Ok, I can get sort of disagreeing the wildfires are from climate change - that’s a couple of logical steps you have to make. But “It’s not causing anyone to cough” is plainly ludicrous. It was making me cough when I went outside.
“It doesn’t smell bad”? Maybe they have COVID and lost their sense of smell altogether? It certainly smelled bad to me. And if you thought it smelled great - wow. I just don’t ever want to be around you if you like those sorts of smells. I can’t see it actually working with anyone who’s ever been in wildfire smoke before - like you don’t need science or education or anything to notice if it makes you cough, or tell something doesn’t smell great.
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Canada has an absolutely massive forest service as well as an insanely large forestry industry overall. They’re better equipped to deal with this sort of thing than pretty much anyone else in the world. Once you reach this magnitude of crown fire there’s really very little you can do.
They’ll spend millions of dollars dumping water from choppers and planes, pushing in firebreaks that won’t hold it - there’s really nothing left to do at this stage but get out of the way. You can’t hose a crown fire out, people on the ground are just risking their lives.
Firebreaks are ineffective because this thing is causing spotfires miles and miles ahead of the front.
Are we ready to take climate change seriously? If not, this is your life every summer from now on.
Signed, a wildland firefighter and forest worker from Australia.
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Yes, the reason people are losing it this year is because the winds are going opposite their usual direction so the smoke is going South. These fires happen every year but this year is much worse due to a dry winter.
In Alberta, where I am, there have been cuts to fire service, in some cases on idealogical grounds, which is frustrating. The fires people are worked up about are on the other side of the country but just pointing out this is nation wide and much worse than previous years (earlier, more, etc).
It’s a rock and a hard place situation. One of the reasons the fires are so bad now is that for many years much effort was put into preventing fires. It allows a lot of fuel to build up, so that when the fire finally gets too big to handle it’s got a huge reserve to burn through. We may have to endure a few years of huge fires to get back down to the usual background level.
Also, low precipitation in the winter leading to drier conditions.
Yeah, Canada needs to get this under control. I sat in traffic for an hour this week to get to the beach and then when I got there… the air was full of smoke! What a waste. US politicians need to take a hardline on the Canadians here.