then we had Kelowna 2, along with Cariboo, Lytton.
As others have written above, climate change has changed our world, more heat, less rain. It isn’t going to change any time soon. The expenses to governments aren’t great enough to cause them to change and there are always other priorities.
The most important reason not much will happen is because the key players in politics and the corporate world have not had their houses burn down due to forest fires. Once that happens they may take a different view point but I’m not holding my breath. They can always check into a decent hotel or go visit some one’s summer house.
Climate change did not suppress fires to the point there was too much over mature timber ripe for a beetle epidemic. That was poor forest management. Sorry TAP old growth people. Don’t even get me started about the BC government’s epic failure to properly manage BC’s forests in so many ways. All too often “conventional wisdom” is a convenient smokescreen behind which such bureaucracies tend to hide their epic failures. Good day