Or maybe I've been reading the wrong news sources and there's more to it? Cause it seems unreal.
Edit: Some sources: http://globalnews.ca/news/2690570/trudeau-criticized-for-ref...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-fire-so...
Or maybe I've been reading the wrong news sources and there's more to it? Cause it seems unreal.
Edit: Some sources: http://globalnews.ca/news/2690570/trudeau-criticized-for-ref...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-fire-so...
Here's some comparisons to the numbers in the article you linked to: Canada: 700 firefighters, several choppers, 27 air tankers and 46 pieces of heavy equipment deployed to fight 500,000+ hectare wildfire that has destroyed 2000+ buildings.
In Australia, 2013: 2000 firefighters, 90 aircraft, 200 fire engines were deployed to fight a 118,000 hectares fire that cost ~US$50 million and destroyed 250 buildings
Many of the firefighters in Australia (and in the southern hemisphere) are idle at the moment as it's heading into winter. It's very weird that Canada turned down help when so much property is on the line.
Source http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-02/australian-firefighter...
Source http://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=41701E7ECBE35-AD48-579...
Believe me, we didn't turn down help out of pride. We have a ton of experience dealing with these things. We know when a fire is fightable, and when it isn't.
If accepting American or Russian help would have helped save Canadian homes and businesses, we would have. The South Africans are here for diplomatic reasons more than anything, and they arrived long after the critical period when we were trying to protect property and lives.
This isn't the California wildfires. It's not threatening populated areas anymore. It's burning in a vast expanse of unpopulated subarctic forest. It's fine. The damage is done; now we wait for it to burn out while keeping an eye out for the next one.
So it's just a Trudeau-like "diversity" hire or something? Not to say that in a mean way, just that they are not the most qualified and have only received minimal training.
I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't being praised as "South African government sees it as repaying a debt to the Canadian people for their support for the anti-apartheid struggle"[1]. Let's just call it an aid program and be done?
1: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/300-south-afric...
Are you implying that they're all black because they're from South Africa?
I hate this notion that wildlife and nature isn't important. Apparently only human lives and materialistic objects matter....
Just an example: http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/09/17/scientists-let-wil...
Did you know that the earth has a history of 400 million years without humans fighting wildfires? (No big plants before the Devonian period.)
Then it turned out that fires are actually beneficial to sequoias reproduction, because they create an environment that is better suited to giant sequoias than the other kinds of trees. So, protecting them from fire was actually damaging their future...
How do you know this? Because the actual firefighters wanted more planes. The prime minster, who knows nothing about fire fighting is the one who rejected the help. Note that this has been an especially dry, hot season with far more wildfires than usual. And despite this, the provincial government cancelled the deal that they had to get more planes. The firefighters were up in arms over this. And that's before the Fort Mac fire happened.
Russia has allot of experience with wildfires it has the largest and densest northern forests in the world combined with a permafrost that holds insane amount of methane and other carbohydrates.
Climate change and forest fires are huge national security issue to Russia and if they go out of control it can cause horrible damage to Russia and even then entire planet as it can cause a Permian extinction style event which happened before when the Siberian carbon traps went up in flames. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...
Russia has been dealing with huge wild fires every several years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Russian_wildfires
They are one of the few countries that designs and builds dedicated firefighting aircraft designed to combat large forest fires. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_Be-200 And while they might be arseholes on the political scene otherwise every time there is a large scale fire they do extend their hand and come in with serious help.
Inviting a totally foreign country in which you're in a) fighting a proxy war with in yet another part of the world; and b) fighting a passive battle for northern sovereignty/control with seems like an incredibly stupid idea.
Canada has many forest fires on the go every year and are generally only worth fighting when they threaten communities. Forests are meant to burn. I have friends who work in emergency fire fighting in Saskatchewan and they have not been deployed to the Northern fires because it is not the problem the media is making it out to be!
Drought conditions and the heat traps that are cities prevent proper rainfall which stops them and changes we've made to the landscape can prevent burn outs which also make fires last longer.
And more importantly while forest fires are natural it doesn't mean it's good, we had at least one fire related extinction event, and even considerably smaller scale fires can be disastrous to humans so while it's true that to some extent the policy is let it burn in this case it's not longer really the case.
And while I would also agree that Canada is in a political muck with Russia it doesn't make sense to deny their help, Israel accepted Turkey's help to combat forest fire when their relationship was arguably at the lowest point shortly after the flotilla incident. Governments should know when it's a good time to put a halt to their differences and emergencies are as good as an excuse as any.
P.S. With forests being natural carbon traps climate change is now just as important factor as threat to communities and livelihood with the amount of CO2 were putting into the atmosphere we might not be able to longer afford for forest fires to take their natural course if we actually want to start reversing some of the changes we've made. This isn't some clear cut case, and in this case it seems that Canada does take help from certain countries but for some reason refrains taking it from others and in such cases politics should really be the last thing on your mind.
I never had this thought until now, but the things you eat are called carbohydrates whilst the things you burn are called hydrocarbons.
It's difficult to top the US in terms of foreign policy assholery though.
The fire presented a risk right at the beginning and seemed to spread into populated area's faster than could be responded to, once that risk was no longer present outside assistance was not required.
Turning down American help was strange though. I'd like an explanation for that..
Apart from Fort McMurray (which is now pretty safe) it's a mostly unpopulated area, and fire is a great natural renewal process in a boreal forest. Letting it burn for a while longer and just trying to keep guiding it away from anything valuable with minimal resources is a valid strategy.
Source - http://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=41701E7ECBE35-AD48-579...
It seems very weird that Russia and the US have nothing to contribute, but inexperienced folks from SA do.
From a forestry management perspective, you don't want the forest to live forever, and trying to prevent old, dead trees from burning is a nightmare. Let the fire burn, protect the property, and the forest will reseed itself during the fire.
But anecdotally Trudeau was worried about carbon footprints from a camp fire he once attended, but these wildfires don't bother him.
They don't feel smart when they can't tell if you're being facetious or literal.
I've seen far too many (AFAICT) absolutely sincerely intended idiotic statements here. I mostly simply let them fly. xkcd 386 only gets you so far.
Adding a </s> tag to your comment helps.
Eventually these trees will die and rot/burn anyway, but new ones will grow and recover near equivalent carbon. Trees just hold carbon temporarily.(Underground gas is another story though)
If you burn oil from deep underground, that carbon would never have escaped without human intervention.