Lightning, it seems, strikes more and more. Scientists consider that climate change is likely, in the north, that is to say at the gateway to the boreal forest, to increase lightning strikes by 11% to 31%. When the average temperature increases by one degree, lightning is multiplied.
A study from the journal Nature Geosciencereported by The Press, exposes this observation widely shared by the scientific community. In other words, beyond Chibougamau, the celestial fire has not finished striking.
Many of the terrible fires last spring and summer were caused by lightning. For the fire to then run to the ground, the conditions must be right. Cut-down forests can encourage fires. Due to a lack of forest cover, humidity is less well preserved. Shavings and dried branches encourage the flames to swallow everything.
Do you remember these end-of-the-world skies, our difficulty in breathing, the atmosphere tinged with yellow and orange? Under the misty fringe of the smoke ceiling, we almost suffocated for whole days. The air was getting thin. The sky was blazing. The atmosphere seemed to escape from our lungs. This sky charged with the power of death highlighted the realities resulting from climate change.
At the airport, I encountered forest firefighters in transit. They were slumped on the ground, exhausted, weighed down by endless days. They were waiting to be transferred to other fire centers. From one corner of the country to another, no one knew where to turn.
We were almost surprised, when the clouds dissipated, to find the warm enchantment of the blue sky and the gentle sun. Then, we continued as before, heads bowed, without taking much trouble to look up from our ordinary.
We have little fear, like in Asterix’s village, that the sky will end up falling on our heads. Our bards are singing the refrain of economic growth at the top of their lungs. Whether the federal currency is now stamped with the head of King Charles or the king of grated poutine does not change the general refrain of capital.
If the number of lightning strikes that tear the sky increases in the years to come, it is reasonable to believe that more humans will be struck by lightning. However, the chances remain rather slim. During big storms, simply take shelter, move away from windows, avoid taking a bath or doing the dishes to reduce the risk of being struck by lightning to almost nothing.
Still, your chances of being struck by lightning remain greater than winning the lottery. According to Environment Canada, the chances of a blast hitting you from the sky are just under one in a million. In comparison, in Lotto 6/49, you have a chance in around twelve million.
In the great lottery of life, faced with the need to have what others have and to do what others do, everyone comes together, week after week, around the hopes offered at low prices by games. of chance. While nurses, teachers, and social service workers fight for better working conditions, while the public domain crumbles before our eyes, the glorious results of chance continue to be told to us as miracles to which it is due. reasonable to aspire to.
In recent days, there was talk of Mr. Larocque and Mrs. Ennis. They are two residents of Coaticook. Monsieur won 55 million in the lottery. The day he found out, Madame didn’t believe it any more than he did. That evening, Monsieur went to bed with the winning ticket. He put it in his pajamas pocket. His night was bad. He woke up several times, as if to make sure the note was still there, that he wasn’t dreaming.
Mr. Larocque’s ticket was purchased at Dépanneur JA, rue Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Coaticook. This is, I believe, the old “Accommodation Karine”. The establishment has changed its name. As a commission, the business receives $550,000. Note that the municipal assessment of the building where Dépanneur JA has been housed for years gives it a value lower than this sum.
What will Mr. Larocque do? He wants to go fishing. When he retired, he took up fly fishing. He never took. Nothing in three years, he said. Maybe Mr. Larocque is not good. The fact remains that warming waters make fish rarer and the trout fishing season shorter. His millions will not give him more fish. Not even in Scotland where he now wants to fish. Since last March, Scottish waters have also been hit by an unprecedented heatwave, causing massive marine mortality. Nature is, alas, everywhere humiliated, trampled, violated. Is this, for everyone, our jackpot? In any case, the lottery constitutes a backdrop against which the miseries of our society are projected with great clarity and contrast.
While there are still nearly 1,000 positions to be filled in education, while public sector unions, in desperation, go on strike, the appetite for the lottery continues to assert, in its own way, a profound desire for change, for escape, for the search for rest, happiness and elsewhere, in the name of the consummation of our illusions, in defiance of the realities which nevertheless pin us to the ground in a flash without us protesting.
In Quebec, the hockey kings of Los Angeles have just won the public lottery. Millions, thrown into the air in a flash, to make millionaires play in a hockey arena that is still empty, even though it was built with $400 million taken from the public treasury. The Kings, the Tampa Bay Lightning or any other team of millionaires could win this lottery, but the population would still be taken, once again, for a big fish.