Fire Weather

A True Story of Survival and Community in Our New Century of Fire

by John Vaillant

English language

Published May 26, 2023 by Knopf Incorporated, Alfred A..

ISBN:: 978-0-525-43424-5

(5 reviews)

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Fire has been a partner in our evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously …

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant’s urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.

5 editions

pdotb@wyrms.de reviewed Fire Weather by John Vaillant

Three or four books welded together?

4 stars

Content warning climate crisis, wildfire

Felt like several rather disjoint narratives -- a pretty short history of the tar sands, a discussion of how wildfires are changing, a lengthy account of the Fort McMurray fire, followed by a lengthy history of climate change and the way fossil fuel companies have concealed the facts so they can keep making profits. The first and last are, unfortunately, nothing new. The discussion of how wildfires are changing was a real eye-opener (I've since looked up 'fire tornadoes' on YT and, yikes!) but the description of the fire in Alberta, while perhaps interesting as an illustration of how things are changing so fast that it's hard for people to comprehend, ultimately felt a bit like a thriller, but written about real peoples' lives. A bit mind-boggling, I will say, that Fort McMurray had a population of around 90,000!

hunterowens reviewed Fire Weather by John Vaillant

incredible tale of changing climate

5 stars

well I'm even more climate change scared shitless, great fire reporting.

markm reviewed Fire Weather by John Vaillant

Review of 'Fire Weather' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

One might think that the story of the great fire of Ft. McMurray, Alberta in 2016 would be similar to other accounts of disaster. The reader would be both horrified and somewhat reassured by the distance of the disaster from his own home in time and space. He or she might tell themself that they wouldn’t have bought tickets on the Titanic or been unlucky enough to be in Galveston in 1900. But this account is different since the author shows us how the Ft. McMurray fire was an example of things to come and that it was secondary to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is not just a Canadian problem. I have had trouble sleeping since reading this.

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The author is fond of his similes. The book is peppered with them. Fire is like a person, a general, a flower, a lemur, a hurricane, like an oven filled with shoeboxes, etc., and fighting one is like playing lacrosse, but only as it was originally conceived. These were distracting.

The author uses some big words, which I sometimes appreciated as with anagnorisis and ignescent, but which sometimes were a distraction as with infandous. I don’t think I've ever heard or read the word infandous before [My spellchecker recommends I use infamous.]. It is not in the Random House or Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionaries. I found it in the 1928 Oxford unabridged dictionary where it is listed as obsolete with references from the 17th century. It is also listed in Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words.

I appreciated the quote from Albert Bartlett, The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. I don't know if it is our greatest shortcoming, and it was Bartlett's thing, but I think it is clear that it is an especially unfortunate feature of innumeracy. I also liked the quote from Aubrey Clayton, The problem with exponential growth is that it means most of the change is always in the recent past. I have asked critics if they remember Al Gore in a cherry-picker in front of a graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide over time. They laugh and say yes, and I inform them that since that movie was made we have produced more carbon dioxide than since we discovered fire. Not all graphed functions are linear.

Lavinia

rated it

Jan 2

PanaX

rated it

Jan 3

Subjects

Forests and forestry