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West Coast Wildfires

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by basso, Sep 15, 2020.

  1. basso

    basso Contributing Member
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    i have many friends and colleagues in Seattle, the Bay Area, and LA, and they're suffering horribly rn w/ "smovid" (smoke +covid).

    Lots of discussion online about the causes, both initially and their severity. the forests are unaffected by geopolitical boundaries, so one wonders, why do the fires stop at the Canadian border?

    [​IMG]
     
  2. basso

    basso Contributing Member
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  3. fchowd0311

    fchowd0311 Contributing Member

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    If you are trying to push some narrative, majority of the fires are on federal land.
     
  4. ThatBoyNick

    ThatBoyNick Member

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    We have a wildfire thread in the hangout

    I'm gonna take a wild guess and say this ikely has something to do with geography, weather patterns this year, and perhaps less human activity due to COVID.
     
  5. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Contributing Member

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    Fires have been more frequent everywhere. It's not just unique to US West Coast. I know Alaska is still the US but not a blue state, and not really close in proximity to Cali/OR/WA, but Alaska now has a fire season as well. My educated guess from knowing the area is that it's a geography/topography thing.

    If you are familiar with the Canadian border from crossing from WA to go up to Vancouver, there is about a 10 mile stretch where the geography sort of flattens out for a bit until you get into Vancouver. I remember it pretty well on that drive i've made a few times.

    So I don't really know what kind of narrative you are trying to push here, but seems most likely a sign of ignorance on your part.
     
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  6. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    It does get "wetter" the further north you go, but that's likely half the story.

    California has admitted to mismanaging forest land so that fires aren't as deadly. We'd definitely have to allocate more money to it. A lot more. @rimrocker mentioned the funding just for firefighting and it looked spartan when you consider it's for an entire region and not individual states.

    And that's the funny thing with these political tit for tats. It's expensive to combat forest fires hundreds to thousands of miles away. People hate taxes. Taxes are a social cost. Social costs aren't trendy and easily encapsulated into a me-only commercial.

    So let's tax cut this b**** and invest in vouchers for fighting forest fires?

    USA! USA!! USA!!!
     
  7. CCorn

    CCorn Member

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    Fires don’t like socialists
     
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  8. basso

    basso Contributing Member
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    i've made that drive too. the fires are east of there however, and i think the topography is pretty similar.
     
  9. basso

    basso Contributing Member
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    i doubt it's much wetter from the 48.9th parallel to the 49th.
     
  10. ROXTXIA

    ROXTXIA Contributing Member

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    Let's please not read into the "fires stop at Canada" thing any more than we must.
    Between getting more rainfall and maybe not having dumbasses with their "gender reveal" parties ("let's set off some fireworks, wouldn't that be a smart thing to do in a tinderbox----oh, sh********...."

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/how...rom-wildfires-like-those-in-the-u-s-1.5105000

    TORONTO -- Canada has experienced a lower than average number of wildfires this year thanks in part to COVID-19 restrictions, as well as cooler temperatures and wetter conditions compared to the United States, where devastating and record-setting wildfires have been raging across large swaths of the west coast this year.

    According to federal government data, Canada has had 3,621 wildfires that burned 235,124 hectares so far this year. This compares to the 10-year average (to date) of 5,639 wildfires burning nearly 2.9 million hectares.

    The government said 2020 has been one of Canada's quietest wildfire seasons since the 1990s, with national wildfire preparedness level remaining at level 1 for much of the summer. This compares to the level 5 preparedness in the United States, where there are currently 87 massive fires burning more than 1.8 million hectares in 10 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, including several that are among the largest fires ever recorded in those states.

    Abnormally low rainfall in the U.S. over the last several years combined with record high temperatures in parts of the west coast have been a driving factor in making the region especially vulnerable to wildfires caused by lightning and humans.

    “The west coast was experiencing that … just huge frequency of lightning strikes that landed in a forest that was really tinder-dry and high temperatures, just like kindling. So it’s really not surprising. It’s just shocking -- the expanse and the intensity,” Alison Munson, a professor of forest ecology at the Université Laval, told CTVNews.ca.

    “That’s the big difference between what we’re seeing in the States and what we’re seeing in Canada - is that drought conditions are really, really severe. Canada hasn’t experienced the same severity of drought as the western States in the last several years … we’re not breaking (temperature) records this summer either.”

    Parts of Canada, such as interior British Columbia, can get fairly dry and become susceptible to the dangers of really dry conditions, but overall, Munson said the local U.S. climate has become more intense in the last five to 10 years.

    “The local weather patterns are just wreaking havoc on the western States, and we’re not experiencing the same weather system,” she added.

    With the quieter than normal fire season in many parts of Canada, some Canadian firefighters have gone south to help battle the inferno. Canada sent 60 people from Quebec last week to California, where wildfires are burning across more than a million hectares of the state, amid warnings of unseasonably hot weather.

    HEAVY RAINFALL AND COVID MEASURES

    The difference has been particularly dramatic in Alberta, where there have been 634 wildfires so far this year burning some 1,450 hectares. A year ago, there were 962 wildfires that burned across 857,000 hectares, while the five-year average for mid-September is 1,288 wildfires burning roughly 408,000 hectares.

    The biggest and most impactful wildfire activity in Alberta occurs in the spring after the snow has melted, exposing dead and dry grass, according to Melissa Story, the provincial information officer with Alberta Wildfire.

    “Until those things turn green, it’s a big tinderbox for wildfires -- they can start easily and spread very quickly,” Story told CTVNews.ca.

    A ban on fires and off-highway vehicle (OHV) restrictions through April and May, as part the province’s COVID-19 response, also helped lower the number of wildfires, she said.

    Campfires that are not fully extinguished can often result in a wildfire, while a buildup of debris such as grass and moss can ignite in the exhaust of an OHV where temperatures can heat up to more than 200C degrees. These are preventable fires and the public is encouraged to be more cautious when they are out in forested areas, Story added.

    “We can’t quite measure exactly how many fires we’ve prevented, but it would probably be safe to say that we avoided a lot with having less people out in the forested areas,” she said, noting that between 65 and 70 per cent of Alberta wildfires are caused by humans in any given year. This year, that figure was 79 per cent. The rest are caused by lightning.

    An unusually rainy start to the summer when COVID-19 restrictions were lifted and the dry vegetation from the winter had turned green also helped minimize some of the wildfires.

    “June in particular was one of our historical highs for accumulated precipitation,” Story said.

    In B.C., about 42 per cent of wildfires are caused by humans on average, while 57 per cent are caused by lightning, according to the province’s wildfire data.

    Munson said travel restrictions meant many Canadians across the country opted for camping instead, but because of more favourable weather, the risks for wildfires caused by humans was lower.

    As the weather begins to cool, it is unlikely -- though not impossible -- that Canada will see any new, major wildfires this year, experts said.

    Still, Canadians are being impacted in other ways, as smoke from the U.S. fires reached six Canadian provinces. The pollution was so severe in B.C. and Alberta at one point that the two provinces issued air quality warnings.

    Overall, scientists have been pointing to climate change as a major factor in the U.S. wildfires.

    “It’s clear that climate change is a big part of what’s happening on the west coast right now,” said Munson.

    “Climate scientists have made the relation directly to what’s happening now. Fires and temperatures will continue to climb. This has been a record breaking year for temperatures in California, for example, and temperatures will not necessarily stabilize -- they’ll keep going up … what’s predicted in the next few years would intensify what’s going on in the West and probably elsewhere in North America.”
     
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  11. ROXRAN

    ROXRAN Contributing Member

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    Great point basso. This is not about “pushing a narrative” or anything others get defensive about. It’s something blatant and interesting that a simple border makes a difference when all things being equal it shouldn’t which then needs closer examination about the whys
     
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  12. basso

    basso Contributing Member
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    correlation is not causation, but thank you for confirming the premise of the thread.
     
  13. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    Another 20 yr old Basso climate change denial thread.

    Let's ignore the obvious with record droughts and focus 100% on underfunded mismanagement to do absolutely nothing for another 20 years...FOH

    kthxbai
     
  14. CometsWin

    CometsWin Breaker Breaker One Nine

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    Fewer Covid deaths in Canada too. Apparently Canada is run by adults.
     
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  15. B@ffled

    B@ffled Member

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    Surely, these are naturally started right? Who in their right mind would purposely start a fire?
     
  16. KingCheetah

    KingCheetah Contributing Member

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    Maps based on US federal data don't show fires outside US borders

     
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  17. ThatBoyNick

    ThatBoyNick Member

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  18. Master Baiter

    Master Baiter Contributing Member

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    I guess gender reveal fireworks hasn’t quite caught on in Canada.
     
  19. Carl Herrera

    Carl Herrera Contributing Member

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  20. Master Baiter

    Master Baiter Contributing Member

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    [​IMG]
     
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