Fort McMurray wildfire

88,000 people were evacuated. some refugees are coming here to their family.

 

We have had so little snow this year. That has been a huge problem. Another fire west of Edmonton is threatening a FN community.

quizzical wrote:

sherpa-finn wrote:

FWIW, in humanitarian-speak, one is a 'displaced person' until such time as one crosses an international border. Only then does one qualify for the term 'refugee'. 

i used the word on purpose so any haters of refugees can maybe get a sense of empathy if they happen across this discussion. i'm so fkn po'd at some red neck haters at the moment.

and distance equivalents say several European counties are being crossed through when comared to coming from Ft Mac to pretty much anywhere. ;)

imv if AB hadn't privatized wild fire forest services years ago the last fire in Slave Lake and this one would not have gotten so out of control. there should be huge interface areas between urban and wildness.

When you say interface areas I assume you mean areas where the Boreal forest needs to be cut back? That was the lesson from Slave Lake that people were saying at the time. This is the second city to be lost in 5 years.

jjuares wrote:

quizzical wrote:

imv if AB hadn't privatized wild fire forest services years ago the last fire in Slave Lake and this one would not have gotten so out of control. there should be huge interface areas between urban and wildness.

When you say interface areas I assume you mean areas where the Boreal forest needs to be cut back? That was the lesson from Slave Lake that people were saying at the time. This is the second city to be lost in 5 years.

yup.  interface areas and ladder fuels are an issue in BC and AB.

BC a bit better but not much and only because we've a dedicated public wild fire policy not a privatized one. it was better back in the NDP days. another loss to tax payers who  paid to build good public infrastructure.

has anyone read WHAT started the fire?

..from the weather channel

The Science Behind the Explosive McMurray Wildfire And How the Inferno Is Creating Its Own Weather

The destructive fire that hit Fort McMurray in Canada's Alberta province was in an area that was ripe for the potential of rapidly spreading wildfires. And the fire was so intense that it even generated its own weather.

Thanks for the background info, quizzical.

I think this is a great opportunity for Albertans to show the rest of Canada how the private sector takes care of its own. Alberta has always been about self sufficiency and the trickle-down benefits of elevating corporate interests above public interests. Let's see how that works now that the shit has hit. Go, Wild Rosers!

Don't read it then, Smith.

Oh, "now's not the time for pointing fingers..." It never is, is it?

jjuares wrote:

This is going to be the costiest natural disaster in Canada's history. The BMO says it is estimating 9 billion. That is only property damage and doesn't include the cost of fighting the fire or the economic dislocation which will also be huge.

Speaking of banks, that's a lot of mortgages going up in flames too. I assume CMHC will be ready to absorb the loses.

Anyhow, wishing the best for everyone suffering from this disaster and thankfully no one has died (that we know of).

 

Pointing fingers in a disaster is a zero-class move from the start. It is another thing doing it without clear evidence, just to gloat and set people against one another, and without bothering to get a bit of background before you open your mouth. Surely you are aware this is not first major disaster (not even the first major fire disaster) to hit that province in recent years. A few years ago it was floods. And before that it was Slave Lake.

For that matter we had a community evacuated here in Saskatchewan last season because of wildfires. Did our capitalist machine crash and burn like you wanted it to?

I might not agree with Brian Jean's politics, and I don't know to what degree his comments were in earnest, or just having the good sense to know when to not say something that would really embarrass him.

But at least I give him credit for having that good sense in this case. Even though he lost his home.

(edit)

There was a death - a collision on the highway.

And regarding insurance, well you can read the news to see how smoothly that has gone after the floods.

 

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Pointing fingers in a disaster is a zero-class move from the start. It is another thing doing it without clear evidence, just to gloat and set people against one another, and without bothering to get a bit of background before you open your mouth. Surely you are aware this is not first major disaster (not even the first major fire disaster) to hit that province in recent years. A few years ago it was floods. And before that it was Slave Lake.

For that matter we had a community evacuated here in Saskatchewan last season because of wildfires.

This is just the latest and certainly will not be the last of extreme weather events that are caused by climate change. It is the height of stupidity in the face of this glaring evidence of the catastrophe that is unfolding to be preaching, like Trudeau and Notley are doing, that building pipelines so that other countries can burn bitumen is the way forward to a green future.  

Given the price of oil and the cost of pipelines to export the filthy bitumen the whole project is not economically viable and it is environmentally destructive. My hope for the people who have lost their homes is that they were well insured so that they can move on to greener pastures as the tar sands projects collapse. 

Hurtin Albertan wrote:

I'll post some more later on when I am not at work. 

We haven't privatized or outsourced wildfire in Alberta, I should know, I do this for a living.  Sure, some things are contracted out but I have no idea what exactly quizzical is talking about.

Anyways, if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.  I have lots to say on this topic, always happy to educate people and clear up misconceptions.

when i fought fires a few years back here in BC, there was a bunch of concern going on about what AB was privatizing and how it was going to jeopordize their ability to rapid respond and IA respond.

i for one would love to hear all you say. we are fighting trying to get the interface areas cleared out as they're all dead or dying pine beetle.

eta and thank you for stopping in it's gotta be crazy there.

Quote:

and officials say they are now water bombing the city to keep it from being overwhelmed by flames....."Our first priority, obviously, was the community and the homes as well as the critical infrastructure."

Morrison said they had 22 water bombers and were bringing in more, including four from Quebec.

"But let me be clear: air tankers are not going to stop this fire.

"It (the fire) is going to continue to push through these dry conditions until we actually get some significant rain."

The fire, which had been menacing Fort McMurray since the weekend, rode a rapid shift in winds Tuesday afternoon to cut through the city on an east-west axis, cutting the main road and sending 80,000 residents fleeing in polar opposite directions under a mandatory evacuation order.

Aided by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 75 square kilometres Tuesday to 100 square kilometres on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was almost nine times that — at 850 square kilometres.

 

6079_Smith_W wrote:

And regarding insurance, well you can read the news to see how smoothly that has gone after the floods.

Of course, but CMHC payouts go to the banks, not disaster survivors.

Wildfire Management Branch in Alberta probably has several hundred full time employees, more if you count people who look after finance and payroll and those people help out on the big fires too, keeping track of all that stuff as part if the Incident Command teams.  We hire several hundred more people just for the summer, it can be a good summer job for students, some of them come back year after year even after they are done school.  I guess it gets to be a way of life for some of them.  Some of the firefighters work for contractors, we used to hire a lot of First Nations firefighters directly but we have been trying to do that through contractors in the past few years.  Almost all of the heavy equipment is hired under contract, same thing for the helicopters and air tankers.

Like just about any fire organization, we put a huge emphasis on "initial attack", the idea is to detect the fires early, quickly get to them when they are small, and hopefully put them out before they get too big.  Most of the time we are successful.  When we are not, it switches over to "sustained action", and depending on how big the fire is, how many firefighters are needed, how complicated the situation is, etc etc, there is either a smaller Incident Command team, or a much larger one.  Sometimes we are able to extinguish the fires after a couple weeks of hard work, sometimes these things just seem to go on and on all summer, for example there were fires last year up by High level that never did get extinguished completely, we stopped working on them when it snowed, and they were still smouldering this spring.

This showed up on my FB feed and I thought I would share. 

Elizabeth Todd wrote:

During the wildfires in SK, when about 10,000 people were evacuated, there was this big community effort to help the evacuees.

Which is so important.

And great.

But do not let this
Climate change moment
Turn into an act of charity.

Come together
Talk about what is happening

And strategize ways to take down the fossil fuel industry.

Nobody should have to fundraise or volunteer
To save communities
In the path of climate violence

Don't stand around with giant cheques
For devastated communities
For your newsletters

And forget to talk about
The emerging climate reality.

Organize
Make noise
And call it for what it is:

It is not just a tragedy
It is not just a weather event

It is the very real impacts of climate change
That people globally are living with
That people globally are dying from

And in SK
When the wildfires roamed
We paid for it
Out of research chairs
Maintenance budgets
And scholarships for students.

We paid for it
With cuts to health care
And upstream programming
That tried to mitigate health issues
At a structural level.

The act of seeing climate change events
As opportunities only for charity
And not
As a time to reflect
And organize against

Makes us participants
In the state narrative

That this is only a tragedy
That this is a fluke
That this isn't a regular occurrence.

Alberta don't forget the cuts
To the wildfire budget
Saskatchewan don't forget the cuts
To the wildfire budget

Our leaders will show up
In bomber jackets
And talk about the devastation

As if it was some kind of act of god

But be fierce in your understanding
That this is the new normal.

Call them out.

Humiliate this short term greed.

Name it and act as such.

There are many who will say
Now is not the time
But before now
Was also not the time

And it is never a good time

To be honest

About climate change

In alberta
Or saskatchewan.

 

It may seem a bit overkill, but all those resources would get committed very quickly if a big fire gets away on us.  And it's always a good idea to try and keep something in reserve in case another fire starts.  Normally we just worry about fires starting in the Forest Protection Area, basically the forested areas that stretch up along the Rocky Mountains, and then spread out over northern Alberta.  Fires that start outside the Forest Protection Area are usually the responsibility of a county fire department of some sort or another, but they aren't set up to deal with large wildland fires that go on for day after day after day, especially if their firefighters are volunteers.  So they call us for help, and we do what we can, but we have to keep some resources back in case fires start in our area of responsibility. 

Like I said before, in my home district we have already been very busy this spring helping out with county fires in areas that we don't normally have to worry about.  I was helping out with one of those fires yesterday.  The fire was spreading quickly and threatening nearby homes, there were fire department staff from I think 4 different fire departments working on the ground, they could have really used air tankers but we were told none were available, either they were all up at Ft McMurray or working on other fires up north.  We were able to help them out with some helicopters, and working together we managed to at least contain the fire near the end of the day, although they will still have a lot of work to do putting out all the fire inside the perimeter.

Basically all I was doing was standing nearby the fire department Incident Commander and acting as a communication link between the fire department staff on the ground and the helicopters in the air.  Making sure the helicopters were working on the priority areas, passing along updates on what the fire was doing, etc etc. 

Our budget might have been cut, but we still have a big enough budget that even if it rained and snowed all summer, which would be nice to see right about now, we would still have a big enough budget to hire on hundreds of seasonal staff to work in our warehouses, work in our lookout towers, work at our fire bases and tanker bases, etc etc.  Some of the cotract firefighters would still be hired under contract, because some of those contracts have 90 days or more of guaranteed employment as an incentive to keep people working and coming back to work.  We even put about a dozen or so helicopters on long term contracts over the summer months with a guarantee of so many hours of work whether they are busy or not.

I'm not super familiar with the budget cuts, but it's nothing major, maybe instead of the air tankers being guaranteed 100 days of work they are now guaranteed 85 days, or whatever the details are. 

The potential downside to the budget cuts to our contracted air tanker fleet would be if we burn through all the guaranteed days early on, and then tell the companies that we don't need them around any more, they go back to Abbotsford in BC or Red Deer in Alberta and find work in other provinces and then we find out we still need them after we tell them that they are done for the season. 

Once fires start and we start spending the money, all of that comes out of a different budget, and I have never heard of any fire organization saying so very sorry, we spent all our money, too bad there is still high fire hazard and out of control fires.  We get the resources we need to get the job done, in the past maybe that meant that Alberta didn't have as big of a budget surplus, this year maybe it will mean we have a larger defecit.

We don't have nearly the problem with beetle killed trees that BC has.  Not even close.  You can fly around Alberta, and in that huge sea of green there are small red patches here and there but nothing like the huge areas of beetle killed trees in parts of BC, at least not as far as I know of.  Might be larger dead red patches of beetle killed timber in areas closer to the BC border, it's been awhile since I've flown around by Grande Prairie or Peace River but the beetles haven't really made much of an impact past the centre of the province.  By and large we still have healthy forests in Alberta, especially on the eastern parts, and for those unfamiliar with Alberta geography, Ft McMurray is in northeastern Alberta, not too far from Saskatchewan.  Pine beetles haven't made it that far east yet, we have been spending millions of dollars for the past several years trying to control the pine beetle as best we can, while we may not be very successful at completely eradicating the little bastards we seem to have been somewhat successful in at least containing them to northwestern Alberta.

Beetle killed trees did not have any impact whatsoever on the recent fire by Ft McMurray. 

As the following article notes, the situation is going to get worse as climate change progresses.

 

Quote:

No one knows exactly how the fire began—whether it was started by a lightning strike or by a spark provided by a person—but it’s clear why the blaze, once underway, raged out of control so quickly. Alberta experienced an unusually dry and warm winter. Precipitation was low, about half of the norm, and what snow there was melted early. April was exceptionally mild, with temperatures regularly in the seventies; two days ago, the thermometer hit ninety, which is about thirty degrees higher than the region’s normal May maximum. “You hate to use the ​cliché, but it really was kind of a perfect storm,” Mike Wotton, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, told the CBC.

Though it’s tough to pin any particular disaster on climate change, in the case of Fort McMurray the link is pretty compelling. In Canada, and also in the United States and much of the rest of the world, higher temperatures have been extending the wildfire season. Last year, wildfires consumed ten million acres in the U.S., which was the largest area of any year on record. All of the top five years occurred in the last decade. In some areas, “we now have year-round fire seasons,” Matt Jolly, a research ecologist for the United States Forest Service, recently told the Times.

“You can say it couldn’t get worse,” Jolly added, but based on its own projections, the forest service expects that it will get worse. According to a Forest Service report published last April, “Climate change has led to fire seasons that are now on average 78 days longer than in 1970.” Over the last three decades, the area destroyed each year by forest fires has doubled, and the service’s scientists project that it’s likely to “double again by midcentury.” A group of scientists who analyzed lake cores from Alaska to obtain a record of forest fires over the last ten thousand years found that in recent decades, blazes were both unusually frequent and unusually severe. “This extreme combination suggests a transition to a unique regime of unprecedented fire activity,” they concluded.

All of this brings us to what one commentator referred to as “the black irony” of the fire that has destroyed most of Fort McMurray. ...

To raise environmental concerns in the midst of human tragedy is to risk the charge of insensitivity. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alluded to this danger at a recent news conference: “Any time we try to make a political argument out of one particular disaster, I think there’s a bit of a shortcut that can sometimes not have the desired outcome.” And certainly it would be wrong to blame the residents of Fort McMurray for the disaster that has befallen them. ...

But to fail to acknowledge the connection is to risk another kind of offense. We are all consumers of oil, not to mention coal and natural gas, which means that we’ve all contributed to the latest inferno. We need to own up to our responsibility and then we need to do something about it. The fire next time is one that we’ve been warned about, and that we’ve all had a hand in starting.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/fort-mcmurray-and-the-fires-...

 

 

 

 

A growing body of scientific evidence shows the clear relationship between climate change and these forest fires. The Slave Lake fire "forced the complete evacuation of Slave Lake's 7,000 residents—considered the largest such displacement in the province's history at the time [and] ...  destroyed roughly one-third of Slave Lake" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Slave_Lake_wildfire), causing the Alberta government to change the length of its fire season. 

 

Quote:

Mike Flannigan, a professor at the University of Alberta and the director of the Western Partnership for Wildland Fire Science, is a leading expert on forest fires. “The area burned in Canada has increased over the past 40 to 50 years. This is due to human-caused climate change,” says Flannigan.

Flannigan says that rising temperatures in Canada lead to drying soil and vegetation, increased lightning strikes, and longer fire seasons. After the 2011 Slave Lake area wildfires, Alberta pushed the beginning of fire season from April 1 to March 1.

A 2014 study published in Science found that climate change led to an increase in lightning strikes—one of the common ways wildfires get started.

Stephen Johnston, chair of the earth and atmospheric sciences department at the University of Alberta, echoes Flannigan’s concerns. “Climate change makes extreme weather events more common. From that perspective, you could say this is more of the extreme types of weather that you’d expect.”

A 2013 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesshowed that boreal forests—the type of forest currently burning in Fort McMurray—haven’t burned so frequently in at least 10,000 years.

In Canada, there’s also evidence that more forest is burning than ever before. A January 2016 study in Climatic Change co-authored by Flannigan, said that 8,000 fires burned over two million hectares on average per year, over the past decade. According to Flannigan, previous decades saw an average of about one million hectares burn per year.

http://www.macleans.ca/society/science/did-climate-change-contribute-to-...

 

 

Forest fires have also caused major damage in BC that has been linked to global warming. 

Quote:

The Kelowna and Barriere fires in the summer of 2003, which followed an extensive drought, destroyed 334 homes, with insurance claims in excess of $200 million. The Slave Lake Fire in the spring of 2011, driven by extreme winds, burned over 400 homes and businesses in Slave Lake and surrounding communities, resulting in an insured loss of $700 million. ...

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections indicate an increase of 1.4 - 5.8 oC in global mean temperature by 2100 AD, with the largest increases occurring at higher latitudes, over land, and during the winter/spring period. These temperature increases will cause projected increases in extreme weather events, including heat waves, droughts, floods, and wind storms.  ...

Temperature is a key variable relative to forest fire activity for three reasons:

(1) It affects the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold, which in turn drives the moisture content of forest fuels;

(2) It is strongly positively correlated with lightning with higher temperatures resulting in more lightning, and;

(3) Warmer temperatures result in longer fire seasons, particularly at high northern latitudes.

Since the early 1990s, fire researchers in Canada have been using the most recent climate change model projections to predict the impact of future climate change on future fire regimes, updating these projections as new models become available. Results to date can be summarized as follows:

(1) Fire danger conditions are expected to become more extreme, most significantly in west- central Canada; 

(2) Both lightning and human-caused fire occurrence will increase across Canada, particularly in the boreal zone where increases of 50-100% are expected by the late 20th century; 

(3) Area burned expected to increase, primarily across west-central Canada; 

(4) Fire seasons will become longer, with earlier springs and later falls;

(5) Forest fire severity and intensity will increase.

http://www.climateontario.ca/doc/ORAC_Products/ICLR/Protecting%20Canadia...

 

In 2015, as forest fires threatened Kelowna once again, even Christy Clark, who wants to export more carbon dioxide producing LNG, admitted the connection between global warming and the intense forest fires that are threatening so many Canadian communities. 

 

Quote:

Relentless forest fires burning across British Columbia may be the new normal, Premier Christy Clark warned as she stood not far from a raging fire that threatened homes in her own riding.

Clark spoke near the Westside Road fire outside West Kelowna on Wednesday, where flames have forced emergency officials to issue evacuation orders to the residents of 70 homes. ...

The premier said she is concerned that climate change has altered the terrain, drying out the land and making it more vulnerable to fire, and as a result what B.C. is seeing isn't unusual and will happen more often.

As of Wednesday, the province has spent more than $140 million battling the 1,300 wildfires that have broken out this season, and Clark said the province could spend another $300 to $400 million this year if the pace continues. ...

"I am mostly concerned ... that the forest fire season won't give us a break and that we're going to see more homes threatened, more people's livelihood threatened, more forest resources lost."

Clark said B.C. must continue to fight climate change, be better prepared for wildfires and have the necessary resources to fight them.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/climate-change-a-factor-in-b-c-forest-fires...

 

Many other countries, even Saudi Arabia, are shifting towards renewables leaving Canada as a major laggard in this regard. 

 

In January 2015 the United States produced 90% of new electrical energy from renewable sources with only 10% coming from natural gas and none from hydroelectricity (called water in the article).

Quote:

Based on data from FERC and educated “other solar” (essentially rooftop solar) estimates from CleanTechnica, we’ve found that 90% of new electricity generation capacity added in the United States in January 2015 came from renewable energy sources. To be more precise, 90% came from solar and wind energy.

The largest source of new capacity came from wind energy (54.7%), rooftop solar was second (26.7%), natural gas was third (10.5%), and utility-scale solar PV brought the rest (8.1%).

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/10/renewable-energy-90-of-new-us-electr...

 

The EU, UK, and Germany have already shifted in a major way towards renewables and away from fossil fuels. 

Quote:

The United Kingdom blew past previous wind power records in 2014 while Germany generated a record amount of electricity from wind in December, setting the stage for 2015 to bring more industry growth across Europe. Exactly how quickly it grows, however, is contingent upon several political and regulatory decisions to come.

Using statistics from the U.K.’s National Grid, the trade association RenewableUK found that wind generated enough electricity to power just over 25 percent of U.K. homes in 2014 — a 15 percent increase from 2013. Wind turbines provided 9.3 percent of the U.K’s total electricity supply last year, a 1.5 percent boost from 2013.  ...

In December, Germany generated more wind power, 8.9 terawatt-hours, than in any previous month. According to the IWR renewable energy research institute, this record will be overtaken in 2015 as more offshore wind farms come online. ...

Across Europe, 2015 will also be a big year for renewable energy policy. Late last year the bloc released plans to legally require member countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below their 1990 levels by 2030. ...

According to two consulting firms, the E.U. renewables market will add 8.7 GW of wind and 10.7 GW of solar this year. 

 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/05/3607904/wind-power-surges-in...

 

Uruguay is also moving away from hydroelectricity, as well as fossil fuels. Instead, its now investing in wind, solar and biomass, resulting in renewables providing 94.5% of its electrical energy and 55% of all its energy needs. 

Quote:

In less than 10 years, Uruguay has slashed its carbon footprint without government subsidies or higher consumer costs, according to the country’s head of climate change policy, Ramón Méndez. In fact, he says that now that renewables provide 94.5% of the country’s electricity, prices are lower than in the past relative to inflation. There are also fewer power cuts because a diverse energy mix means greater resilience to droughts.

It was a very different story just 15 years ago. Back at the turn of the century oil accounted for 27% of Uruguay’s imports and a new pipeline was just about to begin supplying gas from Argentina.  ...

Now the biggest item on import balance sheet is wind turbines, which fill the country’s ports on their way to installation.

Biomass and solar power have also been ramped up. Adding to existing hydropower, this means that renewables now account for 55% of the country’s overall energy mix (including transport fuel) compared with a global average share of 12%. ...

There are no technological miracles involved, nuclear power is entirely absent from the mix, and no new hydroelectric power has been added for more than two decades.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/uruguay-makes-dramati...

 

Denmark and Ireland are also moving towards using wind as a major source of energy instead of hydro or fossil fuels. 

Quote:

Denmark set a new world record for wind production in 2014, getting 39.1 percent of its overall electricity from the clean energy source. The latest figures put the country well on track to meet its 2020 goal of getting 50 percent of its power from renewables. 

Denmark has long been a pioneer in wind power, having installed its first turbines in the mid-1970s, and has even more ambitious aims in sight, including a 100 percent renewable country by 2050.

Last year, onshore wind was also declared the cheapest form of energy in the country. ...

Ireland hits new record for wind energy

 Windy conditions in Ireland meant the country saw not one but two wind energy records set already this year.

According to figures record by EirGrid on Wednesday (Jan. 7), wind energy had created 1,942 MW of energy, enough to power more than 1.26 million homes. And while we are still only a week into 2015, this announcement marked the second time this year the country has seen this record broken. On the Jan. 1, wind energy output was at a previous high of 1,872 MW.

 

http://ecowatch.com/2015/01/09/countries-leading-way-renewable-energy/

 

Another example of the movement away from fossi fuels to renewable energy other than hydro comes from the Carribean island of Bonaire.

Quote:

Like many Caribbean islands, Bonaire originally relied on diesel fuel to generate electricity for residents, with a peak demand of 11 megawatts (MW). This fuel had to be shipped in from other nations, resulting in high electricity prices for Bonaire residents, along with uncertainty about when and how much prices might increase with changing fuel costs.

In 2004, everything changed when a fire destroyed the existing diesel power plant. Although tragic, the situation provided an opportunity for Bonaire to consider what kind of new electricity system to build. ...

Bonaire’s Electricity System Transformation

 The result is a transformed electricity system on Bonaire. The island is now home to 12 wind turbines with a total of 11 MW of wind power capacity, which contribute up to 90 percent of the island’s electricity at times of peak wind, and 40-45 percent of its annual electricity on average.

 

http://ecowatch.com/2015/01/07/bonaire-goodbye-diesel-hello-renewable-en...

 

Scotland is already producing 98% of its electricity from wind power and plans to be export electricity by 2020, as well as be 100% fossil fuel free by 2030. Meanwhile BC continues to move against global trends in planning to develop both hydro and LNG. 

 

Quote:

Scotland stated that wind power generated enough power to supply electricity to 98 percent of Scotland’s households in 2014.

Scotland has even bigger plans for the future — and according to a new study, these plans can be met and even exceeded. Scotland hopes to generate the equivalent of 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2020 and to export non-renewable production from conventional power plants to countries like England. A new report from consultancy firm DNV-GL has found that the country could be fossil fuel-free by 2030, meaning it could do away with any fossil fuel generation, even the exported amount.

 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/05/3607904/wind-power-surges-in...

 

Even Saudi Arabia is getting into the act.

Quote:

Saudi Arabia, the second largest Oil producer of the world is all set to slowly become the world’s largest producer of Solar Energy. The kingdom exporting 11,624,000 barrels of oil per day has realized the necessity to utilize the renewable energy sources effectively.

It looks an odd decision for the country like Saudi Arabia having such huge oil recourses and holds the second biggest market share in the global oil market. Today Saudi consumes as high as one million barrels of oil per day just to meet the electricity needs. Total of 25 percent of its oil produced per annum is consumed within the country itself. The electricity consumption is increasing every day. The time has come for the country to adopt drastic measures to control the oil consumption and shift towards renewable energy.

http://solarpower.com/blog/2016/05/03/saudi-arabia-serious-on-shifting-t...

 

I see it hasn't taken long for people to spout off stupid ignorant shit on social media.  Looks like a few people have been suspended from their place of employment over it too, as per usual.

 

I'm actually really surprised and quite proud though about a lot of the stories of generosity and chairity coming out of Albera. It sounds more like Japan and less like the USA after disasters there.