Climate Change UPDATED > Canada's Record breaking forest fire season had some help, officials ignore; Nova Scotia's largest ever wildfire deliberately set

 

Quebec man pleads guilty to setting 14 forest fires

By Jacob Serebrin  The Canadian Press

Posted January 15, 2024 1:27 pm

 Updated January 15, 2024 3:05 pm

A B.C. Sierra Club member says carbon emissions from wildfires are “a major problem because we cannot continue to ignore these emissions.” – Nov 9, 2023

A Quebec man who posted conspiracy theories online that forest fires were being deliberately set by the government has pleaded guilty to starting a series of fires himself that forced hundreds of people from their homes.

Brian Paré, 38, pleaded guilty Monday to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life at the courthouse in Chibougamau, Que.

Prosecutor Marie-Philippe Charron told the court that two of the 14 fires set by Paré forced the evacuation of around 500 homes in Chapais, Que., a small community located around 425 kilometres northwest of Quebec City.

“On May 31 at 8:30 p.m., the town of Chapais issued a mandatory evacuation order due to the raging fires, in particular the fire at Lake Cavan as well as the airport fire, two fires that are included in the charges and were cause by the accused,” Charron said as she presented an agreed statement of facts.

Residents of the town weren’t able to return home until June 3, Charron said. The Lake Cavan fire was by far the biggest set by Paré, burning nearly 873 hectares of forest, she said. It was also one of the first in a series of five blazes Paré ignited between May 31 and June 1 — the spree started three days after the Quebec government banned open fires in or around forests due to dry weather conditions.

Five fires in a short period of time in the same area raised suspicion, Charron said. Provincial police and first responders “observed that some of the fires had no possible natural cause,” she said, adding that evidence was found that some of the fires had been criminally set.

Charron said police first spoke to Paré on June 2. He had been seen in the area around where a fire had started and was considered a witness. While he denied causing the fires, she said Paré “demonstrated a certain interest in fires” during the interview, which led police to suspect him.

In June, she said, police began watching Paré’s Facebook page, where he regularly posted about Quebec’s record-breaking forest fire season. Among those posts, which remain on his public Facebook page, were claims the fires had been deliberately set by the government to trick people into believing in climate change.

Paré’s ideology and behaviour — including those Facebook posts — matched a profile of the suspect developed by provincial police specialists, she said. 

Charron said police obtained a warrant to install a tracking device on Paré’s vehicle. On Sept. 1 and Sept. 5, she said, that tracking device showed he was at locations where other fires were started.

Paré was arrested on Sept. 7, she said, and when questioned this time, he admitted to starting nine of the fires.

“At this point, the accused admitted he was the one who started the fires and, as his main motivation, claimed he was doing tests to find out whether the forest was really dry or not,” Charron said.

Paré, who has been detained since his arrest, said little during the hearing, only responding “yes” to a series of questions from the judge.

A pre-sentencing report has been ordered that will consider both Paré’s mental state and the risk he poses to public safety. It will be submitted by April 22.

Two other charges — breaking and entering and causing a public nuisance — have been conditionally suspended, Charron said.

More than 700 forest fires burned over 4.5 million hectares of Quebec forest over the summer, according to the province’s forest fire service, which said 99.9 per cent of the fires were sparked by lightning.

And here, we have 14 fires deliberately set, which accounts for 2% of the 700 fires. So, the highest percentage possible for lightning-caused fires is 98%, not 99.9. That's assuming that Paré was the only firebug in all of Quebec. It's also assuming that none of the fires were accidentally started by campfires. In other words, it's a bunch of BS, and Quebec Forestry has no credibility whatsoever.

Greece, which is smaller than Quebec (1/12th) and much smaller than Canada, (just over 1%) arrested 79 firebugs last year. 79! And do you really think that in all of Canada there was only one?

Climate Change > Canada's carbon reduction program is completely wrong! 

Charges laid against N.S. man after the province’s largest wildfire

By Alex Cooke  Global News

Posted January 18, 2024 6:12 am

 Updated January 18, 2024 9:27 am

A man from Shelburne County, N.S., is facing charges in relation to the Barrington Lake wildfire last spring.

The Barrington Lake wildfire is the largest wildfire in the province’s history, having burned through 23,379 hectares in southwestern Nova Scotia. It broke out on May 26, 2023, and was declared under control on June 13, before being extinguished on July 26.

The fire forced more than 6,000 people from their homes and destroyed 60 houses and cottages.

In a release, the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables said 22-year-old Dalton Clark Stewart of Villagedale has been charged under the Forests Act.

He is accused of lighting a fire on privately owned land without permission of the owner or occupier, failing to take reasonable efforts to prevent the spread of a fire, and leaving a fire unattended.

Stewart is scheduled to appear in Shelburne Provincial Court on March 7.

“The court will determine the outcome of the charges, including any penalties,” the release said. “People convicted of violations of the Forests Act can be fined up to $50,000 and/or face up to six months in prison.”

Orlando Fraser, director of the Department’s conservation service, said in an interview that he believes Nova Scotians will be happy that charges were laid.

He was unable to share more information about their investigation due to the upcoming court process.

“I understand the public and Nova Scotia want to hear some information on these fires,” he said. “I just ask for patience as we continue on and bring this matter before the courts.”

Another devastating fire may have been set

DNRR also said they continue to pursue all leads related to the Tantallon wildfire, another significant wildfire that broke out in the Halifax area last spring. Last month, the RCMP said it concluded its investigation into the fire, though DNRR is continuing the probe.

“While the Department has gathered considerable information, there is a high bar for what can be used as evidence in court,” the release said.

“Under the Forests Act, the Department has two years from the date of an alleged offence to lay charges. Charges are only laid if the Department, in consultation with the Public Prosecution Service, believes there is sufficient evidence for a conviction."

The Tantallon wildfire began May 28 and burned 969 hectares, destroying 150 homes. It was declared under control on June 4 and extinguished July 26.

Climate Change > Canada's carbon reduction program is completely wrong! 79 Arrested for setting wildfires in Greece

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Revelations about Canada's wildfires have made it very obvious that we are going about reducing carbon production in an absurdly wrong manner. We can make a huge difference in carbon production by reducing wildfires through proper forest management, and we can do it without destroying the economy.

N.W.T. fires have released 97 megatonnes of carbon, says

European agency — 277 times what its people emit

Territory on track to beat 2014 record for how much land has burned

Liny Lamberink · CBC News · Posted: Aug 28, 2023 1:00 AM PDT | 

An aerial view of the wildfire threatening the Yellowknife area from Aug. 17. The intensity of the fire dampened over the weekend thanks to rain, lighter winds and cooler conditions. (N.W.T. Fire)

Wildfires in the N.W.T have emitted 97 megatonnes of carbon into the air so far this year — 277 times more than what was caused by humans in the territory back in 2021.

Mark Parrington, a senior scientist working at the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), said the N.W.T. has contributed the most of all the provinces and territories to Canada's total wildfire emissions.

From the start of the year up until Aug. 23, wildfires across Canada have emitted 327 megatonnes of carbon into the air according to CAMS data. (For context, one megatonne is a million tonnes.)

More than a quarter of that has been generated by wildfires in the N.W.T., which began burning back in May and have displaced tens of thousands of residents across 10 communities this summer — including the capital city of Yellowknife. The fires have caused damage so far in Kátł'odeeche First Nation, Enterprise and Behchokǫ̀. Hay River and Kátł'odeeche First Nation have been displaced twice by wildfire in a matter of months.

Houses in Enterprise, N.W.T., that were burned by wildfire. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)

Canada's North is warming faster than other parts of the planet, leading to more severe wildfires. It's also the reason why N.W.T., infrastructure is jeopardized by thawing permafrost, traditional ways of life are threatened as species come and go, and one N.W.T. community is at risk of washing away.

"We can all unequivocally agree this is climate change at the very root of this," said Jessica Davey-Quantick, a territorial wildfire information officer, during a press conference last week. 

"We're going to see more active fire behaviour, more extreme weather, more drought-like conditions — all of those factors have kind of combined. But it's really hard to say that there's one culprit that led it to communities this year, when it didn't in previous years."

The nerdy part

Let's walk through the math: 97.09 megatonnes of carbon emitted as of Aug. 23 this year is equivalent to 356.32 megatonnes of carbon dioxide. You can convert the rate of carbon into carbon dioxide equivalent by multiplying the figure by 3.67. 

It's important to make that conversion because the territory reports its annual human-caused emissions in the form of carbon dioxide equivalent — which also take into account other greenhouse gases, like methane and nitrous oxide.

In 2021, the territory emitted 1.287 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Now, we can compare those two numbers equally. 

The carbon dioxide equivalent emitted by wildfires this year (356.32 megatonnes) is 277 times more than what was emitted by humans in 2021 (1.287 megatonnes). 

These numbers make a big joke of all the carbon-reducing efforts in the NWTs. If the NWT reduced its carbon production by 25% it would take more than 1000 years to undue the carbon production of this year's forest fires. If they reduced it by 50% it would still take more than 1000 years to undue this year's fires and 2014's fires. In other words, they can never recover forest fire damage in the NWTs.

No amount of carbon reduction in NWT can make any difference in the temperature of the territory. Consequently, instead of spending money on carbon reduction by people, we should be investing in forest management to reduce the number and size of fires. That's where we can actually make a difference. And perhaps we should be looking at this on a country-wide basis.

How does it all compare to 2014?

The N.W.T.'s vast boreal forest usually sequesters more carbon than it emits — except during big fire years.

Up until now, 2014 has been considered the territory's worst wildfire year. According to CAMS data up until Aug. 23, the current wildfire season has not quite eclipsed 2014 in terms of emissions. (It has, however, if you compare it to Natural Resources Canada data which says fires that year emitted roughly 94.5 megatonnes of carbon.

Drone aerial still photo of houses in Enterprise, N.W.T., on Aug. 24 that were burned by wildfire.

(Tyson Koschik/CBC)

According to N.W.T. Fire, 2.96 million hectares of land have burned in fires so far this year, but it's calculating an updated figure. The agency said the territory is well on its way to beating the record set back in 2014 of 3.4 million hectares burned.

Wildfires emit more than just carbon

CAMS monitors where wildfires are around the world and how intensely they're burning. It also tracks emissions and forecasts the effect smoke has on the atmosphere. 

Parrington said they're able to do this using meteorology and satellite imagery. It's important to monitor wildfire emissions, he said, because of the effects it has on air quality and human health. 

"Fires release far more pollutants into the atmosphere than the usual activities like road transport, energy production, industry," he said. "As well as the carbon gases, there's a lot of very harmful and hazardous constituents of smoke, including particulate matter, things like benzene, which a lot of people might associate only as an industrial pollutant." 

When fires stop and the wind shifts, Parrington said air quality improves — but pollution from wildfires can persist for a long time if it settles on rivers and water bodies too. 

The link between fires and climate change

World Weather Attribution, a U.K. based group that estimates the contribution of climate change to individual extreme weather events, recently released a study that found record-setting fires in Québec earlier this year were made twice as likely because of human-caused warming. 

The group says it's exploring options to study wildfires in other parts of Canada, but Yan Boulanger, a forest ecology scientist with Natural Resources Canada and one of the Québec study's authors, said its findings can be extrapolated to Canada's North. 

A member of B Company, 2nd Battalion, Royal 22e Régiment, conducts Type III firefighting operations in the vicinity of Hay River, N.W.T., in support of Operation LENTUS on Aug. 22. (Corporal Jonathan King/Canadian Armed Forces)

Québec is one of the areas of Canada that's least affected by climate change, he explained, yet climate change still played a very big role in the fires there. 

Given that climate change is having a bigger effect on British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories and Yukon, Boulanger said wildfires in those provinces and territories are probably made more than twice as likely by climate change. 

"These are very, very conservative estimates," he said. 

Still, Boulanger said he's shocked by the record number of people displaced across the N.W.T. and the evacuations that have taken place in Québec, B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Yukon. 

He said Indigenous people are over-represented among evacuees, and they will continue to be over-represented in the future because their communities are typically in very fire-prone environments.

World Weather Attribution's Québec analysis has not yet been subject to scientific peer review, but it is based on peer-reviewed modelling. In the past, the research group has subjected its analyses to review and has not had to change its findings. 

Forest fires all over the world, and especially here in Canada, have been blamed on Climate Change, and yes, there is probably an element of global warming involved. But when some accused climate-change proponents of setting some of those fires, the government and media made fun of them as though the idea was absurd. 

Greece has proven that it is not absurd and the RCMP should be investigating the cause of every fire that started in Canada this year.

Greek officials say 79 arrested on arson charges over wildfires

By Clyde Hughes

 

Firefighters operate during a wildfire, in Palagia village, Alexandroupolis, Thrace, in northern Greece,

on Tuesday. Photo by Dimitris Alexoudis/EPA-EFE

Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Greek officials made 79 arrests connected with alleged arson claims in many of the wildfires that have ravaged the country this summer.

Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said Thursday that arsonists are continuing to start fires around the country with several new attempts to start blazes northwest of Athens on Mount Parnitha. Hundreds of wildfires have killed 20 people this week.

"Arsonist scum are setting fires that threaten forests, property, and, most of all, human lives," Kikilias said in a briefing. "You will not get away with it. We will find you [and] you will be held accountable."

Stefan Doerr, who heads the Center for Wildfire Research at Swansea University, said that alleged arsonists have taken advantage of hot and dry conditions this summer to set wildfires that then spread quickly.

The bodies of 19 people believed to be migrants with children were discovered near the Evros region of northeastern Greece after a wildfire.

The European Union's Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic said that more than 180,400 acres burned in Alexandroupolis marking the largest wildfire ever recorded among member states.

"We must continue strengthening national and collective prevention and preparedness efforts in view of more brutal fire seasons," Lenarcic said.

Wildfires have burned more than 321,000 acres total in Greece, another EU record, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.

Climate Change > In 2023, Canada's Carbon emissions from Forest Fires was more than half the total from anthropogenic sources

 

Canada produced 23% of global wildfire carbon emissions

for 2023: report

By Aaron D'Andrea  Global News

Posted December 13, 2023 9:19 am

 Updated December 13, 2023 9:34 am

Canada was responsible for roughly 23 per cent of global wildfire carbon emissions in 2023, a new report has found.

Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the European Union’s space program, revealed in a report on Tuesday the country’s historic wildfire season resulted in about 480 megatonnes of carbon being produced.

That is “23 per cent of the total global wildfire carbon emissions for 2023. The global annual total estimated fire emissions (as of Dec. 10) is 2,100 megatonnes of carbon,” the organization said.

“The wildfires that Canada experienced during 2023 have generated the highest carbon emissions on record for this country by a wide margin.”

Note: Canada's carbon tax does not address this issue except to make it more expensive to fight fires.

On August 28th, this year I posted, "Climate Change > Canada's carbon reduction program is completely wrong!" This report by Copernicus verifies much of what I wrote. 

480 megatonnes of carbon produced by wildfires this year is probably twice what we produce normally, although it may be closer to the norm in the future. 480 mts compares to 738 mts Canada is credited with producing in "Non-Covid" years from anthropogenic sources. 

Through creative and proper forestry management, that 480 mts can be dramatically reduced far more easily than significant reductions in anthropogenic carbon production. And, it can be done without the disastrous effect on the Canadian economy that the carbon tax has had.

 

2:22

‘Very negative for climate’: Growing urgency to understand carbon’s dangers

With roughly 18.5 million hectares of land burned, 2023 was the worst wildfire season ever recorded in Canada. It cooked the previous record of 7.6 million hectares scorched in 1989.

The impact was felt right across the country: British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories and Quebec saw heavy and intense wildfires throughout their regions.

While they burned, their smoke spread not only throughout Canada, but the world.

It prompted numerous air quality warnings, spread to cities in the United States, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean into parts of Europe.

Mark Parrington, a senior scientist in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said the wildfires burned at a level never before seen in their data records.

“The impacts of North American air quality, and the fact that Europe could experience hazy skies as a result of these fires, gives a clear indication of their significance,” he said.

1:53

The toll of record-breaking heat throughout the world

While Canada headlined the Copernicus report, other regions were also mentioned.

The historically wildfire-sensitive Mediterranean region in Europe, particularly Greece, experienced devastating wildfires in July and August.

The fires in Rhodes in July and around the Evros region, close to the Turkish border, and then of East Macedonia and Thrace in August, had significant impacts on area communities. The combined wildfire carbon emissions for July and August were the third largest on record followed by 2007 and 2021, at about two megatonnes of carbon.

The wildfires in Spain, on the border between Aragon and Valencia, and in Asturias, at the end of March, were the country’s first large forest fires of the year, resulting in the highest emissions for the month in Copernicus’ data set.

In August, the Spanish island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands experienced the highest carbon emissions since 2003.

2:35

Earth breaches critical warming threshold

Copernicus added in its report that the relationship between climate change and wildfires is “complex.”

“The emissions from wildfires are not one of the main drivers behind the increase of concentrations of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, but the increase in temperature associated with higher levels of these gases does increase the likelihood of wildfires,” it said.

This might be true for most countries, especially those countries that are much smaller than Canada, wildfires contribute about half as much carbon as people do in Canada. How can that not be considered a main driver? 

In the video, the presenter stated that clear-cutting needs to be stopped. But clear-cutting, if it is done in a way that will limit the boundaries of a potential fire, can be an integral part of the overall strategy to control and reduce forest fires.

“As heatwaves become more common, in combination with long-standing drought conditions, the likelihood of experiencing unprecedented wildfires as those experienced in Canada is higher. Therefore, the constant monitoring of the evolution of wildfire emissions is key to assess and mitigate their impact on air quality and human health.”

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Climate Change > Worst Wildfire Season for Canada - Calls for a New Approach to Forestry

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This has been the worst wildfire season on record. What could 2024 have in store?

'If next year is going to be a warmer year, I would expect that the dice will be loaded,'

says fire expert

Nicole Mortillaro · CBC News · Posted: Sep 27, 2023 1:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: September 27

A man prepares to return to his home in Lee Creek, B.C., on Aug. 19, amid the wildfires that swept through the province this summer. This year was the worst for wildfires in Canadian history. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

What a summer that was — the hottest ever recorded globally and the worst for wildfires in Canadian history.  

Dry conditions and warmer-than-usual temperatures helped fuel a long and unrelenting wildfire season that, to date, has burned more than 17,500,000 hectares, a 647 per cent increase over the 10-year average. Tens of thousands of residents were forced to flee, and six firefighters lost their lives battling the seemingly endless flames.

And the fires are still burning. 

The question is, are there lessons to be learned? Can the devastating wildfires of 2023 help prepare us for 2024? 

Heating up

The whole year is on track to be one of the hottest on record. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there is a 93.42 per cent chance it will take the top spot and a 99.5 per cent chance it will at least be in the top five.

To put it in perspective, all of the hottest years in NOAA's 143-year record have occurred since 2010, with the last nine years being the nine warmest on record.

Added to that, we're also in the midst of an El Niño — a cyclical warming in the Pacific Ocean that, coupled with the atmosphere, can cause a rise in the global temperature — and that means next summer could see more of the same.

"We already broke various global temperature records in the summer," said Greg Flato, a senior research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). "So my expectation is that we will break even more of those records next year."

What's more concerning however, is the increasing wildfire risk, particularly in British Columbia.

According to a recent study published in Nature Communications, four of the worst wildfire seasons in B.C. in the last 100 years have all occurred in the past seven years: 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2023. 

Added to that, Canada's Changing Climate Report, released in 2019. found that as the planet continues to warm Canada will experience more extremes, including drought and wildfire risks.

For more info, please go to CBC at: There is some comfort knowing that

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About half of all wildfires are started by people, mostly accidentally. But there were accusations that many were started on purpose by environmentalists who want to exaggerate the issue of global warming. As unlikely as it seems, we take note that Greece has arrested 79 Muslim migrants for starting fires in what was a very bad fire season in that country. The motivation is different, but it speaks to the fact that people willingly set fires for their own reasons.

Most of the above story talks about strategies for fighting fires. That's all good, but what Canada really needs is an overall forestry strategy to prevent fires from starting, or from growing out of control once they start. A good part of this can be accomplised by strategic logging. A water-bomber dropping retardent on a logged corridor on the edge of a fire should be very effective in controlling that fires progress.

The story below is just one unique idea that can help fight forest fires before they  begin, or to keep them from burning towns and cities.

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These goats are 'constantly eating' to prevent wildfires in the California countryside

Armed only with their appetites, a herd of goats can clear about an acre of brush in a day

Philip Drost · CBC Radio · Posted: Sep 26, 2023 3:10 PM PDT | Last Updated: September 26

Michael Choi, owner of Fire Grazers Inc., says the goats will be working until November,

munching on as much brush as they can. (Fire Grazers Inc.)

There's a crew of firefighters gaining renown for their work to keep California safe from wildfires. Each member of the team has a great work ethic, a mean appetite — and four legs.

"They're constantly eating. I mean, they've got several stomachs," Michael Choi, owner of Fire Grazers Inc., told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

"I like to say that they eat their food twice and that's how much they love to do it."

The goats' buffet turns into a buffer for potential wildfires. All that munching clears away the fuel a wildfire needs to spread.

Choi's business organizes a herd of about 900 goats that eat their way through the brush of California. He'll typically take a herd of 300 of them at a time, who can then eat up to an acre of brush a day.

And as North America recovers from one of its worst wildfire seasons ever, Choi says his goats are playing an important role in prevention.  

Working with goats

While a common motto in Hollywood advises TV and film crews against working with animals, Choi says his goats are splendid workers.

They don't mind the heat, and don't need much more than water and their work to keep them happy, he said. They can handle whatever landscape is thrown at them, from grassy flat lands to steep slopes. They do need some protection, but Choi says a well-trained dog can keep predators away.

Choi also has to set up fences to make sure the goats stay eating where they are supposed to; otherwise they might end up in somebody's orchard. 

"That's a constant conflict of us trying to say, hey, only eat this stuff," said Choi.  

There isn't much a goat won't eat, and that comes in handy when trying to clear the countryside of brush. 

(Fire Grazers Inc.)

"They eat it pretty much as well as a fire department would require, down to like three inches of brush on the ground. And I mean, in the process, they also treat soil with their fertilizer and their hooves, and get it all nice and ready for the next rain." 

And because a goat's digestive system is so intense, the seeds of any invasive plant species they chow down on won't have a chance at growing from that fertilizer.

Busy summer

Choi and the goats have had their work cut out for them this year. A deadly winter of rain has led to more plant growth across the state. Some years, Choi and the goats are done by September, but this year he estimates they will be working until November.

They've had so many requests for their services, Choi needed to get more goats. Choi and his goats have worked with cities, home owner associations, and conservancy organizations across California. But he says not enough people are preparing for the damage forest fires can do.

It's a practice that is being utilized in Canada as well. The city of Quesnel, B.C., started using goats this summer to chow down on invasive species and reduce wildfire fuel.