17 times the size of Manhattan
Eric Holthaus at Slate points out that the Fort McMurray fire is just the time to talk about climate change. It’s not as if it’s peripheral, after all.
Friday marks the fourth day of an intense firestorm in Canada’s boreal forest that has engulfed large parts of Fort McMurray, Alberta—a frontier town that serves as the base for the province’s oil sands region. Already, the fires rank as Canada’s costliest natural disaster on record, and the town’s entire population of more than 80,000 people has been evacuated. The area burned, about 250,000 acres, is now 17 times the size of the island of Manhattan. And conditions could still get worse. “The beast is still up. It’s surrounding the city,” said fire chief Darby Allen in a video update Thursday night.
That no one has yet died in the fire is a miracle, if you believe in such things. Photos of the fire from space on Wednesday resembled an explosion.
On Wednesday afternoon, the fire began to create its own weather conditions, with lightning from pyrocumulus clouds likely further fueling the fire’s growth. On Wednesday evening, one of the main evacuation centers itself had to be evacuated, as the fire spread out of control. On Thursday, the fire grew in size more than eightfold, after more than quadrupling in size the previous day.
And, not surprisingly, it isn’t just a random uncaused miraculous event.
I want to be clear: Talking about climate change during an ongoing disaster like Fort McMurray is absolutely necessary. There is a sensitive way to do it, one that acknowledges what the victims are going through and does not blame them for these difficulties. But adding scientific context helps inform our response and helps us figure out how something so horrific could have happened.
Because climate change isn’t “by the end of the 21st century” any more. It’s here. We’re in it.
Though uncertainty still reigns among those working to put out the fire in Fort McMurray, there are certain facts that we do know: Experts have warned for years that Alberta’s forests are being primed for “catastrophic fires.” We know that. In the boreal forest, once the winter snowpack melts, the exposed dry brush serves as perfect kindling—which is why this time of year marks the start of fire season. We know that. Record warm temperatures, a vanishingly small snowpack, and drought conditions—all of which are symptoms of climate change in boreal Canada—very probably made this fire worse. “This [fire] is consistent with what we expect from human-caused climate change affecting our fire regime,” said Mike Flannigan from the University of Alberta.
We need to talk.
According to Donald Trump, it’s just “weather”. And we can’t hurt business profits for “the atmosphere” (sneer quotes to indicate the sneer in his voice when he said it).
I don’t care which one of the two gets the Democratic nomination. This is one more reason to vote for them. Sanders sounds great on the environment, being blunt about what we need to do. Clinton is more cautious, talking about what she thinks we can do. The problem is, what she proposes is probably light years ahead of what we can do (politically), unless we start to pay attention….now.
No deaths have yet been reported in the fire, but tragically two teens have been killed in a collision between two vehicles evacuating the area. One was the 15 year-old daughter of a deputy fire chief and one of a set of triplets. The vehicles are reported to have burst into flames, closing one of the two evacuation routes temporarily.
Sad situation.
That’s a real fire, even by Australian standards, it’s amazing that there have been no fatalities. Add Canada to the list of potential infernos, along with the SW US and the SE of Australia. It’s difficult to explain to some uncomprehending European how catastrophic these types of fires actually are –“Why don’t firefighters use firebreaks?” Or “How can it happen in a First World country?” Jeez.
I can remember a Canadian forester commenting on how quickly Australian forests recover from bushfires compared with those in North America. Unfortunately given climate change and the resulting increased frequency of wildfires, even Australian forests will be pushed beyond their recovery limits.
It’s not just difficult for Europeans. I know a lot of Americans who are able to shut their eyes to it. Oklahoma was on fire when I moved to Nebraska; no one in Nebraska was even aware of it, and there is only one state between the two. Few of my students are even aware of the wildfire problem in California; Canada, being another country, is even further off their radar.
My students frequently express surprise that global warming is having an impact in “other” parts of the world, when I introduce them to places like the Maldive Islands. “It isn’t affecting us here” they claim. They are wrong. Even here, they are rarely aware of the things that are happening.
As the Beatles once said, “Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.”
iknlast
“I know a lot of Americans who are able to shut their eyes to it.”
That’s amazing. Probably the difference here in Australia is that no state is really immune to bushfires, so, during the Summer-Autumn period there’s usually a fire somewhere, often there are casualties.
The most destructive fires in Australia occurred in my home state of Victoria— the so-called Black Saturday fires in 2009. !73 people were killed, 450,000 hectares (1,100,000 acres) were burnt. The temperature reached 45C. The alarming probability is that a new record will be set, sooner or later.
“It isn’t affecting us here”
Yes, I’ve noticed that complacency, even smugness from the citizens of relatively cold countries.They tend to reduce the effects of climate change to an increase in temperature, therefore warmer summers, warmer winters. I’ve tried to point out that changes in average temperatures can affect rainfall patterns, increase the risk of droughts with obvious consequences for agriculture or change the routes of ocean currents which could wipe out productive fishing areas.
I can’t avoid the analogy of the slowly boiling frog.
RJW – the amazing thing is, we had our worst drought in recorded history in 2012 (I live in Nebraska; Nebraska and Wyoming were both in that same crisis). The response? It’s not global warming – there have always been droughts. Which is true. It’s not a single drought, it’s the pattern, and they refuse to look at it.
In our state, the legislature has forbidden the state agencies to discuss global warming when they talk about weather anomalies (and I don’t think we’re the only one). A number of the people at the college where I teach dismiss it with a wave of the hand. Not happening, it’s just Al Gore, and everyone knows he’s a liberal, so everything he says is a lie.
It was even worse in Oklahoma, which was ON FIRE when I left. Meanwhile, the senior Senator, Jim Inhofe, has taken it upon himself to write a book called something like The Greatest Hoax ever Perpetrated on Mankind. They are so afraid it might cost them…millions of dollars, tens of dollars, pennies, they don’t care. If it’s money, they won’t spend it.
And they’ll find a way to wave this away, too, if they even notice it.
iknlast,
“In our state, the legislature has forbidden the state agencies to discuss global warming when they talk about weather anomalies (and I don’t think we’re the only one).”
Depressingly familiar. Our previous PM described anthropogenic climate climate as ‘bullshit’, the present PM seems more sympathetic, but he’s leading a party of neoliberal ideologues who will still attempt to stifle debate. There are some indications (public opinion surveys) that the business lobby and the hard right are losing the battle, let’s hope. There have been serious bleaching occurrences on the Great barrier Reef, a world heritage area, people are noticing, particularly those that make a living from tourism. They would probably usually be conservative voters.There are also crackpots, usually with no relevant scientific credentials whatsoever, who appear to be genuinely skeptical, although most climate change deniers are probably bought and paid for by coal and oil companies. It’s an old corporate tactic, whether it’s coal, cigarettes or other forms of toxic externalities—fight a rear guard action and deny, confuse and lie. Once the smart capital has moved to other industries, the deniers mysteriously disappear. For example, only the loony libertarian right would seriously promote cigarette smoking now.
I had no idea that other areas in the US were affected by droughts and fires, we usually only hear about California here in Australia.
The “beast”.
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/05/the-massive-wildfire-burning-in-alberta/481611/#img23
I don’t know about in Australia, but there is an indication here that the US public actually is accepting that climate change is real. The depressing part is that the same surveys that indicate that show that they don’t think there is any urgency to deal with it.
As for not hearing about any area but California – that’s been my experience with students who come here from other countries.. They have heard about California, Texas, and New York. The rest of the US is a huge cipher. The problem is, much of our policy is being run by the area most people don’t hear about – the midwest. Because of the way we apportion our representation, the midwest has more representation per capita than most other areas, and they hold much of the country hostage.
But you’re not alone. I rarely meet anyone from the USA who knows anything about Nebraska, and often knows little about any part of the country outside of their own home region (defined very narrowly, so they often have no clue about other parts of their own state).
Climate change, Mr Holthaus? Not this time:
https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/on-forest-fires-climate-activist-arent-just-insensitive-they-are-also-wrong/
@10
Thanks for that. You just knew the Climate Change crowd would soon invoke global warming as root cause. Fort McMurray’s population is close to 90,000 people. 40 years ago it was a hamlet with a gas station and a grocery store. The more the population increases, the more likely forest fires will occur as a result of careless humans. Also, as your article states, some types of forests need fires to regenerate and some species of trees need them so that their seeds germinate.
And there’s one other thing that many overlook; the problem with lightening strikes. Certain heatwaves, if conditions are right and the convergence of them timely, can produce dangerous, fire-causing lightening strikes even though there isn’t a thunderstorm for hundreds of miles around. Prior to the appearance of these fires the whole Fort McMurray region had experienced a heat wave.