Out of the Frying pan...? Fort MacMurray, Alberta evacuees drive past the flames as they escape massive forest fire.
Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada is a city built by the oil industry. Specifically, it was built by the Tar Sands.. one of the biggest, nastiest point sources of greenhouse gasses in North America. Prior to the construction of the Alberta tar sands, Ft McMurray was a quiet Alberta town of little note. In the last few decades, it has grown into a boom town servicing the massive tar oil extraction projects just north of the city. In a case of Karmic Turnaround, the entire population of Ft. McMurray, has been ordered evacuated because of a massive global-warming fanned forest fire.
Retweeted Tyler Burgett (@tburgs15):#ymmfire pic.twitter.com/... https://t.co/kt00oYVX5R
— Hayley Wickenheiser (@wick_22) May 4, 2016
While the United States has been riveted by Casic’s Surrender to Donald Trump, Canadians have bee watching the tragedy an industrial city of 50,000 people evacuated even as it’s primary escape route has been cut in half by massive forest fire.
Now, I would be the first person to tell you that a single event cannot usually be tagged as being caused by Global Warming. Global warming isn’t a single event, it’s a trend. It’s more like a loaded dice. You can’t take one throw of a suspect pair of dice and say “twelve — These dice are loaded!”. Twelves sometimes occur with both fair and loaded dice, and two’s sometimes occur with both loaded and fair dice. With both loaded dice and global warming, you have to look at a series of events before you can clearly see the pattern of the loading.
‘So then how,’ one should ask, ‘can you claim that this event is caused by global warming?’
My answer is that this actually the result of the confluence of multiple global warming effects.
To begin with, the effects of global warming get more noticeable as you move further north. In the southern US, the temperature changes are small, and the effects are not particularly clear. Droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and other storms occur much like they did before — just a shade stronger. In Canada, on the other hand, the temperature changes are a bit stronger, and they show in more obvious ways — the growing season has been extended in recent decades, temperatures in the winter don’t go as low as they used to, there isn’t as much snow in the winter, it melts sooner and drought in the prairies has gone from an occasional issue to a chronic problem.
Ft. McMurray is in Canada’s ‘Near North’ — south of the Arctic circle, but north of most of Canada’s population. (Edmonton — Canada’s northernmost city of more than ½ million is about 250 miles south.). Last winter was warmer and dryer than usual. The snow pack has completely melted and in the last few days the temperature has been much above normal. On Tuesday temperatures were as high as 32C (89F) versus a ‘normal’ high of 16C (60F). The entire province has been experiencing warmer than usual temperatures and lower than usual rainfall (drought) for years. These are all chronic conditions which are consistent with Global Warming.
The fire, itself, isn’t such a big surprise (we’re just entering the start of fire season), but the chronic conditions have resulted in tinder dry conditions and high fire risk at a time of year when you would normally expect mild to medium fire risk. All you needed to add to this was some gusty winds to turn a small weekend fire into a massive blaze requiring the evacuation of an entire city.
The chronic conditions exacerbating this fire are why I’m calling this disaster a global-warming caused event.
Update:
Now, to be sure, the entire city has not been destroyed, and is unlikely to be. Some neighbourhoods have suffered extreme fire loss, with as much as 80% of the homes destroyed, and a number of businesses have gone up in flames, but the downtown core is mostly intact and many neighbourhoods have suffered minor or no loss. The reason for the evacuation was that, as of Tuesday, the fire had become so fast-moving and unpredictable that authorities were unable to ensure that any part of the city was beyond threat.
Temperatures today (Wednesday) are once again predicted to go into the 30s (celsius) and the fire is still out of control. Many people have lost everything, but the majority of the city is likely to ‘only’ be extremely inconvenienced by this fire.
My point, though, still stands. This disaster was caused, in a large part, by global warming. These super-fires have become a recurring theme in western Canada as large swathes of forest become bone dry and stressed by the warming climate. The threat continues in other areas of the world — extremes of weather, large storms, droughts and the threats of rising and warming oceans continue. The prime point that makes this disaster of interest is the fact that a city that was essentially built by a powerful source of CO2 is now under threat because of the resulting global warming.
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