10 Comments
User's avatar
Ronald Randall's avatar

Wildfires in Canada have burned to create large smoke plumes for long periods of time because they are hard to reach. We must anticipate worse events of similar type from the boreal forests of Siberia....

The impact of wildfire smoke needs much more attention as a communication topic to stir up popular interest in climate adaptation investments.

Peter Carter's avatar

Excellent Highly recommended to read

Dean Rovang's avatar

And I thought we had it bad in New Mexico…

Buzen's avatar

If fires recently are more intense instead of burning just the underbrush, and this is increasing the incidence of smoke days, wouldn’t that imply the increase maybe more validly correlated to poor forest management (made worse by lawsuits against controlled burns) instead of climate change?

Andrew Dessler's avatar

In some cases, forest management is a contributing factor. But for many, e.g., the Canadian fires, the forests are not managed and are too big to be managed. Read Zeke's recent post on this: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/canadas-boreal-wildfires-arent-just

Buzen's avatar

I guess Canadian forests are being managed by nature then. I think wildfires are worse for humanity, the ecosystem and the atmosphere than many other climate change induced changes. The problem is blaming carbon emissions is counterproductive, given that even if we reached net zero (which realistically won’t happen for several decades) the carbon is already in the air and wildfires due to climate change won’t start diminishing. We need smarter forest management, probably using technology like fire spotting/fighting drones or robot fire line making tractors, satellite monitoring and that can happen faster than trying to reduce carbon emissions now.

Ken Towe's avatar

It has been known for many years that most wildfires are the result of an increasing number of humans using bad forest management and either causing them accidentally or intentionally by arson. Of course it could all be blamed on increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 ...but that also correlates with an increasing population using carbon for energy. Regardless, urgent reductions in CO2 emissions will have no effect on the CO2 we have already added. What that does is leave carbon in the ground where it can't be used to help finish the energy transition to renewables and EVs. A rock and a hard place?

LouisBDL's avatar

Very interested in wildfires in Canada

Jeff Suchon's avatar

What happened to, "Give a hoot don't pollute"?

Yogi Bear warnings about forest fires?

Non-native Americans dressed as native Americans tearing as the trash is thrown on them?

And the sequel to the drug problem:

"Earth is a terrible thing to waste"

We had some good campaigns going here in the USA but then came Reagan..

maurice forget's avatar

Stupidity And cupidity lead us.