May 11, 2016

The Fort Mac Fire and Climate Change

Is it time yet?  Can we talk about this?

Others certainly are.  As in the International New York Times:

.

Fort Mac

Scientists have been warning for decades that climate change is a threat to the immense tracts of forest that ring the Northern Hemisphere, with rising temperatures, drying trees and earlier melting of snow contributing to a growing number of wildfires.

The near-destruction of a Canadian city last week by a fire that sent almost 90,000 people fleeing for their lives is grim proof that the threat to these vast stands of spruce and other resinous trees, collectively known as the boreal forest, is real. And scientists say a large-scale loss of the forest could have profound consequences for efforts to limit the damage from climate change.

TrudeauThe charge leveled against those who have made the connection – most notably the leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May – is of insensitivity if not inaccuracy.  The suffering is too real to be politicized – which is what some of those who prefer the connection not be made at all are calling it: politicization.  Ideally, average Canadians will be persuaded that raising climate change in the context of those whose living depends on the oil sands is so inappropriate that it should not be discussed, ever.

Beyond that is an even tougher question: Should we as Canadians, whether through government funding or private investment, pour money into Fort McMurray to rebuild and enlarge the city so that we can double down on carbon extraction, even as the forests burn and threaten one of the world’s most valuable carbon sinks?

How can that be reconciled?

Or is it better just not to talk about it?

Posted in

Support

If you love this region and have a view to its future please subscribe, donate, or become a Patron.

Share on

Comments

Leave a Reply to AnonymousCancel Reply

  1. This harkens the same ‘doth protest too much’ plea that conservative pundits in the US trot out after every mass shooting (of white people). ‘How dare you/they politicize this tragedy!’ Don’t let false piety detract from honest questions. There is nothing to be or feel guilty about in debating whether the Ft Mac model is one we want to continue to pursue.

    1. Glad to see I’m not the only person who immediately thought of the American non-response to mass shootings when I read Trudeau’s comments. I would have expected this from Harper but was saddened to see it from Trudeau.

  2. I wrote a thesis about the morphology and development of Fort McMurray as a visiting student at the University of Alberta. Back in the day you could still walk some of the old trails in the muskeg that were the original Hudson’s Bay fur trapper paths. At the time I was given an original copy of the first typewritten town plan-I donated it to the Special Collections Library at UBC. Rumour has it that the original plan-by Cohos Evamy-was sketched out on the back of a cigarette pack while flying above the old town site in a helicopter.
    Fort McMurray has had an eccentric history, including an earlier plan for extraction from the oil sands with a nuclear device. It is surrounded by boreal forests, and they regenerate by burning every 75 years or so.

    1. The problem is record massive forest fires are arriving at rates that will obliterate the natural 75-year regeneration cycle. The boreal forest is as good or better than the Amazon for sequestering carbon under normal conditions, but the carbon stores are released en masse with fires like this. Some scientists are worried that the highest latitude boreal forest will burn off at rates that are exorbitant enough to expose the permafrost under the soils to melting, and then we will have one of the most serious tipping points of all: the release of methane in quantities large enough to put global warming on steroids.

  3. Very Disappointed in Trudeau thus far. Standing up in Paris and blabbering on about Climate change commitments then Woodfibre LNG, the pipeline reversals…

    Not to mention not action on amending C-51, I guess that ones here to stay.

  4. We seriously expect our energy addiction to use less fossil fuels any time soon ? 80%+ of the world’s energy consumption is fueled by fossil fuels, i.e. coal, oil and gas. There are few alternatives of scale for soon 8B people flying, driving, eating , turning on A/C, heating homes, transporting stuff etc

    The entire food chain uses fossil fuels from planting to harvesting to shipping.

    As such the far bigger question to ask is how can we reduce energy consumption i.e. become less energy obese.

    A liter of gas saved or not used by not driving or driving in a more fuel efficient car saves about 6-7 liters of oil on the production side. This is also referred to as energy asymmetry. Each liter of oil used needs to be extracted ( which costs energy ) then has to be shipped to the refinery via pipeline in bulk ( which costs energy ) then has to be refined ( which costs energy ) and then has to be shipped, often by truck to gas stations ( which costs energy ) and then, when burned in the car creates useless heat and friction not used to propel the car forward. This all adds up, to roughly a factor of 6:1. Is this topic of energy asymmetry taught in schools, and if not, why not ?

    As such, we need to start with THE CONSUMER i.e. with less use or being more energy efficient !

    Fort McMurray exists because consumers demand oil. If no one bought oil, it would not be extracted.

    Rather than teaching about climate change and evil oil & coal, perhaps we ought to teach far more about energy obesity and energy assymetry !!

    Reducing coal use is the next low hanging fruit, after energy reduction !

    Where is this taught ? Where is this awareness ?

    In a month it is business as usual in Fort Mc as the world needs 100M barrels of oil – DAILY !

    1. Thomas, fossil fuels are a relatively new element in our civilization, and are the new kid on the block in agriculture. Fossil fuel as chemical fertilizer is now used as a substitute for soil, and forms a very high cost line item on a farmer’s balance sheet. In fact, some jurisdictions have farmed out the soil down to the mineral soil (i.e. sand and gravel) and the cost of fertilizer has, in part, sunk many farmers under a mountain of debt.

      Fossil fuel dependency needs to be broken with things far healthier: Diversity and long term stability. You won’t find these in LNG or tar sands. And amidst your multiple point making, perhaps you can have a look at something that controls all fossil fuels, notably supply and price: Geology.

      1. Let’s not forget the standard of living achieved due to oil, gas and coal. You cannot pretend we can immediately achieve the same with substitutes.

        Keep in mind, too, that the bottom 6-7B all want what we, the top 1B have achieved in the last 100-150 years in terms of wealth creation.

        Of course drier forests due to global warming are related to Fort Mc fires.

        Oil has very high utility to users and there is no easy substitute.

  5. As someone who believes in global warming I would caution about linking a specific weather event with global warming. In particular I would be cautious about linking fires in the boreal forests with global warming. While a link is logical and likely a much larger cause of fires like these is the historical patern of forest fire suppression that has resulted in much heavier fuel loads and hotter more intense fires.

    1. Rico, the boreal forest is also a lot drier than under average conditions. It has come off several consecutive years of record temperatures and lack of precipitation, and it is that long-term trend that links successive fires like this to climate change. There have been fires since time immemorial. But massive fire events are coming faster than ever and closer together on the timeline.

    2. I understand that scientists are being rational and accurate when they limit their claims like this, but I suspect that a general audience hears this as equivocation, tantamount to saying that there is no link. In ordinary debate, the moment you start fiddling with definitions, you lose the argument.

      Which claim is less reasonable: that there is a link to climate change, or that there is no link at all? The latter strikes me as preposterous. But in terms of take-away messages, I think those are your only options. You have a choice between misleading the audience with accuracy, or leaving them with the right impression by misrepresenting the science.

      I would reframe the issue. This fire is representative of the effects of climate change, and an indication of what we should expect. This is indisputable, and it’s the message that matters. (It also leaves no room for blame or heartless statements about karma.) As for this event, maybe we just got unlucky: climate change increase the frequency and severity of fires like this, it produces hot weather and earlier springs that dry out the trees and the soil – but hey, maybe this particular fire would have happened anyway. Leave deniers to go beyond this to make the even more flimsy argument that climate has no effect.

      (If forced to answer the question of whether climate change causes fires, I would say that it doesn’t. Sources of ignition cause fires.)

      To answer the original question: Yes, I think we should talk about it. Arguments otherwise amount to political correctness (or concern trolling) that someone might be offended. Regardless, no-one in Fort McMurray should be blamed for making a living. We should instead be focusing on the future.

  6. We are so beyond preventing global warming now. All the politicos are facile, or act directly against the wellbeing of future generations while mouthing bromides. Adaptation measures should have started a decade ago. On that, we are not even out of the gate.

    The most galling thing about today’s politicians is their struggle to maintain the illusion of credibility when they issue strident, emotional comments about climate change then turn around in the very next breath and claim LNG as a solution, knowing full well fugitive methane and groundwater pollution will spike that one to the ground. Or enact a quick carbon tax, then practically the next day demand pipeline approval by claiming a “social licence” to do so via the carbon tax. Well, the laws of physics don’t work from a sheet of talking points. These leaders are so naïve it is pathetic, and their centre or left party allegiance is irrelevant. At least with conservatives their outright rejection, denial or Doubting Thomas policies were easy to understand, and they didn’t contradict themselves.

    Where are our Canadian patents on high density batteries and capacitors? Our geothermal plant engineering export potential? The well-funded innovation labs at our greatest universities? Our stable, generous (by today’s measure) long term funding for public transit, clean energy and efficient buildings? Our renewed understanding of life cycle, full cost accounting in our economic system? Our national smart grid? Our public equity share in privately-developed renewables? The energy cost calculations of various urban planning initiatives?

    This conversation must move on at a societal level.

    1. Look to Europe, specifically Denmark, Germany and Switzerland where Canada could go: higher gasoline costs, thus smaller more fuel efficient cars. More walkable or bikable cities. More electric trains. More solar panels. Windmills where it is windy. Nuclear power. More tele-commuting. Road tolls.

      Still, plenty of cars, very few e-cars.

      The price: triple to sixty old electricity cost. Is the Canadian consumer ready for it ?

      We need to reduce energy obesity, i.e. reduce energy consumption while still keeping or improving a relatively affluent life style. This is what the Germans, the Danish and the Swiss have achieved. i.e. get more ( life style, housing, vehicles at high speed, quality of life) with less ( energy ) and even less fossil fuels.

      Keep in mind that even if we, the top 1B are able to reduce energy by say 20-25% while not compromising our life style the bottom 5-6B want what we have and thus they need far FAR more energy, nixing any efficiency gains of the top 1B, adding in fact if you assume they will need at least 50% – 100% more over the next few decades. Oil production will peak around 110-125 million daily barrels of oil in the 2020s or 2030s most likely.

      LNG is far cleaner than coal. Switching all coal plants and all diesel trucks to LNG will reduce CO2 consumption significantly !

      Pretending that e-trucks and a few windmills or geothermal plants will do the same is unrealistic ! The scale of world wide energy requirements, roughly 250 million BOE ( barrel of oil equivalent) daily is just too vast !!

  7. The environment is a dynamic system and the potential tipping point between normalcy and catastrophe has to be defined by urban designers. This suggests that adaptation planning is required as well as emergency planning. For example: green belts serving as fire breaks, interconnected road networks offering multiple avenues of escape, elimination of choke points and dead ends, moratoriums on flood plain land development, erosion protection measures, etc.

  8. Good points, J.

    I’d add that the urban design efforts must address system efficacy as well. And financing, as cities will be straining to cope. I cannot imagine the costs of absorbing mid-century climate change refugees from Delta and Richmond due to flooding, let alone from an overheated California.

  9. Our past management practices do not incorporate genetics for the most part, and they certainly do not include adaptation. Typically, they focus on resistance, which is trying to force a forest to stay in a particular state. And that’s just not going to work — you can’t force a forest to stay a certain way. Eventually, it will tip.

    Instead, we need to think about adaptation. When we talk about forests and natural ecosystems, adaptation comes down to the genetic potential of trees to deal with a new situation. So the only way that we can help our forests in the long term is to strengthen their genetic abilities for adaptation. We have to look at the way our practices either support or interfere with this capacity for adaptation.

    A quote from Yale 360’s site that examined the pine beetle issue and climate change in the boreal forest. The entomologist sees great potential for research into tree genetics as part of a major adaptation effort, specifically why some individual trees have survived pine beetle infestations and long drought while the forest around them died.

    http://e360.yale.edu/feature/how_science_can_help_to_halt_the_western_bark_beetle_plague/2944/

  10. Several things should happened parallel while the ongoing scientific work needs to continue on climate change and outcomes if climate change is the cause of certain longitudinal manifestations in our environment:

    *Don’t blame people working and earning money in the oil /tar sands. We’re talking about ordinary folks, not the CEOs who give orders to extract for profit, etc.

    They are..no different from the sophisticated corporate tax lawyers in the big global firms who develop sophisticated tax planning schemes to reduce tax rate for their corporate clients. The Panama Papers are revealing some of this. But any well-versed accountant /tax lawyer knows this and how tax law can be interpreted and avoiding (carefully) the line of illegal practices. Make tax law more transparent (the lay public has great difficult challenging Income Tax Act because it’s highly technical area of law)/put control mechanisms. (I know, wouldn’t know if I had not also worked for one of the big firms.)

    Same for climate change: there are variables that are hard for the public to grasp. A lot of people don’t even want to acknowledge what the Inuit in the far north may have witnessed in their environment over the past 50 years.

    So instead of the general public spending a lot of time agreeing/disagreeing what causes climate change, encourage change at a people level for those…who live oil/energy industry-dependent areas of Canada to consider their health (by reducing car dependency for the 5 min. car drive for simple tasks), designing liveable /walkable/cycleable communities that useful /safe infrastructure, investing in transit, etc.

    *****Also having a property insurance industry that encourages rebuilding at same replacement price but more sustainable. Am thinking of the insurance assessors who have just flown into Fort Mac and need to determine /validate the insurance claim costs from their clients. Am not hopeful at all that even if the municipality wanted to modify the damaged neighbourhood abit, they won’t spend much time/if any, doing it.

  11. You and the NY Times should wait until the cause of the fires has been determined but so far everything is pointing to human activity such as off road vehicle use. That’s why Rachel and her crew put a moratorium on the activity. Since I know I’ll get vilified for what I said I’ll back it up with some evidence.

    Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fires at the University of Alberta, says the fire’s proximity to the city, as well as data that shows there were no lightning strikes in the area, lead him to believe the cause of the fire was likely human.

    “And in spring it’s heavily loaded on the side of people-caused fires,” Flannigan said.

    An average of 1,200 wildfires are reported in Alberta each year, and half of those fires are caused by humans, according to the National Fire Database. Lightning is the second-leading cause with 47 per cent.

    Source: http://globalnews.ca/news/2684741/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-likely-caused-by-humans/

    Other AB scientists and government officials have said the same thing. Yeah, the dry conditions provided a ton of fuel for those fires but they didn’t just start on their own which the NY Times appears to hinting at. No wonder their recent stories on climate change have been getting so many negative comments. My favorite was the one from last week about the climate refugees from LA (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/us/resettling-the-first-american-climate-refugees.html?smid=nytnow-share&smprod=nytnow&_r=0). I recommend reading the NYT Picks in the comments section. People aren’t stupid folks. Why do you guys keep acting as if they are? You make these wild claims such as global warming is a proven fact, the oil sands are bad, people who live in suburbs are fat, ignorant racists who are causing cities to broke, etc. and then get all worked up when you get called out. The comments to this blog post clearly show that. At least a couple of people who have posted here about this story are being reasonable and not letting ideology drive them.

  12. Corn, it doesn’t matter how a forest fire starts. Once it’s roaring away it is fueled by the conditions created prior to the start. In our situation a record-breaking climate warming trend has exacerbated cycles like El Nino, and it is clear that the boreal forest is suffering greatly as a result. The fact this fire was sparked by immature yahoos on ATVs and occurred next to a town is irrelevant to the conditions that will surely generate record numbers of large fires. We’re not even out of May, yet the fires currently burning make it seem like late August.

    As for your “wild claims” claim, well, let’s let the evidence speak.

  13. Justin knows that the oil will be needed and we will be paying to rebuild Fort McMurray, no matter if everyone buys a Tesla, or not. Justin will soon be helping Bombardier build the new Model C. Air Canada and now Delta have ordered them. Bombardier hope to capture a third of the market for that niche, which means 3,500 new aircraft by 2035, all burning – oil.

    Aircraft are expensive and designed to fly, so they are configured to fly as much as possible, only stopping on the ground to pick-up and drop-off passengers and crew and have the occasional maintenance done. Based on these aircraft flying just 12 hours a day because of night curfews and routine stops we can see that once 3,500 Bombardier Model C’s join the rest of the worlds airlines fleets they will be burning around 100 million litres of fuel per day.

    That’s around a billion gallons of gasoline a year.

    I guess it can be bought from the Saudis.

    1. Indeed, the illusion that we can wean ourselves off oil quickly, or at all, is wrong.

      The wealthy first top 1B can certainly curtail energy demand by say 20-25%, and replace some urban machinery, including cars to e-cars. The bottom wanting world of 5-7B people want what we have, incl. A/C, airplanes, fridges, ravel, iPhones, flying, travel .. all which costs energy and as such world total energy demand will INCREASE .. and even if the share of oil, gas or coal goes down, as it will, it will not reduce overall consumption by much .. perhaps coal first as the dirtiest fuel around. Gas can replace much of it as it is cleaner burning, but oil / gasoline / diesel / kerosine has such high energy density of 4-20 times that of electric batteries such much of the transportation chain will use it for decades, likely centuries.

      Until then Canada should supply it and make money off it. In parallel we can develop energy reduction techniques as well as convert some oil burning stationary engines from coal or oil to electricity, say cars in cities or lawn mowers or diesel buses, to leave oil for long distance ships, cars and planes !

Subscribe to Viewpoint Vancouver

Get breaking news and fresh views, direct to your inbox.

Join 7,284 other subscribers

Show your Support

Check our Patreon page for stylish coffee mugs, private city tours, and more – or, make a one-time or recurring donation. Thank you for helping shape this place we love.

Popular Articles

See All

All Articles