19 Comments
User's avatar
Ken Lassman's avatar

Thank you for your analysis. An additional component to consider in future analyses is the fact that starting in the 1600s, indigenous fire management of the landscapes in question were actively suppressed across much of the boreal forest region, and yet those fire management traditions are still alive in many of the 600 predominantly indigenous communities across the north woods. There has been a quiet revolution that has been going on, with the realization that those indigenous burns, small in scale and well timed earlier in the year, can head off much of the large scale dangers that are inherent in boreal forests that are not logged or otherwise accessed by western lumber/agricultural interests. It is a misnomer to say that these boreal forests were not actively managed just because they weren't being logged. For an excellent research paper outlining these practices and their results on biodiversity, forest composition, wildfire management and human's relationship to these forests, I recommend reading "Centering Indigenous Voices: The Role of Fire in the Boreal Forest of North America" in the journal Fire Science and Management: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40725-022-00168-9

Jeff Suchon's avatar

Somehow, we think we are smarter than the years of expertise that the indigenous amassed and evolution itself. We approach Earth as a commodity and ask "Nature.. what is nature?"

As Earth 🔥

New Prairie Review's avatar

What is alarming about the response of the climate change deniers who are coming up with every bogus excuse other than anthropogenic climate change to explain the wildfires, is the mass psychosis that philosopher Slavoj Žižek (taking from Freud) calls "Fetishistic disavowal".

maurice forget's avatar

Yeah! Nice analyse. Now what are we doing?

Russell John Netto's avatar

Your government is spending billions of tax dollars blocking offshore windfarm projects and instead investing in coal.

Russell John Netto's avatar

These megafires that are constantly occuring are a new feature of climate change. John Vaillant has written a terrific book, 'Fire Weather', which describes the Fort McMurray megafire which will blow your socks off.

Later next week, here in the UK we will enter our fourth consecutive heatwave of the summer and July isn't over yet. Very few of our homes and buildings have air-conditioning and most of our infrastructure is not built for ever-hotter summers. Study in 2021 predicted that we were not likely to experience 40C temperatures until 2050, but we hit that mark the following year.

https://www.ukclimaterisk.org/publications/technical-report-ccra3-ia/chapter-1/#section-1-authors

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cwyq0k3nq2yo

Worse still, we are already into an El Nino event that will be one of the strongest in recent years which promises yet more misery for millions of people.

Jeff Suchon's avatar

Great climate attribution to wildfires Zeke!

I call it the climate change duck.

If it dries up, burns, floods, quacks, and looks like 👍 it's caused by clinate change then..

It probably is. Occam's climate razor.

Russell John Netto's avatar

When your house is on fire the famous advice of William of Ockham becomes redundant.

Jeff Suchon's avatar

We actually debate if it really is burning as the last cinders get swooped up in the pyre driven winds.. As Earth 🔥

Jeff Suchon's avatar

Good point 👉

We have lead climate feet. Heavy and slow to react to climate change. We never proactive because of the inertia.

We delayed drawdown mitigation. Now we have to adapt. We delay adaptation.

We might be best at crying😢 in time. As Earth 🔥.

Jeff Suchon's avatar

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow

Everything is possible tomorrow

Fusion will save us. Let's ✋️

AI will save us. Let's ✋️

As we perch ourselves on higher ground with face masks and goggles on inside our air conditioned caves in the skies.

Russell John Netto's avatar

There's always those cities on Mars that Elon Musk is proposing.

Jeff Suchon's avatar

That we'll f up.

Elon if you read this.. the best project is..

R E V I S I T E A R T H

Doug's avatar

The painfully obvious conclusion that Zele doesn’t draw: in a world where GHG emissions continue to rise along with the temperature, the arboreal forest will continue to burn at an increasing rate until there is nothing left.

JAM's avatar

the sad part is it's a faux-pas for anyone to dispute comments like this even though it's nonsense.

Jeff Suchon's avatar

You gotta get the smoke out of your room. It blurred in your eyes what Zeke said.

Gord Miller's avatar

Thank you Zeke, I was happy to see a real scientific analysis of this situation. Something to counter the nonsense coming out of the USA. Good job!

Iain's avatar

An excellent learned analysis, well done, and thank you for bringing clarity in the fog/smoke!