'Zombie Fires' burning at an alarming rate in Canada | Hacker News Reader

'Zombie Fires' burning at an alarming rate in Canada

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101 pointsvoisin66 comments

I'm in Australia, and we had these on our place.

We have bush and cow-paddocks. We had a bush-fire go through back in 2018, and even though the fire was extinguished, I noticed the grass turning black in a line, or spreading out radially in some spots. Not fast, but it was steady.

I worked out it was a peat fire and called the fire-brigade back. The chief told us, and this is a direct quote, "it's just cow-pats on fire"! It took a more experienced old-hand to set him straight, and that it was an actual problem.

On a small scale it's like voodoo. On those scales, it must be terrifying.

Spooky. How do you deal with something like that?

Dig with a Macleod tool, straight jets of water into the ground to penetrate, sprays on turned soil to cool. Rinse and repeat.

A thermal imaging camera can be handy to find the hot spots. Especially if you can get on the fireground overnight.

Mainly, though, you just need to watch peaty areas carefully until you’re sure they’re done and dusted. Regular patrols, especially ahead of a bad weather change.

Australian peat is very different to Canadian peat, though. Canada is wetter and colder, making this kind of overwintering possible. Here peat fires can smoulder for up to a few weeks, but they’ll either blow back up once it gets dry enough or go out once it rains enough. We never get that protective snow layer that keeps the fire dry but cool for months on end.

I haven’t been over but a couple of mates went last year. The part of Canada they were working has a deep peat/duff layer above permafrost. All the trees are rooted only in the duff so when the fire rolls through, it burns out all the root balls and suddenly every tree is a widowmaker.

Also Canada has reliable flowing water from snowmelt, so their tactics are focused on high pressure pumps and multi-km hose lays. Totally alien to the dry firefighting tactics we use in remote area work here in Aus.

Canadian government has cut funding and forest management services, which leads to these fires, which the government blames on global warming and climate change.

But the government has stopped managing the forests, and is not putting forth the required effort to deal with the fires or the root issues.

Unfortunately this is a problem that the government appears reluctant to deal with because it feeds their ideological agenda of climate change.

Unfortunately as a Canadian, I can't trust the Canadian government as they maintain they are leaders in this sector, yet failing (on purpose imo) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/world/canada/canada-firef...

That’s not really what’s going on, people always complain about the budget but the variability is vastly more than explained by budgets alone. In Alberta 30% more acres burned in 1983 than 2023, while 2020 was one of the lowest years on record.

Wildfires are just highly variable, and 2023 was ideal conditions for them while 2020 wasn’t.

> while 2020 was one of the lowest years on record

Kind of an interesting data point given that wildfires are often unintentionally started by humans and 2020 was the bulk of the lockdown from COVID.

Except that

1. the vast majority of forest fires in Canada are started by lightning strikes.

2. Canada did not have strict lock-down rules like much of the world; going off in the woods was one of the things you could definitey do

I remember (from videos of VivaFrei, a Canadian citizen) that it was prohibited to walk outside area of few blocks away from your home address. And there were curfews.

If so, going off in the woods was one of the things you could definitey not do.

There was only curfews in Quebec. Really early on when things were more unknown some places put more restrictions on things like going to parks but that lifted pretty fast.

"Lifted pretty fast" is a vague statement. When where these restrictions lifted? Before or after wildfires season?

I was there, and I definitely could do those things.

Actually most are caused by human activity

> Canada did not have strict lock-down rules like much of the world

Canada is big. The covid rules were by province. Quebec in the east had lockdowns, but the fires discussed in the article are in the west.

Highly variable but the trend is increasing. And fires are becoming more costly, evacuations more frequent. More people are living, retiring, in remote places.

Canada is the fourth largest oil producer in the world, if they have an ideological agenda against climate change they’re going about it all wrong.

You can say the same about Norway, that went full speed for electric cars but still extract and sell a lot of oil.

This is currently our biggest unsolved political issue IMO. Without a focus on the supply side, all of our current consumption-focused climate change policies (carbon tax on consumption, electric vehicle mandates, most recently infrastructure issues etc.) effectively amount to weak virtue signaling that has mostly succeeded in dividing voters and provinces against each other, when we should instead be tackling the 500 lb gorilla in the room (Alberta’s oil sands). Hence the well-deserved Greta Thunberg snark towards Trudeau a while back.

How do we do that? Some think we should just leave the oil in the ground. Others think we should avoid building further export infrastructure (i.e. pipelines). These options strike me as politically unpalatable, and even our current government stepped in at one point a few years ago to bail out the troubled Trans Mountain pipeline.

One option I am strongly in favour of is nuclearizing the oil sands. AFAIK right now the process for extracting crude from the oil sands is very energy-intensive and is currently powered by nat gas since the producers have it on hand. There was a proposal a while back to power this process by nuclear energy, which failed because: a) nuclear energy was scary, and b) crude prices took off and reduced the economic incentive for cost savings.

I imagine that the nuclear option could be resurrected now alongside government investment in LNG infra as well as a supply-side carbon tax to provide extra incentive to push producers on board. Since we’re not going to leave the oil in the ground anyway, this would allow us to extract it in the cleanest possible way, while actually creating jobs and making our energy exports more competitive overall.

Now, if only Canada could elect a visionary government that actually cared about climate change and not just about virtual signaling…

> Without a focus on the supply side, all of our current consumption-focused climate change policies (carbon tax on consumption, electric vehicle mandates, most recently infrastructure issues etc.) effectively amount to weak virtue signaling that has mostly succeeded in dividing voters and provinces against each other

This is a very bad-faith read of what actually happened. There’s been decades of interest in the supply side, but this isn’t happening in isolation: the fossil fuel industry is massive and has enormous political clout, and they know that there’s no path to a better world which doesn’t involve the fossil fuel industry making trillions fewer dollars. That means that supply side improvements have both been prevented or steered in infeasible directions which conveniently mean fossil fuel consumption won’t drop in the slightest until decades in the future when something very hard finally happens (hydrogen, nuclear). Any time you’re about to repeat a right-wing trope about virtue signaling, know that you’re contributing your time and credibility to assist their propaganda campaign entirely pro bono instead of doing anything which could help.

Re: tar sands, nuclear takes too long to construct and if you did get a plant through you’d want to use it to decarbonize usage directly rather than encourage more oil consumption.

Overall you’re right about fossil fuel interests blocking progress. But you’re wrong about nothing changing until “far in the future” as well as the part about “hydrogen, nuclear”* being key drivers. China has now built so much solar PV and wind that their emissions are set to peak and enter a structural decline this year. Similar trends are occurring everywhere in the world, just a couple of years behind. It’s just taking time for people to realize this is happening, because the exponential phase of an S-curve produces such fast change that even being one or two years out of date is like reading news from last century.

* As a note, hydrogen and nuclear will be relevant, but only for the last (hard) fraction of it. Ironically, promoting hydrogen and nuclear as the “only viable technology” seems to be the latest PR campaign pursued by fossil interests.

I think we’re actually in agreement. All I meant by that was that the fossil fuel companies have been happy to support things like an envisioned transition to hydrogen, biofuels, or nuclear power when that means it’s business as usual for decades until [hypothetically] some major change happens and our emissions will drop precipitously. Toyota is similarly happy to talk about how green they’ll be in 2040 while heavily advertising that you need a $60k ICE Tundra to drive to the office in the meantime since those have a much higher profit margin than the few hydrogen vehicles they can sell.

I strongly agree that nuclear is relevant for some last n% stuff but am hoping that the renewable boom will buy enough time to deploy it. As you noted, the capacity there has been on a reassuringly massive growth curve with no barriers to stop it other than politics.

Q: Who decides whether the policy focus is on the supply side or consumption side?

A: The government and its voters.

That’s it. That’s who I am going to hold accountable.

Now, the point I am making that you seem to miss is that in Canada, the supply side is the larger issue. This is because we are a net energy exporter. So hence why to most Canadians outside of Alberta, blaming the consumer while giving the oil sands a pass feels like cheap political theatre.

OTOH Albertans feel very threatened any time the government starts to talk about doing something supply side, and I think many are actually very happy to go along with the political theatre of the demand side focus because they know it doesn’t directly threaten their jobs.

What should we do in an ideal world? Target both. But if I were designing an effective climate policy and had to pick only one, I would do supply side first.

On a side note, studies have estimated that the current carbon tax levels are 5-10x too low to effectively price in the externalities due to releasing the carbon. So yes, it’s virtue signaling.

> The government and its voters.

Do they operate in an ideal state of perfect knowledge or have they possibly been influenced by the billions spent by fossil fuel companies trying to deny or minimize the problem, and massively overstate the economic cost of reducing carbon emissions? By all means, hold people accountable for bad decisions but also recognize that they’re not making those decisions in a vacuum. If you think the carbon tax is low, start your blame with the people who strenuously opposed it more than the people who got you the current tax.

A carbon tax is not 'weak virtue signalling', a sufficiently priced carbon tax changes the composition of supply and demand for all goods to account for carbon emitted.

I agree and am in favour of carbon taxes. However this particular carbon tax is weak virtue signaling exactly because it is not sufficiently priced.

And it’s poorly targeted.

The Canadian carbon tax can barely politically survive at the price its at, and moreover its slated to reach $170 / ton

Unfortunately, having an ideological agenda against climate change and trying to effectively manage and mitigate climate change are completely orthogonal.

Let me introduce you to the western/eastern Canada divide...

Alberta is the fourth largest oil producer in the world, Alberta/Saskatchewan/Manitoba are basically 100% conservative party.

Ontario/Quebec/BC are the political battlefield of Canada. The Liberal party uses Climate Change basically as anti-western-Canada/anti-conservative-party tool.

The Liberal Party is in power, and promotes a lot do climate change rhetoric. The Conservative Party is pro oil. Alberta & Saskatchewan are pro oil.

> The Liberal party uses Climate Change basically as anti-western-Canada/anti-conservative-party tool.

It isn't used by the liberal party as an anti western tool. It's an actual threat that is creating serious problems across Canada today.

Here in Alberta today, we are facing an unprecedented drought in 2024 as a product of record low snowpack that itself is a product of 2023 being the hottest year in recorded history.

Pine beetle infestations are destroying forests across the BC / Alberta border because in the last decade our winters have simply no longer been cold enough to kill them off.

The revenue neutral carbon tax is the most effective market oriented policy for decarbonizing economic growth, as demonstrated by economic study after economic study.

> It isn't used by the liberal party as an anti western tool. It's an actual threat that is creating serious problems across Canada today.

It is both.

The question is, if Canada completely shut down everything, would that change anything? Would Canada literally ceasing all oil extraction fix any of the issues you bring up? Would it measurably help anything?

You do understand that it's dry as fuck after snowpack is at a record low the last 3 years.

Sustainable forrest management requires frequent controlled burns to manage underbrush. Around Michigan this can be a yearly occurrence.

You’re thinking of the forest in British Columbia that don’t sit on meters of peatland.

This is peat burning deep underground. There is nothing forest management can do to stop that because it’s not a forest problem, it’s a dried out peat problem.

> because it feeds their ideological agenda of climate change.

If Alberta, and Canada in general, has any ideological agenda about climate change, it's about making it worse faster, given that they are one of the biggest producer of oil, and the worse kind possible…

Canada's forests are just too vast for active management. At best, forests that threaten structures might be managed at the edges. But for climate change location doesn't matter. All the big fires in the north, started by lightning in areas far from roads, cannot be prevented through raking out the underbrush. There aren't enough rakes in the world.

California is doing the same thing too. Take the poor forest management and add trees being killed by a foreign beetle to the mix, and you have powder keg every summer waiting to go off.

The reason pine beetle infestations have exploded is because Canadian winters are no longer reliably cold enough to kill them off.

Exactly what 'management' do you mean? I ask because this is a frequent astroturf point timber companies use to claim that they need to have larger, cheaper timber leases.

The forests were fine for a very, very, very long time before timber companies were around to help 'manage' them. Many species require forest fire as part of a larger biological cycle. Forest fires are OK. Let them burn. The problem is that we're trying to insert our human stuff into the forests, at which point all of a sudden they are something that requires 'managing'.

I mean, depends on how you define OK. On a geological timescale, sure they’ll be just fine. On a timescale measured in decades to centuries, not necessarily.

Fire is definitely part of many ecosystems. Fire every ten years in a sclerophyll forest? Great! Fire in a rainforest during a bad drought? It’s gone now. Might come back after the next ice age.

Also, “forest” environments that have been clear felled and replaced with a monocrop at some point basically have to be managed thereafter. Any properly bad fire through there will leave the ground essentially sterile. Seed bank destroyed. Still black years later. Their natural resilience is gone and it’s our responsibility to manage the fire ecology while they rehabilitate in the same way we need to manage the flora back to something healthier.

And then of course, anywhere we’ve built human stuff on the interface. We either defend it or we resign ourselves to the people who live there being homeless after the next fire. Leaving aside whether that’s right or wrong, it’s a very different social pact than the one we’ve operated under so far. Any change to that is going to be generational rather than short term.

This seems to be similar to that American town where the coal mine went in fire and kept burning, even to this day.

Except here the organic substrate is burning. Apparently it is well insulated because the top snow layer doesn't melt but it is also porous because the fire needs oxygen.

You're thinking of the Centralia fire:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

"The Centralia mine fire is a coal-seam fire which has been burning in the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States, since at least May 27, 1962. Its original cause and start date are still a matter of debate. It is burning at depths of up to 300 ft (90 m) over an 8 mi (13 km) stretch of 3,700 acres (15 km2).[4] At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years."

Replace the oxygen in that tunnels with a mix of water and some inert mix gas heavier than air?

Identify each pit and air vent smoking and seal it tight until the oxygen is exhausted?

Nobody has really tried anything to stop this C02 emission source in 70 years?

Have you heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routine_flaring ?

It is not that simple. The rock is still hot, hot enough that it will take decades to cool. It could reignite decades later if given air. Any effort to seal and extinguish the fire would be a project more like chernobyl remediation than putting out a forest fire.

Also, if the coal is hot, putting water (steam) on it produces flammable gas (CO and H2).

CO2 injection to smother and cool?

That makes carbon monoxide.

Maybe nitrogen?

Appears to be state of the art (injecting nitrogen foam). Good call!

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40789-022-00539-4

https://patents.google.com/patent/US7104336

I wonder if big companies would agree to sponsor this fix if the government will agree in return to include a reduction in their carbon emissions taxes of that year. If well done everybody would be happy. One problem less.

We have prices and rewards allocated for looking for solutions to non-simple cases. How much resources have been trow to the problem? More or less resources than excuses?

Let a lot of the main carbon storage released just because "why should we care?" is ludicrous. We are in a better position to fix it than in 60's.

Can they at least get energy out of it? Eg by putting pipes in the ground and pumping water through them so that it comes out hot enough to drive a turbine?

There seem to be a lot of these coal fires:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

We should use them as geothermal power sources.

Oh great. With in situ coal combustion, we can use all the coal, not just the readily mineable coal. Let's reproduce the CO2 increase from the end Permian extinction.

If they are already burning, and we can't or won't put them out, then why not? As of now, they are emitting CO2 and are also of no use.

Should we not use them out of spite of ourselves?

It's not a safe area to be around. The ground shifts, the air is death. The water is death. Really not worth it. There are some great videos on youtube about these places. They make clear why nobody lives around them.

we already are, on a planet-wide basis

Last year was bad for forest fire season in BC and AB. This coming one has the potential to be as bad or worse. Snow-pack in the mountains is something like 30% of average in some places, so far anyways. Gonna be dry.

All last summer in the US Upper Midwest, we got drifting smoke from Canadian wildfires. This news doesn't bode well.

I suspect we will have smoke/haze again this year (Illinois).

It was wild to see. I was working down in the Monmouth, IL region for a few weeks this past spring. My wife in Saskatchewan would send me pictures when the smoke got bad. Two or three days later it would reliably roll through Monmouth.

I’m sure hoping it doesn’t happen again this year. While it was pretty bad down in IL when it would roll through, it was downright miserable back home in SK. Some days you’d wake up in the morning with this thick crust of gunk in your eyes and nose. Can’t have been good for health.

>> So-called zombie fires are burning under thick layers of snow at an unprecedented rate.

...also called overwintering fires. They are flameless smoulders that burn slowly below the surface

I guess we know what drives clicks.

"RCMP arrest man for arson in connection with starting wildfires"

https://globalnews.ca/news/9673400/arson-alberta-wildfires-i...

But yeah, "zombie fires"

Did you read the article? Zombie fires are those continuing to burn under the snow. That term doesn’t conflict at all with one idiot starting a handful of fires.

The article is specifically talking about fires that smolder underground through the winter (even in -40 F conditions), fed on peat moss.

tl;dr

The western provinces of Canada are tracking a higher than usual number of peat fires that they expect will “kick start” a new round of forest fires in the spring.

British Columbia: 106 peat fires (typical average ~10) Alberta: 57 (average ~6)

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