Pumpkin Hollow ain’t got no trees.I remember making a joke about purchasing avocado acreage in British Columbia, as if to void the consequences of global warming one only needed to move North. After watching Canada burn last year, taking into account the low precipitation in Western Canada this winter, and recent reading reports of thousands of “zombie fires” that are causing concern, worrying officials of an even worse wildfire season this summer.
I’d never heard the term “Zombie fire” before. The Sierra has snow and also wildfires, but a fire burning under the snow in the floor litter is new to me.
What is truely terrorizing is these Zombie fires cannot be controlled by human intervention. We saw last year the inability Fire Services to suppress all wildfire, and some that were let to (supposedly) burn out. With the prospect of even more fires this summer, I think it’s time that investors start to include this new risk in their DD.
Readers may recall my concern of the higher temperatures reached in Mega-fires that melt materials in the forest litter and soil, and forms a waxy layer in-between grains of the inorganic component of the soil. The waxy material prevents the soil from taking up water, thus in regions of high terrain, the naturally funneling of rain and snowmelt into riverine valleys will be disastrously increased.
What has this to do with copper mining? Canada is a major producer of metals as we all know, and has producing copper mines that are dependent upon hundreds of miles of highway. The worst-case scenario (with my limited imagination) might be the stranding of a mine by 5 separate landslides over a distance of 20 miles or more, most can be cleared from only one end, first one, then the next, then the next – it could take months. No earnings, negative cash flow. Not a good deal.
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