Whitehorse Daily Star

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Mike Fancie

Fire rating elevated to extreme

The southern and central sections of the Yukon have hit an extreme fire rating – including the Whitehorse area.

By Whitehorse Star on June 2, 2022

The southern and central sections of the Yukon have hit an extreme fire rating – including the Whitehorse area.

That was the word from Yukon Wildland Fire Management officials this morning.

Spokesperson Mike Fancie spoke to the Star to explain what’s driving the escalating risk of fire.

He said the recent warm weather, coupled with a relative lack of rain and steady winds, is the major contributing factor.

Despite the ground still being relatively wet due to the abundant snowpack, the vegetation on top of the ground – particularly leaf litter – is now bone-dry.

Whitehorse and Carcross are particularly desiccated at the moment, Fancie said.

That makes it quite possible for something like a campfire to grow out of control, or for a grassfire to start and spread quickly, he noted.

“The weather is what poses the greatest challenge,” he said.

Other regions in the territory aren’t quite in the same situation yet.

It’s not unusual to see such conditions early in the season, Fancie said.

There have been six fires this year to date, with 4.1 hectares burned.

Comments (16)

Up 1 Down 1

North_of_60 on Jun 8, 2022 at 9:54 pm

Some like @Kappo are mistakenly relying on corporate media for climate science information. Actual climate science data show that current CO2 levels are at the lowest concentration since 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. https://mashable.com/article/co2-earth-history-climate-change

Carbon Dioxide combined with photosynthesis is responsible for life on earth as we know it. There is no actual evidence that more CO2 will make the planet significantly warmer. It didn't in the past when there was more than ten times the present average concentration of 415ppm [0.04% of the atmosphere].

The only additions to the carbon cycle caused by humans are from oxidizing carbon that's been stored for millions of years such as fossil fuels or limestone. The idea that human induced 'land use change' provides 'additional' CO2 is false. Any CO2 emissions caused by 'land use change' would have occurred anyway as vegetation in the carbon cycle decomposed or was burned naturally.

The 36 gigatons of CO2 that human activities emit per year burning fossil fuels, industrial processes and product use (combustion, flaring, cement, iron and steel, chemicals and urea) calculates to 4.6ppm of the atmosphere's 415ppm of CO2, or about 1%, thus 99% of atmospheric CO2 is entirely natural. Our 1% contribution may not be adding much, but every ppm of CO2 helps to green the planet.

Even if more CO2 did make the planet as warm as it has been in the past, what's the harm in that? Earth during the Pliocene, 4 million years ago before the gap between North and South America closed, was a warm and lush green environment where only Antarctica and Greenland had ice caps and the Arctic ocean was ice free except for ephemeral sea ice in the dead of winter. It's likely that we could have thrived during the Pliocene.

Up 1 Down 1

Groucho d'North on Jun 8, 2022 at 4:57 pm

@Kappo,
I believe your critcisms of me are misdirected and pertain more to another's comments. Or are you barking in frustration?

Up 5 Down 3

Kappo on Jun 7, 2022 at 10:53 pm

@Groucho

"Humans burning fossil fuels to maintain a modern industrial society has no effect on the climate; it was just as extreme and just as variable before fossil fuels were ever used by humans."

Sorry but no you are very wrong. Earth has been pulling carbon out of the atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years and sequestering it deep underground in the form of fossil fuels. Now, we humans are taking hundreds of billions of tons of it from where it was sequestered and throwing it all back into the atmosphere in about 200 years.

So once again, we are reversing much of what the earth has done over hundreds of millions of years in a mere 200 give or take. How can any rational person claim that this isn't affecting our atmosphere and climate?

Further evidence is found in the fact that this level of climate upheaval that we are seeing now is only known to have occurred a handful of times throughout the history of life on earth. Each time coincided with mass extinction events like we are seeing now (including the Permian Extinction Event 250 million years ago when 90% of life on earth was extinguished. Also known as The Great Dying). The difference is that in the past, these were caused by asteroid strikes or massive super volcano eruptions like the one underneath Yellowstone for example. Currently there are no super volcanoes erupting and no major asteroid strikes, so the current climate change we are witnessing only makes sense when we factor in human emissions. Given how rare this type of change and extinction is, it would be an astronomical coincidence that this is happening within the exact time period that humans have become industrialized.

This is well in line with what was theorized to happen even before the year 1900. The specifics of what would happen weren't mentioned but the general theory of global warming was. It was obvious to many scientists shortly after we started to burn fossil fuels on a large scale. Unfortunately they have been proven quite correct.

Up 6 Down 8

North_of_60 on Jun 6, 2022 at 6:48 pm

@TheHammer, The climate has been changing naturally all by itself without any human contribution for billions of years. Humans burning fossil fuels to maintain a modern industrial society has no effect on the climate; it was just as extreme and just as variable before fossil fuels were ever used by humans. Nuclear is the only 'alternative' energy source that can significantly displace fossil fuels and provide the energy we want in our society. With that inescapable reality in mind, we hope you're perceptive enough to be supporting nuclear energy for the Yukon.
Be very careful with blindly accepting greenwashed ideology, if you drink too much of that green-kool-ade you may begin to think that humans cause everything you don't like.

Up 9 Down 6

Existential Crisis! on Jun 6, 2022 at 6:48 pm

In response to TheHammer on Jun 6, 2022 at 12:20 pm:

The current Klimate Khange narrative as an imminent threat caused by the carelessness of human activity is hokum.
However, this narrative is easily manipulated in vulnerable minds to create fear and societal level changes in the name of an existential crisis… You’re gonna die, we’re gonna die, everyone is going to die!

While we’re waiting though you might as well own nothing and be happy in our basic dictatorship… No? Too bad, anthropogenic climate change necessitates that we take everything from you, your mind too…

It’s interesting to see the push for diversity has coincided with declines in fluid intelligence, and intelligence more generally. These are absolutely worrying trends… But hey, you continue to swallow the propaganda of the L-NDP death cult… Spread the fear and alarm around… Panic!!!!!!!!!!

FFS!

The climate industrial complex, as economist Bjorn Lonborg has aptly called the climate doomsday crowd, has persuaded the media to indulge consistent exaggeration and predictions that link virtually any weather event— droughts, floods , hurricanes or heavy rains—directly to human caused climate change.

As President Obama's undersecretary of energy for science, physicist Steve Koonin, pointed out, the most widely reported projections reflect only highly improbable worse case scenarios based on such things as ever growing coal usage and no significant technological improvement.

Increasingly, even climate scientists are noting that the constant, and often poorly supported doomsaying threaten the credibility of the movement itself. And there have been quiet reversals; the more extreme predictions have been abandoned or walked back, even by the UN itself.

And yet, in the U.S., the vast majority of young Americans continue to believe that we face imminent environmental catastrophe. And Canadian psychologists have found elevated levels of anxiety among young people, some of whom see climate as justifying the decision to not have offspring—not surprising given that they are constantly told that their world will be coming to a catastrophic end.

Peddle your crap elsewhere! Enough damage has been done by the L-NDP diversity cartel of societal level change through the use and abuse of emotionalism over fact, form over content… Etc…

Up 10 Down 2

Groucho d'North on Jun 6, 2022 at 4:31 pm

@TheHammer
Again I disagree, the use of fossil fuels over the past century was not carelessness, it was an efficient source of energy that was transformed into a variety of power sources that built the world we live in today. Technology has advanced to provide a number of "alternatives" to fossil fuels, but none so far have replaced fossil fuels for ease of use and transportation ease or heating energy. Fossil fuels have been adapted to energize a wide variety of applications that have made our lives better, safer and more comfortable. It was not carelessness but a purposeful application of an agile energy source. Technology advancement continues to find superiour replacements for older technologies, a suitable, multi-applicable energy alternative to fossil fuels has not yet been developed, but perhaps our chilfren will find the magic solution to these challenges. The climate change hyperbole has a bad habit of forgetting the realities of life for the majority and mix of people living around the planet. Don't drink the green Koolaid.

Up 4 Down 9

TheHammer on Jun 6, 2022 at 12:20 pm

Groucho d' North@ 'human carelessness'...is the cause climate change. Climate change 101.

Up 11 Down 11

Mitch Holder on Jun 6, 2022 at 11:26 am

Anyone else notice THERE IS NEVER JUST NORMAL WEATHER AND NORMALLY EXPECTED SEASONAL WEATHER EVENTS ANYMORE? Everything is a climate emergency. If you are so scared of your own shadow, why do you presume to cast it on the rest of us? I am not afraid of your shadow, I will use it to kindle my campfire this summer.

Up 7 Down 22

Max Mack on Jun 3, 2022 at 6:37 pm

@ Smokey

Naw, they aren't being set appropriately using a "data driven system" as you claim. It's overkill, fear-mongering, and politics using "data" as justification. Our easily provoked and uneducated public eats this fear porn up.

"Out of control" simply means the fire is expanding -- however slowly -- or not "not contained".
Wildfire 101.

Up 2 Down 14

Mitch Holder on Jun 3, 2022 at 4:48 pm

@ Matthew - Ooh, weather modification act, is that where we seize the weather's assets and deprive it's children of heating fuel to create the pretext to take them away, the same ways colonists took First Nations children by destroying their communities to establish that no one was fit to raise their children?

I like your sarcasm dude.

Up 16 Down 22

Mitch Holder on Jun 3, 2022 at 9:25 am

Extreme Fire Rating? Is it Ecowarrior season already? Surprised we aren't saying fire is racist at this point. but give it time and apathy and we surely will.

Up 27 Down 5

Smokey on Jun 2, 2022 at 6:03 pm

@Max Mack the fire danger rating levels are set appropriately. They are determined by a data-driven system with daily inputs from weather stations across the territory. It's not like they're set arbitrarily.

Like the spokesperson said in the release, it is quite possible for fires resulting from these conditions to grow out of control ("burn deep or long" as you put it). Also, wildfires can be dangerous without burning deep or long. Wildfires in grass and other fine surface fuels can be dangerous with the current weather conditions and the fuel moisture levels.

There is no fear mongering going on here.

Up 10 Down 18

Mitch Holder on Jun 2, 2022 at 4:32 pm

Only YTG employees with PD Days and 200 dollar MEC butane stoves can use fire this summer, you plebs are bad for our environment.

Up 9 Down 9

Matthew on Jun 2, 2022 at 4:19 pm

Big question here is: will the Government enable our Weather Modification Act to extinguish fires that get too close to the city!?

Up 20 Down 59

Max Mack on Jun 2, 2022 at 2:22 pm

An "extreme" fire rating where only the uppermost layers of leaf litter are dry?

This seems excessive. Any resulting fires will not burn deep or long.
Perhaps Wildfire Mgmt should set the rating levels a little more appropriately. What's with the fear mongering?

Up 57 Down 9

Groucho d'North on Jun 2, 2022 at 2:04 pm

“The weather is what poses the greatest challenge,” he said.
I disagree, human carelessness will remain the greatest risk of new fire starts, then add the current weather situation for the combination we should all fear.
You can't fix stupid!

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