Chilly at -9°c this morning. The window scrapper I bought seems to work good. A skiff of snow here and there. Nasty roads going to work last Friday. Quite a few vehicles in the ditch. The first touch of winter can be that way with people learning how to drive icy roads again.
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British Columbia and Canada had a bad forest fire year in 2023. Locally we had several fires burning close by, however I have seen worse years. Still, it has been reported, BC had one of the worst years in history, if not the worst.
Smoke engulfed many American and Canadian cities making breathing difficult for residents. In our part of BC the smoke wasn’t too bad. I guess it depends on the winds. We have definitely had worse.
Here is a scary statistic; according to Natural Resources Canada forest fires caused triple the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, then from all other sources in Canada, including the burning of oil and gas. Most would have come from BC.
Wildfires are considered a natural source and are not counted towards Canada’s emissions or climate targets.
In other words; Canadians could achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and we could still have run away global warming due to the forest burning and other natural disasters.
I also fear British Columbia Foresters could use these statistics to cut down every tree in BC. They are well on their way to doing it regardless.
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Considering these statistics, even if we were to stop burning oil tomorrow we had better figure out how we are going to live on a warming planet. It is beyond humans control now – if it ever really was in our control.
Palliser Pass 
Jim R
We have a friend who is a forest assessor. In the winter he lives in Georgia US and walks forest acreages to see if they are ready for harvest. In the summer he lives in the northwest states to do the same. He understands that fires are a natural event. They can’t be prevented forever. Good management is important to keep them from building up a huge reserve of dead wood over the years. Then they can become big problems when they burn.
No snow yet here. In fact, tonight will likely get below freezing for the first time and end the growing season. Good bye straggler tomatoes.
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underswansea
In BC we are cutting forests as fast as humanly possible. It is interesting, now we have a skim of snow on the ground, forest companies are burning slash piles (left over from the logging process). Sometimes there is as much slash as harvested timber. Now our air quality is being affected by the smoke from this process, not to mention the CO2 released into the atmosphere.
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mountaincoward
They said originally that we would reach a ‘tipping point’ if people didn’t cut carbon emissions – I believe we’ve already passed it a few years back now.
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underswansea
You could be correct.
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