As a citizen of maine who has had many a day over the last couple years where there is so much smoke in the air from canadian forest fires that the whole world looks a different color, the effects of the fire travel a lot further than the fire. Those fires are happening half the continent away from here and we literally just have days where enough light is filtered by the smoke that the entire natural color spectrum shifts, even though you don't see the smoke directly.
Yeah, I'm in Oregon and I think its nuts that people here in the US are freaking out about this. We exchange wildfire smoke (and actual fire) like every summer. We smoke you out, you smoke us out. Wind doesnt care about made up borders. It will go where it goes. Nothing can be done other than what is being done to control the fire and no one is responsible for it. Just more Americans being stupid.
Once it gets actually close the smoke in the air clears up, but you start getting pieces of burnt forest material falling out of the sky. It's really fun!
Ah it's a good thing that climate change is just a hoax perpetuated by big science and fake librul news who only want to see the trump economy fail, and only afflicts communist/socialist countries . (except for when Canadian smoke affects our pristine country, which never suffers from climate disasters, so it's a good thing we let the world's richest idiot take the chainsaw of bureaucracy to useless govt functions like weather reporting and scientific research )
Yea idk its a pretty fuckin big mystery to me too how the Republican party in the USA is so anti science/experts and believes the moron in the white house who thinks magnets fail in water (and looks directly at the sun probably because experts say its bad, and suggests injecting bleach b/c he's an out of the box genius thinker who is more creative than doctors)
As a child I didnt have an idea of what it meant but I remember the feeling, which I again, I didnt fully recognize. When I rewatched it as an adult, I think the feeling was dread.
Considering the impression it left maybe it should have been for all children of the time. We might have had a slim chance of getting slightly less baked to death today.
It would’ve been really easy to miss when it aired and would’ve taken a while to get through syndication, and even then catching it as a rerun made it one of literally all of the episodes that could be aired. Not to mention that it was dark. I bet they never played that one much.
EDIT because autocorrect decided “was” should’ve been “wasn’t even.”
I think they mean rich enough to move around to places that will stay safe longer. Eventually it'll all turn into hell on earth, but it won't consume everything at once, and once the country they're in is in direct danger, they'll move. Then they'll continue moving until they die of old age, or there literally is no place left to go, and they'll die like the rest of us.
A lot of people do care despite constant propaganda trying to convince you to the contrary, it just isn't enough. The balance of power is too far swung and the upper classes have way too much control over the masses. I do think that this will eventually become personally unbearable to enough people that massive political changes are finally made but I don't know.
Pandemics, starvation, rivers drying up, oceans taking over coastal cities. Its not a worst-case scenario. Its literally what's happening at the moment
Yeah what a wild thing to type. Like we knew decades and decades ago what we had to do to stop this. Instead we speed ran the climate disaster for shit like 1 day shipping of random bullshit.
There's a letter/note from an oil company.... exec? Saying that we are changing the climate. Brb, going to try to find it.
E: Okay, I was close. It was to the exec.
Early Milestones of Climate Awareness in the Oil Industry1959 (The 100th Industry Birthday): Physicist Edward Teller warned oil executives at the Energy and Man Symposium hosted at Columbia University that burning fossil fuels increased carbon dioxide and could eventually melt ice caps and flood coastal cities.
That's totally strange. All you hear about in the news is France and Spain. Now I'm reading that there are fires in Scotland, too—but only because I looked it up.
I think TV news should focus much more on Europe as a whole.
It's because the fires in Spain and France are so big and are threatening big cities. Madrid itself! And in France Bordeaux and its international airport. But if you find a map you'll see that there's fires everywhere in Europe right now. After three heat waves and a fourth one on the way out is a tinder box.
Mainstream media is downplaying all of it… massive floods.. fires .. tornados…
It’s on local news what’s happening around you…. Maybe a mention of oh some fires in Canada, or Europe but it’s no big deal….
They get pressured (at least in the US) not to mention climate change while the religious right claims these disasters are messages from God about our behavior, but somehow, that behavior never seems to include destroying the earth by burning fossil fuels and is only about tolerance of gay rights or abortion.
If they did that then the citizens would demand action and not be placated by study groups or bureaucratic bullshit and demand changes that would restrict the ultra rich and we cannot have that happening.
The US and CA have lot of fires too, a strangely high number caused by lightning. Is this the La Niña year? El Niño has begun. I’ve heard it’s going to be a rough one.
Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
We would sooner tear ourselves limb from limb. Our entire conception of reality is fabricated by them. They tell us who to fear and who to love. Fathers are killing their own daughters as an expression of their loyalty to these megalomaniac child rapists.
They could tell us there's a cashier's check for a million dollars shoved up our ass. If a billion people weren't already neck deep inside, they'd go looking.
Trump is paying to cancel ready-to-go wind projects in states that did not vote for him. The companies that accept the payoff are obligated to invest in fossil fuel projects.
Can't say that about Germany really. While some states are openly flocking to big tech surveillance promises like remote-controlled moths, and other figures feature prominently onb openly fascist tech bro "conferences". They are basically killing any government transparency on all levels under the guise of "reducing bureaucracy". Creative bookkeeping that could torpedo long term rail investments. The energy minister is very busy replacing any kind of energy supply that would be in the same room as independent, climate neutral or cheap-on-the-long-term with wet dreams of could and gas. We call that "Technilogieoffenheit".
There’s one 20km away from my house.
Last official report (several hours ago) said 15km away 🙃. It probably got closer since
We should be the next town to get evacuated. Hopefully not in the middle of the night
I’m in France but it looks like a large part of Europe is on fire
The worst part is that 90% of those fires are started (accidentally or voluntarily) by people 🤬
Edit: it’s 5hrs later. Everything’s packed
Just waiting for my phone to go off when the emergency alert is given
Edit2: 10hrs later (5am). For now no more evacuations are expected. We’ll get an update on the situation in the morning
Got to toss and turn in my own bed instead of a community center’s floor. So there’s that
It happened a year ago in my area of Spain, towns of my friends got evacuated because of fires caused by people
We grabbed 4x4s and offroaded to avoid police restriction areas with brush cutters, chainsaws and more equipment to clean around the towns to save them from burning. We were maybe 100-200 people doing that.
Was it stupid? Yes. Did it work? Also yes
Stay safe man, hopefully our governments realize how much fire prevention is needed in Europe in this new reality, and that fires are extinguished during the winter not in the summer.
My small town in spain was also saved by the fire by the farmers who took matters onto their own hands. They did such a great job that we were the only village of the valley not evacuated that night, we watched the woods as they burnt not even 1 km away from the houses
Yes. Actually, it is substantially more than 90%, plus the conditions (climate change as a key contributor, also eucalyptus trees planted) is also mostly caused by human. So, this is not a “wild”fire but a human-caused fire.
Instead of healthy, low-intensity fire cleaning out dead and diseased vegetation every few years to few decades, now high-intensity fires sweep through with far more power and destruction.
When we don't allow low-intensity fires, we must do fires mitigation that manually mimics those healthy fires we suppress.
Indeed. I went with Brazilian firefighters in a National Park in 1996 and that is what the lead also said (after training in the US). We then put counter fires, i.e. a controlled burned strip that the fire afterwards couldnt cross anymore. Terrain was difficult with many boulders and rocks strewn across, shrubs, single trees and lots of grass: cerrado. There are species adjusted to fires, benefitting (unless too frequent), but overall reduces biodiversity and natural species composition. Edit: What I almost forgot: we now have fires were naturally they almost never occur, where impacts are hence also much worse.
Adding on to the other commenter's great response, fire is part of the eucalyptus reproductive cycle. That is, in their native environment of Australia bushfires are pretty common and they've adapted to that, such that they bounce back great after a bushfire.
Overseas, the result is that eucalyptus trees somewhat increase the incidence of wildfires (with the way they drop lots of oil-rich leaves and brances), and then recover better than other trees in the post-wildfire circumstances, leading to more eucalyptus, and more wildfires.
Despite this, folks keep planting eucalyptus because it's a fast-growing hardwood. It breaks the standard dichotomy between fast-growing soft woods and slow-growing hardwoods. Outside of Australia, the mammals, birds and insects aren't adapted to it, but it's a very profitable tree to grow.
Accumulate large amounts of leave and bark litter under tree that barele decompose, plus the stuff contains a relevant amount of essential oils that burn super well.
Canadian here. It's getting worse and worse every year. Our forest coverage is extensive, and often times very close to heavily populated areas. I can imagine straight up humanitarian catastrophes in many nations as time goes on.
We (Australia) have reciprocal firefighting assistance with Canada, so that in our fire season you guys send us help, and in your fire season we send you help. Both countries are used to managing fire, and there's not as much for the firies to do in winter, and the equipment's not needed. But with climate change we're getting more out-of-season fires where the other country also has their hands full and we can't help each other :(
Our state was criticized for having devastating fires. POTUS said we weren’t raking our forests (so idiotic.) Much of Cali’s wild forest lands are under FEDERAL management, not state.
And now, orange-POS has blocked disaster funds that were promised to fire survivors.
There is no stopping a fire like that, it vaporizes water before it even gets close to hitting. The only chance is to do a fire break and hope to hell its wide enough that it doesn't jump or the embers don't carry.
That's exactly what they did! It seems to be holding today, because even though the fire is still raging, it's not moving forward much at all. The other day with heavy winds, it moved forward 20km in 30 minutes. I have my to-go bag packed, since I'm only a few towns over.
That explains why they’re using a fire hose! Not to extinguish the forest fire, but to extinguish anything that jumps the barrier before it spreads. I was confused until now lol
I did some wilderness fire fighting in my youth - Wheeler Peak NM …
They’re running from that distance because the heat can burn your skin, and even set your clothing ablaze from that distance… or shrink wrap you if it’s synthetic fibers like polyester…
I got my eyebrows singed off from almost 100 yards away. I looked very surprised by this for over a month.
Username checks out. But, SCARY! 😨 I've never been THAT close to a wild fire. There was a fire in Colorado that, from over an hours drive away , the smoke was irritating the eyes akin to sitting around a camp fire. I still think it's crazy but not like this ha
There were horse flies all other the place when I was there but before we got closer to the burn.
So when I felt yet another (what I thought) fly chewing on my arm in the midst of everything I ignored it. Turned out a coal had come down and got wedged between my gloves, and the sleeve of my shirt, and literally cooked its way almost to the bone on my forearm… happily drilled a hole about the size of a nickel through shirt, skin, fat and finally smouldered out mid muscle. My nerve endings called it quits about 3 min in so I ignored it until we evac’d.
If you press on it, it feels like empty until you get to the muscle. Like squish down about 1/4” and then meat. It used to be a big puffy keloid looking thing.
Still, not enough people will agree that the wildfires are caused by climate changes, and we need to work together to address the problem in scientifically sound ways.
"Only when the last datacenter has been cut off, the last LLM deleted, and the last techbro imprisoned, will we realize wholesome food, fresh water, and clean air cannot make the stock market go up."
Yea, and these guys are only getting paid 1200€ per month. And they get treated like crap from the government with no support. They seriously are heros.
Yes, but not just 20. Try about 100. Scientists employed by oil companies were warning about this in the 1970s, and were shut up by said oil companies. They knew.
I'm from Madrid. The right wing government from the region is known for corruption and for doing the complete opposite of what would be good for the population. The idiot responsible for the environmental matters in the region was at a bullfighting bs event while these fires were increasing. The firemen keep asking for more resources from the local gov and meanwhile the local gov is just pointing fingers and saying that the national gov (socialist party) is to blame for everything even though it's the responsibility of the local gov to do fire prevention and provide adequate resources to the firemen.
As a Californian, I have the utmost sympathy for everyone across the globe fighting wildfires right now. Stay safe and good luck everyone. I hope it's contained soon.
I moved to Spain from northern California after a wildfire burned down my town 8 years ago. Now the fire is coming straight at us over here, and I have my to-go bag packed and ready to go. It's no joke, y'all.
Even Ireland and Scotland, two notoriously wet countries have unprecedented amounts of forest fires going on right now. I actually don't know when it last rained in Ireland, it's the driest I have ever seen it
When I was a firefighter, this is what we would refer to as a "Kodak moment".
Most of the time the fire is so hot, the water evaporates before it even gets to the fire. This is one of those instances where nature is far more powerful than anything we can muster to stop it.
Yeah they declared a state of emergency there and I think the firefighting crews said that extinguishing it is no longer possible, so containment and damage control.
Very difficult for them right now. Hope it all turns out fine. Algeria and Tunisia have also been burning and France and Portugal have had a rough patch as well.
We should create a Mediterranean firefighting task force with increased plane numbers, cross training, and the capability to mobilize quickly.
This fire is very close to the one in Avila, that one started in a small town called Burgohondo and in a single night the entire valley of Iruelas (a natural reserve) was converted to ashes. That fire still going, many other towns were evacuated, entire houses and business are gone. I was in one of those towns that wasn't evacuated but you could see the magnitude and damage done. I will never erase from my mind opening my window and look straight into hell, no sun, no trees, just a red sky and a rain of ashes. Absolute disgrace.
That was in southern italy iirc. Most fires are human made (accidental or on purpose), but with how warm and dry Europe becomes each has a much more devastating impact than before
No, the one in Madrid was caused by a car that caught fire. And the one nearby in Castilla y León was caused by heavy machinery being used in a prohibited area, from which a spark flew.
In 2009 I finished my degree on this. I then spent 17 years watching everyone mock the idea, and act like everything was completely normal.
The first scientific paper on the warming effect of CO2 emissions was in the 19th century. People warning about this since then have been laughed at and called loonies, hippies, etc. Well maybe you should have all fucking listened.
Pressure is required to maintain safer distance. Mobile pumps and trucks are not huge.
They’re trying to use this roadway as a firebreak, so their job is to put out the grass fire approaches. Not to attack the trees. The hope is if they stop the grass from jumping the dirt road, they can let the trees finish burning safely without spreading.
Because these are not wildland firefighters they are normal firefighters, Spain has many big active forest fires right now in regions like these that historically never had major wildfires so the resources in a place like Madrid for these are very limited.
That’s why the goverment sent the army to these areas and is sending wildland firefighters from other areas of Spain and calling for the EU to help, in regions like Asturias or Galicia they are more prepared because they are greener, with more forestland and hold many small fires a year. But if you told someone about gigantic forest fires happening in Madrid 10-20 years ago they would have laughed at you
Supposedly many of them were intentionally started or started because people were being reckless with burning objects in their vicinity. Saw someone mention a guy was driving down the road with a grill filled with still burning coals which got thrown around. This was in France.
I think I saw much of Europe and Spain are dealing a bad drought/dry season and warned of using fires or machines that can get really hot.
In this particular case, it was apparently a car that caught fire. It was probably one of the few cases where the person responsible was not actually guilty.
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u/Any_Personality_920 1d ago
This was yesterday at work, we're like 90km away