Despite what our capitalist rulers want us to think, everything is not fine...
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The northern hemisphere has had a large number of intense wildfires in the first half of summer, carrying vast amounts of smoke across Eurasia and North America.
These wildfires are generally caused by long periods of hot and dry conditions in areas of high vegetation, and have resulted in increased carbon and smoke emissions.
Large-scale and intense wildfires have developed throughout the late spring and summer, with numerous fires burning in Canada, Alaska, and eastern Russia.
Guillermo Rein, a professor of fire science in the department of mechanical engineering at Imperial College London, said: “In recent years the fire season is expanding, starting earlier and lasting longer. But it’s not just the fact the wildfire season is widening, it’s also that the intensity of wildfire season is becoming unprecedented.”
According to official Russian figures, the number of wildfires this year has decreased by 30% compared with the previous year, but the area burnt is 50% larger, highlighting the intensity of the wildfires.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/23/large-scale-and-intense-wildfires-carrying-smoke-across-northern-hemisphere
See more below... 🧵 1/3
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
Large-scale and intense wildfires carrying smoke across northern hemisphere
Late spring and early summer blazes in Canada, Alaska and eastern Russia add to carbon emissionsGuardian staff reporter (The Guardian)
Bread and Circuses
in reply to Bread and Circuses • • •🧵 2/3
As we saw in the article above, climate change is not only increasing the number of wildfires, it's making them burn much hotter and faster, consuming more vegetation and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere...
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After a wet winter and hot summer, this year’s fire season in California is off to a fierce start.
So far, more than 3,500 wildfires have eaten up at least 219,247 acres across the state. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, and dozens of structures have been damaged or destroyed.
The number of fires is only slightly higher than this time last year, but state data show that the acreage burned is more than 20 times greater. By this point in 2023, just over 3,000 blazes had consumed 10,398 acres. According to David Acuna, a Cal Fire battalion chief, the longer-term trends are similarly alarming.
“If you look at the five-year average, we are slightly below on the number of fires,” Acuna said, “but we are more than 400% greater in acres burned.”
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🧵 2/3
As we saw in the article above, climate change is not only increasing the number of wildfires, it's making them burn much hotter and faster, consuming more vegetation and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere...
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After a wet winter and hot summer, this year’s fire season in California is off to a fierce start.
So far, more than 3,500 wildfires have eaten up at least 219,247 acres across the state. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, and dozens of structures have been damaged or destroyed.
The number of fires is only slightly higher than this time last year, but state data show that the acreage burned is more than 20 times greater. By this point in 2023, just over 3,000 blazes had consumed 10,398 acres. According to David Acuna, a Cal Fire battalion chief, the longer-term trends are similarly alarming.
“If you look at the five-year average, we are slightly below on the number of fires,” Acuna said, “but we are more than 400% greater in acres burned.”
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-12/california-wildfires-burn-20-times-as-much-land-as-last-year
#California #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
'A fire year': California wildfires burn 20 times more acres than 2023
Keri Blakinger (Los Angeles Times)Bread and Circuses
in reply to Bread and Circuses • • •đź§µ 3/3
Here's an overview of the situation in Canada: 935 active fires, 414 of them out of control, with 2.2 million hectares burned so far...
🔥 https://ciffc.net/
#Canada #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
CIFFC
ciffc.netKent Pitman
in reply to Bread and Circuses • • •At this point I find myself almost wondering if there's any research being done and how to stop a big fire, distinct from a small one. It feels like our approach must be wrong, that at the scale we're talking about, you can't solve these things by sending individual human beings out to little bits of the edge.
Are we producing firemen at the right rate? Are people seeing the need and rushing to become firemen, or are they seeing the deaths and avoiding it. Are we going to run out of firemen?
Are we going to need more and more airplanes?
This is like its own little war. And, like if it were a war, I would like to see graphs that show us how much territory has been ceded and how much remains. How much grows back in between onslaughts, and a kind of progress bar until we don't have any more forest.
Not even to mention a progress bar of our various sources of oxygen. We're deoxygenating the ocean, and that's taking a toll on things. We're chopping down rainforests. How many of these can we bear before we literally start changing the oxygen content of the atmosp
... Show more...At this point I find myself almost wondering if there's any research being done and how to stop a big fire, distinct from a small one. It feels like our approach must be wrong, that at the scale we're talking about, you can't solve these things by sending individual human beings out to little bits of the edge.
Are we producing firemen at the right rate? Are people seeing the need and rushing to become firemen, or are they seeing the deaths and avoiding it. Are we going to run out of firemen?
Are we going to need more and more airplanes?
This is like its own little war. And, like if it were a war, I would like to see graphs that show us how much territory has been ceded and how much remains. How much grows back in between onslaughts, and a kind of progress bar until we don't have any more forest.
Not even to mention a progress bar of our various sources of oxygen. We're deoxygenating the ocean, and that's taking a toll on things. We're chopping down rainforests. How many of these can we bear before we literally start changing the oxygen content of the atmosphere?
Just looking at these pictures it feels like anyone who's talking what's the world will look like in 2100 it's just plain crazy. Who could possibly be here still to see it? Surely this is diminishing key resources at a rate that cannot sustain us. How could there possibly be 75 more of these summers left in Canada? Or the world?
And is there an effect here, like the air pollution aerosol effect, where we're getting some perverse BENEFIT from the smoke, such that if/when we put these out we're going to be in worse shape for the lack of aerosols because we've come to rely on the reflectivity, thinking we've got climate under control, only to find we were relying on forest fires to mess up our measurements, and that other getting things under control was mirage.
In my mind, I keep wanting to see that they've carved gaps into the forests, dividing them into a grid, with something flame proof in between, so that the fires can't spread more than a certain amount before hitting a firewall. Yeah, I presume that would really hurt animal life. Lots of stuff needs to migrate across those boundaries on a regular basis. So probably not a practical solution. At some point though, you have to ask whether the fires are going to hurt them worse. I don't see discussion of these kinds of things.
We need people trained with career specialties in these areas, how many not to burden them with debt. The points to how badly we as a public need education, if we are going to survive things. We need to stop treating education like it is a personal indulgence. We should have whole schools for people we're going to solve these problems, or think tanks.
Instead we have think tanks for how we're going to make people believe these problems are not here. Let's just make that illegal, a crime against humanity, sieze the money they've taken orchestrating this fiasco, and use it for better purposes.
I don't know if these are even the right questions. They are the things that occur to me when I look at pictures like this, but I'm just one random person. We need a more robust discussion among more people to make sure that things are not being overlooked, both problems and suggestions about how to solve them.
I feel like the media is failing us by just seeing these things, shrugging, and moving on to hockey scores or some other trivial matter. I wish that the world could be about trivial matters, but I can only do that with a firm foundation. And right now there's a war going on that is not being adequately talked about, and therefore also not adequately prioritized.
#climate #fires #wildfires #ClimateCrisis #collapse #education #research #ClimateResponse #media #journalism #JournalismFail #society #LateStageCapitalism #ClimateCommunication #ClimateMetrics
Kent Pitman
in reply to Kent Pitman • • •Related also to wildfires, this is another kind of scary.
"Oregon wildfire creates its own weather after growing to nearly 245,000 acres
Pyrocumulus clouds like one above Durkee fire can create rain and lightning, potentially causing new fire starts"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/24/oregon-wildfire-creates-its-own-weather
Oregon wildfire creates its own weather after growing to nearly 245,000 acres
Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)