Jasper wildfire/climate change

You're the one who decided to blame a wildfire on climate change... What did you really expect?

You started off making sense, then derailed.

Droughts (and little snowpack for that matter) aren't caused by climate change. The amount of water on earth is constant. Just because an area is experiencing a drought, doesn't mean it's because of climate change.

If you can willingly sit there and say human activity hasn't had an adverse effect on the worlds climate, there's no point in talking to you. Its right there in front of you.
 
If you can willingly sit there and say human activity hasn't had an adverse effect on the worlds climate, there's no point in talking to you. Its right there in front of you.
That's your explanation on how climate change is the reason for wildfires?

Sure, stupid people start wildfires, but climate change isn't the problem here...
 
That's your explanation on how climate change is the reason for wildfires?

Sure, stupid people start wildfires, but climate change isn't the problem here...

Yeah those stupid sentient lightning strikes, in areas seeing previously unknown levels of drought, with the lowest recorded levels of snowpack, year after year after year…
 
Really sad to see, and my thoughts are with the folks who live there.

Folks can argue about the tendencies, contributing factors, and causes all they want - I kind of see it as irrelevant to the fact of the matter that it can happen in the west. Talk to folks in the fire world in Montana, and they know the day is likely coming that towns like Seeley Lake or Lincoln, and even the edges of larger ones like Helena, could very much be dealing with an unfightable wildfire on mainstreet. It's not an easy or cheap problem to reduce the likelihood of.
 
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Randy says quit having pissing matches over politics so a fire thread immediately starts veering into oncoming traffic by leaning into a potential pissing match about the veracity of climate change science.

technically not explicitly politics i guess, touché
 
All the OSB and Lambeams, from those useless trees.
Mismanagement.
No thinning, no mills.

No mill towns.
No jobs.
No investments in the richest country in the world.
Rinse and repeat elsewhere.

Very sad to see. Farthest north in Canada I ever got was Jasper.
 
Knew this thread would bring out the climate change deniers, and thats fine. If you want to be willingly blind to whats happening, who am I to stop you.
When I was in grad school nearly 40 years back, just warming itself had confidence intervals of warming predictions high enough that allowed my meteorology professor to say hold on, we aren't certain yet.

Since that time all projections have proven to be wrong.

The climate has warmed up MUCH FASTER than was predicted.

Just yesterday I heard a fellow describe yet another worrisome trend--one I suspect might make fires more likely and more severe.

Measuring frost and hydrology in the forest--they found that much later arrival of snow cover and much earlier loss of it has created more and more lasting frost. When the snow goes over frost it runs off--much faster than when frost is leaving or gone when it goes. This both increases the damage from high rainfall events downstream and decreases soil moisture available for trees and other fire carrying fuels.

So many different pathways climate change is having a negative impact like that the average denier has no understanding of.

Visited Jasper and Banff several times as a Kid. While I understand commercialization has changed things, I had hoped to go back in Retirement. Really sorry to see this going on. I might be mixing Banff and Jasper up but recall there were a lot of old structures and architecture there that will be hard to replace if lost to fire.
 
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Randy says quit having pissing matches over politics so a fire thread immediately starts veering into oncoming traffic by leaning into a potential pissing match about the veracity of climate change science.

technically not explicitly politics i guess, touché

Glad it passed muster with you, I was waiting with baited breath to find out if it did.
 
Very sad to see such a unique little town destroyed. I always take a quick stop in Jasper on my way to and from Alaska and have also been doing backpacking/packrafting trips in Jasper and Banff the past few years. I have a big trip panned about 30-40 miles south of Jasper later this summer. The parks up there do seem to do a pretty good job with controlled burns. Twice now I have had to change my plans and go to a different area due to large burn operations in Banff and Jasper. These pics are from a late august trip near the Banff/Jasper border last summer. I had planned this route for the previous summer, but had to postpone a year due to a controlled burn closure. You can see the burn scar in the last couple pics.
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Is that Athabasca? If so am I wrong in remembering much deeper ice from 50 years back or so?
 
Is that Athabasca? If so am I wrong in remembering much deeper ice from 50 years back or so?

I wouldn't doubt it. Glaciers everywhere are shrinking. Polar ice caps as well. There's data showing what's happening in the Hudson's Bay, and what it causes in the ecological chain from polar bears on down, that's alarming to say the least. But that's just normal apparently to some.
 
So sorry to see this happening. I know only too well the rath of a wildfire.

A couple of days ago I was talking to my daughter's new man about morel picking in a fresh burn. I told him about a burn I was working in back in 1985 and about the ridiculous amount of mushrooms. Then it hit me. That was a 10,000-acre fire. That was an unprecedented size at the time. 10,000-acre fires were once in a generation events. Now just 40 years later a 10,000-acre fire doesn't even get honorable mention. Some of the fires around here now days burn that much in one day. Things are changing and changing fast.

Big fires have always been. Just seams more significant since its now. Sucks to see nonetheless.
 
Is that Athabasca? If so am I wrong in remembering much deeper ice from 50 years back or so?
No, its Saskatchewan Glacier a few miles south of Athabaskan, but they both connect to the Columbia Ice Field up top. When I was doing research on this trip I discovered that the US Army had a research/training facility built on this glacier back in the 40-50's. I was able to find an old picture from that time period and back then the glacier went all the way to the thick timber to the right of the center of this image below. It has since receded almost 3 miles. In much of that area, it is over 500 feet of elevation from the valley bottom to the marks on the valley walls where the glacier sat 75 years ago. That is a lot of ice gone just in this small toe of the glacier. Even where the glacier is still present, it is easy to see where it has also lost at least 500 feet off the top.
Map.jpg
 
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Knew this thread would bring out the climate change deniers, and thats fine. If you want to be willingly blind to whats happening, who am I to stop you.
Dubz - think i should have added more context. When climate change is attributed as the sole cause - the other causes and solutions (not related to energy/climate policy) at the table are discarded.
 
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