Smoke on the water...

[johnboy]

... and fire in the sky. Maybe it's from all the birthday candles (Happy Birthday Sky and Archer) but we are in a bad way out here. Like smoking two packs a day. I can feel my chest tightening up. Many fires burning throughout the BC interior and on Van. Island with no relief in sight. I'd pay good money for a strong westerly to clear this crap away. A buncha rain would be good as well.

[Bwana]

Making for lots of hazy days out here to johnboy.

[Chicken Dinner]

I hope it clears out for you soon!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Thumper]

One'a my favorite songs back in the day! ;)

Yep, I've stayed in touch with Sunshine and she can't see past the hood of her car when driving! It's a mess out that way.

[Big Skyz]

We are burning up down here too and the smoke is terrible.

[jb]

We're getting some beautiful sunsets and sunrises here from all that smoke.
Hang tough youse guys, it will all end.

[airbud7]

y'all hang tough ....never lived through that in the deep south but I guess it could happen (pray not)

I do remember when they canceled the Daytona/Pepsi 400 because of wildfire ....a lot further south than me though.

[Penguin]

johnboy and troy, you have my sympathies.

I never understood how intense wildfire smoke could get 1000 miles from the fire... until I lived through it up in Minnesota a few years back. Gads! It is unbelievable how smoky and nasty it can get. And I was a heck of a lot further away from the fires than you guys. We'll cross our fingers and hope you get some rain soon.

Will

[BarryBobPosthole]

Smoke from those fires were on the weather satelite as far west as Okie City on last night’s weather report.

Shit is getting real environmentally speaking.

BKB

[johnboy]

Makes me think of that old saying: Man plans; God laughs. Everything man has ever done to curb air pollution has gone up in a puff of smoke, so to speak. Gotta help the 'global warming' issue however as all this smoke is definitely keeping the temps down here. Forecast is for 31c but it's currently 21c, according to my truck. There is a silver lining!

[BarryBobPosthole]

Makes me think of that old saying: Man plans; God laughs. Everything man has ever done to curb air pollution has gone up in a puff of smoke, so to speak!

I wonder where your facts are to back this up. The Clean Air Act (1970 in the US, not sure if there is a Canadian equivalent) has most certainly reduced air pollution. There was a time when acid rain threatened valuable timber resources in both countries. The Clean Air Act has reduced that threat almost to nothing.

We don’t need to hug every tree and not all environmental legislation is good. But climate science denial don’t work either.

BKb

[johnboy]

Facts? Facts? We don't need no steenkin' facts! Just gotta look out my window.

Lighten up, fer petes sake Barry. Environmental laws curb air pollution. Absolutely and a good thing but my weak attempt at humour over our current situation seems to have been missed. Can you imagine the mega tonnes of carbon and all the multitude of chemicals being produced by the wildfires that are currently raging over a big piece of western North America? Sorta takes us back a step, don't it? Not to mention what one single volcanic eruption pumps into the atmosphere. In the face of Mother Nature, all the efforts of mankind seem pitiful.

And I don't even know what 'climate science denial' means.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Lighten up? so I can’t take issue with anything without being told to lighten up?

Sure, I will lighten up.

BKB

[Big Skyz]

What it looks like it Montana right now with the Howe Ridge fire. Literally smoke on the water and fire in the sky.
https://kpax.images.worldnow.com/images/17411919_G.jpg?auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=800 &lastEditedDate=20180814125624

[johnboy]

OK, what are you taking issue with or should that be with what are you taking issue? Could be the smoke addling my brain but you kinda lost me here.

[BarryBobPosthole]

I guess the thing I take issue with John is your statement says to me that these fires are just some freak of nature that will happen no matter what we try to do. Correct me if I’m wrong there. That’s fine if thats what you think. But I strongly disagree. Haven’t these fires set records pretty much every year lately?

BKB

[BarryBobPosthole]

And to answer your question...

BkB

10196

[johnboy]

Well, that was never my intention. The fires that we are having (at least here in BC) is a direct result of the extreme dry conditions we have had all summer. Here on the Island we have not had any significant rain since May and everything is as dry as a popcorn fart. Add stupid people and dry lightning strikes to that and you got what we got - half the province on fire. Another contributing factor is the large amounts of dry tinder left after logging operations. All that slash used to be eliminated in controlled burns but that was prohibited years ago because the environmentalists didn't like it. Now we pay the price. Add in the huge tracks of pine forest killed by the pine beetle and becoming perfect tinder and there is no wonder the forests are explosive.

Is it dry because climate factors are changing? Probably but that always leads to the man-caused or natural event argument and I really won't get into that because I think it is probably a combination of both. These last couple of years have been hotter and dryer than we have ever seen here on the coast but is that 'weather' or 'climate'? Don't know.

My original point was that man is very small in the face of nature. We sometimes forget that to our detriment. Hubris.

[johnboy]

OK, I give up. You win.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Oh come on. Now YOU lighten up.

There is much we agree on. There is much we don’t.


I ain’t trying to change your mind. But I ain’t gonna just shut up either. There is some serious shit going on in our environment and while its easy to put the blame on the ‘environmentalists’, it ain’t all correct.
Why is it again we hate ‘environmentalists’? weren’t the writers we admire most, Aldo Leopold for example, the first environmentalists?

Maybe its because I live in a state where we thought we couldn’t fuck it up and produced one of the biggest environmental disasters in history. And it was Man. Made.
Its happening again and we better wake up
BkB

[Thumper]

Snowflake

[airbud7]

https://i1.wp.com/slydor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Funny-Global-Warming-Meme-1.jpg?fit=720%2C404&ssl=1

[BarryBobPosthole]

^^^^^^like^^^^^


something tells me Canada wouldn’t have the same effect with the Queen gettin down to her skivvies.

[airbud7]

liberals want to tax cow farts! .....methane tax for the steak you eat!

https://i.imgur.com/wHPQ1TI.jpg

[Thumper]

Why does that remind me of TW?

[BarryBobPosthole]

Terry’s carbon footprint wafted in the wind.

BKB

[Thumper]

Is that a brass cowbell? Or is that ol' girl sticking her tongue out at us?

[BarryBobPosthole]

On my walk this morning, I could smell the smoke from the western fires.
holy crap.

BKB

[Thumper]

That was coming from your beard after your morning toke, dufus! ;)

[BarryBobPosthole]

Mebbeso.

Or maybe it was Johnboy’s collar!

BKb

[LJ3]

My original point was that man is very small in the face of nature. We sometimes forget that to our detriment. Hubris.

I'm with Johnboy on this one.

[BarryBobPosthole]

He wasn’t talking about your small hands.

BKb

[Captain]

It all started when “we” took fire out of nature and controlled it.
Now instead of small controlled burns the forest floors are piled high with a century worth of fuel. So when a fire does break out in ideal conditions it runs wild.
If controlled burns are done every so often fuel is way down and wildfires are contained more easily.
Native American Indians use to use fire as a fire deturant.

[BarryBobPosthole]

So according to your theory, before we came along they must have had horrible fires. But they didn’t. We didn’t start having big fires like these until they started timbering. There was a huge fire in the Superior Nat’l Forest in the 1800s that really triggered the whole National Forest System. One of its primary purposes was to reduce those fires. You can’t take all the mature shit out of a forest and expect it not to become a giant fireplace.
Now I actually ain’t against timbering. That isn’t the point. The point is to stop blaming it onthe LACK of timbering. The folks that are spreading that bullshit are the ones who stand to make the most money off it.


BKB