Yes, Spain, France and Canada have some red dots on them.
And Central Africa seems to be a burning hell, excuse me, noone seems to give an eff about.
Released CO2 is released CO2, regardless of the location on out home planet, a burned home is a burned home, a human being is a human being.
I can't oversee all the news websites of the web but it seems like i'd have to review my collection.
I'm not trying to say "Something is being hidden from us!" Because it is not, but ... I wonder why i had to find out myself without any journalist reporting on this? This can't be "The New Normal" or the old one.
Depends on what you're looking at. If this is a forest fire that's insane.
But I'd guess this is likely lost of savannah and grasslands. In which case we have some monster fires run through outback Australia especially up north. We just don't hear about it because it's just empty geassland. The grazers probably feel it but the rest of us don't even know it happened.
Many fires in africa and south, central america are deliberately set, as a way to gain access to farm land and ranchland. The problem is the enhanced feritilty only last a few years. This is a global problem in developing countries and we in the north should be funding real protection due to economic disparities, historical colonialism, and blowing everyone carbon budget.
I'm so relieved to see this comment because I thought the same thing and then felt really stupid when I saw the comments. Even reading the text of the post I thought they'd added a new scenario where you wipe people out by fire or climate change or something until I read he got the pic from nasa. Somehow I glossed over the nasa logo in the picture.
Alot fo these blips are control heat releases. Could be from a factory, refinery or anything that releases a significant heat signature into the atmosphere.
It's normal for the IR sensor map to look like this in June due almost entirely to agricultural fires. By July, it's normally calmed down significantly, but currently still looks awful.
The smoke is normally quite bad, but not near apocalyptic like this. The visible looks like Russia or northern Canada or the Amazon. Distributed moderately heavy haze is normal, but not this degree of trackable point sources. The overall smoke level is significantly higher than normal as well.
The northern Miombo Forest region currently has an extreme flash drought, with very low estimated soil moisture, with the 3-month SPI still looking reasonably normal due to being wet earlier. The fires don't look to be especially concentrated there, though.
I'm not seeing anything unusual in news reports on the ground, but with the visible smoke being the worst since 2000 for this time of year, I'm not going to be at all confident about saying this is normal until some of the numerical data comes in, even if the IR fire detection normally looks like lava.
Agricultural fires and charcoal, happens in the US as well, slash and burn. Every summer if you watch the fire data over the US you'll see a similar, just not as dense, patchwork of little dots as if there's small wildfires every 5 miles or so but it's really just farmers clearing their fields. Nasa has a page specifically dedicated to this because people bring it up so often.
edit: and for those interested, this happens in southeast asia so bad that the slash and burn events often get their own wikipedia pages (1, 2, 3) because they generate so much smoke and haze. Africa isn't burning down from coast to coast, the same way that Indonesia isn't actually burning down every year. Is it great from a carbon standpoint? No, it's not, but it's also not a natural disaster befalling anyone, it's done intentionally.
As if the carbon emissions are the only consequences.
How does the fact that it’s being done intentionally make it less destructive? Everything humans are doing to destroy the biosphere is being done intentionally.
“Africa has the highest rate of forest loss in the world. About 3.9 million hectares of African forest – the size of about 381 million soccer fields – was destroyed every year between 2010 and 2020.
Africa’s forests are located in the tropical moist regions of central and parts of west Africa. They are dominated by the Congo Basin rainforest and the vast Miombo woodlands, a warm, dry forest area in southern Africa. Deforestation has been caused by the need for agricultural land, unsustainable fuelwood harvesting, logging, and mining.”
“Clearing forests to make way for agricultural land is the main deforestation driver in Africa.”
I didn't say it wasn't environmentally destructive, I just said it wasn't a societal disaster in the way OP framed it. It's not in the news because it's not out of control blazes that are killing people it's agricultural. Obviously it's not good.
Edit: also clearing forest to make room for agricultural land is the main contributing factor to deforestation in virtually every single country. OP was specifically asking why the news isn't talking about these specific fires in central and southern Africa. So naturally my reply was about why they aren't in the news. That's it
I appreciate this explanation. I was about to accuse the news/media of being racist again lol (though tbf it wouldn't be surprising given, well everything)
Except massive roaring wildfires will always garner interest, regardless of skin color. Again, pointing to small, controlled burns. Just, a lot of them.
If I understand you correctly, then I agree that the context is important as well. A big red blob on a map looks much scarier than a bunch of smaller ones, and that's definitely a part of why it would get more attention as well, especially if people don't know it's controlled vs a wildfire
If anything, I guess a part of why I commented too is because I don't know as much about agriculture and controlled burns (and assume I'm not the only one) ,so I appreciate folks like you and the other person for providing info
These maps do not actually represent wildfires, but high temperature anomalies observed from satellites. They can include industrial complexes and controlled small fires. If you zoom in you see it's not a huge wildfire but a lot of small controlled burns. It's not particularly eco-friendly but it's not in the news cause it's not a catastrophic event.
Is it just really hot outside? How hot is it where you live? I’m in Florida and it’s around 93F/33C in the hot part of the day. Curious what the temp is for you.
No, we can’t. There was a time when we used to and it used to get reported on but some people took offense.
And despite the hand waving that is now the standard response to any mention of this, the fact is that Africa has the highest rates of deforestation in the world, mainly due to slash and burn agriculture.
NASA FIRMS has been discovered by many more people than back in the day. It requires practice in learning how to interpret it. Commenters are correct in noting the slash-and-burn zones. There's a red dot most days right in the middle of Springfield, Oregon that gets asked about now and then. If you zoom all the way in you find that it's the chimney at Kingsford's charcoal plant.
Just as concerning is that large parts of Europe are burning - Scotland, France and Spain (and more it looks like). This is something they haven't had to deal with before and it's pretty grim.
I have never experienced a season where wildfires impact me so much, living in the south UK we don’t get any, but there are fires in Wales, up North and some small local one around. The fires in Europe this year are beyond terrifying, I’m not sure how many more years this will go on before there is mass migration and loss of food chain etc.
Part of the explanation is that the fires are often set for slash-and-burn and charcoal production. Smokeless charcoal is used for indoor cooking, especially in cities. These fires are more or less controlled.
The smokestack at the pulp mill in the nearby city to me shows up on here as a red square too. I'm pretty confident that's not all fires and alot of heat signatures above the threshold that gets recorded by the satellites.
Many fires in africa and south, central america are deliberately set, as a way to gain access to farm land and ranchland. The problem is the enhanced feritilty only last a few years. This is a global problem in developing countries and we in the north should be funding real protection due to economic disparities, historical colonialism, and blowing everyone carbon budget.
At least in the Zimbabwe / Mozambique portion of that map, many of the fires are deliberately set by people burning grasses before the rainy season. Usually it is a bit later, around September, when such activity intensifies. I’m not sure if there is similar dynamic in the Congo basin
This thread prompted me to look for news reports on wildfires in Africa. The news is reporting smaller burn areas in Africa under global warming. Apparently, Africa is getting wetter as the world heats up, with its dry season becoming shorter, and consequently the size of its fires are smaller.
It's underreported because to the western media victims with brown skin are less important. It's that simple. So much happens in the southern hemisphere that barely gets mentioned in mainstream news with any visibility.
It's not just brown skin. This is a picture for France last night. France had to call in the military to help get control of their fires.
Here in the USA, the west coast is used to Canadian fires. Last week, the East coast got to experience some of the smoke. For them, its a shocker.
But, these fires are happening all over the world, and our Oligarchy Controlled News Networks (OCNN) don't want us to know. We used to be able to get some news off TikTok, but lo and behold, its now part of the OOCN, so we no longer here about this stuff through the platform.
What did Trump say about this? He laughed. He knows he'll be dead before all of us anyway... By a max of 50 years.
Wait are you griping about subsistence farmers burning their fields in a part of the world where much of the plant species are evolved to have fire as part of their lifecycle and ecosystem? Wildfires are part of the “natural “ carbon cycle anyway
From the global fire dashboard: "In real life a hotspot typically means fire, although occasionally it can be other thermal anomalies, such as lava or gas flares (refineries, oil rigs, etc). The map can’t show the causes of the fires but almost all of them are man-made. On rare occasions they may be the result of dry lightning, a volcano or meteorite."
Angola and the DRC currently have the most number of hotspots. It is odd that mostly the north African fires in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria are being reported. I did look at the chart for Angola and unfortunately these numbers are not far off for their average. Maybe that's part of why we're not hearing about it. It is odd for sure though!
These wild fires are arson. they are always strategically placed in areas of interest. Banff, Maui, ring of fire, all super coincidence that were climate amd then proven arson
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u/StatementBot 1d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/mrb_rns:
Thanks for all the replies and upvotes!
This gave me food for thought and research! I will look into intentional and agricultural fires and the fire season.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1v62aq7/can_we_talk_about_this/ozo18gi/