The entire capital city of Canada's Northwest Territories has been ordered to evacuate as hundreds of wildfires scorch the region, officials say
The entire capital city of Canada's Northwest Territories has been ordered to evacuate as hundreds of wildfires scorch the region, officials say
Hundreds of wildfires burning in Canada’s Northwest Territories have prompted emergency declarations and the evacuation of the capital city of Yellowknife by road and air.
And as we enter the "Entire cities burning down" part of climate change the world will do... Absolutely nothing.
135Because to fix it, what they have to change is everything. The way things are powered, produced, financed and probably also governed. Nobody will vote for that. They'll keep trying to patch things up until it really starts to falls apart and people take the pieces to put them together differently.
28Effective prevention of climate change is and has been politically impossible, like you said.
Maybe I'm just depressed about it all but I've moved on to the unfortunate "resilience" (or acceptance) phase. It's coming and it's not slowing down. So what are we going to do about? The answers differ depending on where you live. Some places just aren't going to survive. The ones that do are going to have strained resources to withstand extreme climate effects while simultaneously having a refugee problem.
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But Canada is doing it's part - they claim credit for all those forests as part of the climate change goal! (disclaimer: only when the trees are growing, not when they're burning)
6Man that's pretty disheartening. Guess I'll just go to bed now.
4The problem is that the typical Republican does not believe this is related to climate change. When I suggested that my father-in-law laughed at me saying "yeah, everything is related to climate change huh?"
2I have to admit I’m kind of with the conservatives on this. I mean, of course it’s an issues and humanitarian crisis and yet one more example why climate change is so important but …..
There’s already too much hyperbole here that makes me immediately want to discount this. Yeah, 20,000 is a lot of people to be affected but when you’re phrasing this as “entire cities” and “the capital city of the territory”, but the entire territory has fewer people than my “small suburb” ….
Edit to add: my university had a larger population than this “entire cities”. Can’t we talk about this serious issue without counter-productive hyperbole?
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Just one of those fires is 600 square miles in size. I can't even begin to comprehend what that must be like, and I've been in a wildfire situation before
90Sounds like Vonnegut in Dresden
12So it goes
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If it were a rectangle, it would take you 2 hours to drive around it at 70mph
4To me that’s the standout statistic here. I’m a little less sympathetic to “entire cities” with less population than anything I’m familiar with but holy crap …. My small suburb has way over the population of the entire territory but the size of that fire is 46 times the area! Damn
Actually, I live near Boston and that fire is over 6 times the area of the city.
Looking farther afield, that fire is twice the area of New York City
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As an Australian watching the northern hemisphere lately it's scary to think our fire season is almost here and we've had the right conditions for lots of fuel to grow and die off.
67For the first time in my life I'm terrified of what this summer has the potential to be like this year. I'm in QLD and summer is always tough but I'm really worried about how high the temperatures might rise this year.
19European here. A friend of mine bought a house in Cairns a while back. Is it an area that's known to have problems with wildfires? I realised this is a vague question but she was asking me about whether or not she should sell the house based on the global financial situation, but she never mentioned wildfires. I assume she's factoring it in based on the insane wildfires you guys had a couple of years back but you can never be sure
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As an Australian-Canadian, I've given up on my dream of moving back to Australia. That country is done. And I say this as someone currently living in Canada.
3🤔 So countries like that need some kind of mass irrigation systems to water the forests and fields in the summer to stop wildfires from happening
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
About 20,000 residents in Yellowknife are being urged to get out of the way of fast-moving flames as more than 230 fires char the territory and smoke creeps south, impacting air quality in the United States.
One of the wildfires burning west of Yellowknife is approximately 165,000 hectares, more than 600 square miles, and inching closer to the community and main highway, according to Mike Gibbins, who manages communications for Municipal Affairs Minister Shane Thompson’s office.
Thompson declared an emergency for the entire territory on Tuesday, which will allow officials “to access and deploy resources so that we can continue our work to protect residents and communities in a more efficient manner,” he said.
Sensitive groups, such as people with lung or heart disease, the elderly and children are urged to avoid prolonged or heavy exertion and the general public is being told to limit outdoor activity.
In Canada, the Minister of National Defense Bill Blair on Tuesday mobilized the Canadian Armed Forces to provide firefighting personnel, airlift resources, and logistical support to the Northwest Territories.
“We stand with the people of the Northwest Territories as they experience their worst fire season on record, and I am confident that our military personnel will do their utmost to assist their fellow Canadians,” Blair said in a statement.
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22No one will do anything until we start hunting them. Entire cites are burning down. Peace is not an option.
17Honestly, it is probably too late for a revolution to be meaningful. Climate collapse will take decades to resolve itself even if we halted all carbon usage today.
Leaving the planet might actually be a more realistic option, especially to preserve what's left of nature.
I'm not saying don't eat the rich though. Just that it won't stop what's already started.
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God damn that's frightening
13If this is the plot of Balto 2, I hate it.
11That's rough.
9Damn. Thoughts and prayers to all caught in that. On a side note, just played through firewatch today, fun
experiencegame.8Oh, this is such a shit thread to have this conversation, but nevertheless...
I played Firewatch for a while a couple of years ago and LOVED it. Didn't finish, not sure what happened but I just never got back to it. I think I've forgotten enough of it now that I can go back and start again and have a fresh experience. I've recommended this game to a few people and everyone has loved it. Some excellent twists and turns and fun little bits of mystery. Great writing!
9Just bought this for 75% off and I'm super keen to get into it.
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I think this is a bigger climate change issue than vast areas of dry brush or woods mire likely to burn ….
-- Forest fires are not new to the area but the increased risk and size are
-- who the f expects wildfires in Hawaii? How does it get dry enough for that to happen?
-- meanwhile I’m sitting here in the Northeast US with so much rain that even with way above average temperatures, my grass is still green and growing like Spring. Usually it goes dormant sometime in July and you don’t have to cut it much anymore (unless you water it) but I’m still more than once per week
1Yellowknife has less than 10% of the population of the city I live in, and you've never heard of it. I respect the great impact on 20k people, but there ain't many folks living up there.
1Is there unbiased data that says the fires were started due to climate change? Either way, time for Canada to out these fires out. Like get a hose and some water.
-5the fires were started due to climate change?
Interesting academic question. Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that these specific fires were not.
It's still an uncontroversial insight that events like these will occur more often, and become more severe, as a consequence of climate change.
So even if this particular event was not caused by climate change (or if a causal link cannot be shown beyond doubt), it still serves as a taste for things to come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire#Climate_change_effects
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