Rendered at 15:26:37 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
wosk 9 hours ago [-]
Le Monde, very reputed French newspaper (NYtimes equivalent for France perhaps) says that it’s not the first time this cloud is seen in France [1]: (translation mine)
> “What is happening right now is extremely, extremely unusual. Seeing a cloud this massive and reaching such an altitude above a wildfire is exceptionally rare,” the researcher explains.
“During the Pedrógão fire [which claimed around 60 lives in Portugal in 2017], there were two episodes of fire-induced thunderstorms. Here, we are already at eight or ten, and the forecast is not encouraging at all.”
Although unprecedented in both intensity and frequency, the phenomenon has been observed in France before, according to the expert: during the Fontainebleau wildfire (Seine-et-Marne) in July, the Ribaute fire (Aude) in 2025, and the Générac fire (Gard) in 2019.
It seems that this cloud and the attached storms have been seen before, even recently, in France, but this one is one of a kind for intensity, by far.
What is indicative of escalating climate catastrophe is indeed the intensity and frequency of those firestorms, not any lack of precedent for a cloud shape.
But the really salient observation is how people individually and their social system as a whole react (or not).
Debating the shapes of clouds points to a fundamental dysfunctional disconnect on multiple levels.
Galanwe 3 hours ago [-]
> What is indicative of escalating climate catastrophe is indeed the intensity and frequency of those firestorms
I don't think we have the data that proves this theory (which of course doesn't mean that the theory is wrong), because the vast majority of these fires are man-made, not natural disasters.
This year's Fontainebleau wildfires were caused by 1) a deranged person ligthning bushes and drenching them with fuel 2) a simple minded person throwing a cigaret but in bushes during a heat wave...
The huge wildfire in the south some years ago was caused by a similarly simple minded dude that caried his alight barbecue from one place to another on the back of his pickup truck (creating a dozen wildfires in the process along the road).
Loquebantur 2 hours ago [-]
You're conceptually wrong about "the theory" and factually about the majority of fires.
The fundamental connection increase of CO2 => increase in mean temperature => increase in frequency of high-energy atmospheric events is entirely obvious and well established.
CO2 traps heat and heat is energy. Firestorms are an immediate consequence of that and accordingly rise in frequency as well.
The idea, such fires would be "preventable, since due to individual human action" is patently absurd even in principle. You cannot easily ignite a forest that isn't dried out.
An easily ignitable forest on the other hand just waits for the first spark, no matter the source. The hotter climate provides more sparks in the form of lightning. At some point, ignition is virtually guaranteed. And that point is reached already.
jappgar 14 minutes ago [-]
Spot on. But logic is lost on people who are ideologically motivated.
jvanderbot 2 hours ago [-]
I think you're missing a step --> Drier forests and more downed trees.
All the lightning in the world isn't going to burn down a rainforest.
svara 48 minutes ago [-]
People have not suddenly become deranged or simple minded.
Two of the large recent fires in the Landes region, including the most recent, have started from poorly maintained, spontaneously igniting cars. Those also have not suddenly started appearing out of nowhere.
The common thread is very dry forests, it just takes a spark for disaster.
x______________ 2 hours ago [-]
Might I add that the possibility of the country going up in flames is magnified by the climate change that allows everything to be so dry and volatile, regardless of the cause of the fires that occurred.
6 hours ago [-]
Dibby053 16 hours ago [-]
For context on why this region is burning so easily: the Landes and Médoc are huge, artificial pine forests created in the 19th century under Napoleon III to drain and reclaim what was considered an inhospitable wetland, where shepherds famously walked around on stilts. Pine resin and needle litter makes it exceptionally flammable, and being an uninterrupted monoculture on flat land it lacks natural barriers to stop the fire from advancing.
reco98gg 11 hours ago [-]
The main reason the forest is burning is global warming. There were 3 punishing heatwaves before the fire, it was just a matter of time.
A part of the Fontainebleau forest, much more north, no pine trees, went in smoke earlier. Forests are burning near Madrid.
It may make some people feel better to think that it is an isolated, local problem, but unfortunately global warming is the main culprit and we at least need to acknowledge it.
I don't think the person you're responding to was trying to deny global warming being a factor. I think they're just explaining why this fire is so bad compared to other fires we have seen in France before.
I know global warming plays a major role in this, but I still found it interesting to know why this fire seems so bad.
reco98gg 10 hours ago [-]
You may be absolutely right about the OP, I cannot know.
Still, I believe it is important to highlight the elephant in the room first.
For example to your point: "I still found it interesting to kmow why this fire seems so bad compared to [...] before", I think it is important to state: "because global warming is getting worse over time". Not because pine trees, which have been around for a long time, and have never burned so badly.
yoghurtwere 10 hours ago [-]
> Not because pine trees, which have been around for a long time, and have never burned so badly.
Basically they had no way to fight those fires at the time, as the article explains.
reco98gg 9 hours ago [-]
[Answering here to @applepearlime bc limits of my green acct]
They do have firebreaks, paths for trucks to go in many places [1]. I've seen many.
But you could argue they're not wide enough to actually break fire. And when I see videos of how tall and wide the flames are, I have no idea how wide they should be... It's a managed forest though, definitely looked after because economics interests (wood, tourism).
> And when I see videos of how tall and wide the flames are, I have no idea how wide they should be...
Up to 40km, depending on the wind. Embers can travel a long way.
applepearlime 9 hours ago [-]
I can't say that I buy your argument.
Either way, firebreaks and green firebreaks seem like they could be a reasonable mitigation approach, whatever the overall causes.
Does anyone here know whether the Landes forest has good firebreaks? If not, does anyone here know why? I failed to find anything about it online.
gabaix 5 hours ago [-]
I grew up there. I used to bike along stretches of firebreaks between plots. These firebreaks are nowhere nearly enough. Trees are young, pine needles spread everywhere, and ground is sandy.
The forest is a giant tinderbox.
cindyllm 9 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Arodex 5 hours ago [-]
You know this was once, 77 years ago?
mytailorisrich 6 hours ago [-]
The elephant in the room is that many of those fires are criminal and that the French government has arbitrated budget restrictions against investing in fire-fighting equipment, especially planes.
It so happens that the current fire near Bordeaux is roughy in the same area as the historic fire of 1949 in which 82 people died (and currently still smaller, hopefully it will stay that way) [1], as someone else already mentioned.
Wildfires in Fontainebleau are not new, either, even if this year's one it is historically large. First laws against fires in the in forest and obligation of inhabitants to help in case of fire date from the 14th century [2].
Yes warming trends do not help and increase risk (hence need to invest in equipment and prevention) but there is also fabricated drama and lack of perspective, which are unfortunately how everything is reported nowadays.
About a third of those fires are criminal [0], yes that's a lot, but the majority are still accidental or natural.
Even the criminal ones are only enabled because of the dry vegetation, caused by the recent heat waves. IMO focusing on what caused the spark is missing the root cause: global warming.
And yes you can argue that such fires existed previously, but what's concerning is that the frequency on which they are happening is increasing rapidly
In the South of France, dry vegetation in summer is normal. Areas where this is most expected, the Mediterranean, have actually seen a decrease of fires over time as preventive measures and fire-fighting readiness have increased. [1] See graph for "Nombre de feux de foret in zone mediterraneene 1973-2024", graph for "surfaces parcourues", and text.
That's why I am suggesting to keep a cool head and to take a step back to analyse things rationally. In any case that is good advice to adapt to warming, too. If you go down the rabbit hole of media reporting you are going to have a nervous breakdown.
A rational approach to existential threats is indeed good advice, but to surrender in the face of complexity is not.
The human induced climate catastrophe is due to a systemic failure and consequentially needs to be addressed on a systemic level. The economic system and policies need to be adapted, even against the implied subjective interests of the biggest holders of capital and assets.
They like to paint that as "impossible", but of course it's not.
mytailorisrich 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks for illustrating my point...
Loquebantur 3 hours ago [-]
Well, actually, you're exemplifying mine.
Being trapped in an Overton window selected for you by those invested in upholding the status quo is what leads to your emotional stress.
The fundamental disconnect between the existential threat of climate catastrophe and the official un-reaction to it is what leaves you unable to cope with actually very much white-washed reporting on the topic.
Arodex 5 hours ago [-]
>warming trends do not help
Understatement of the year, here, after the third heatwave of the year with a fourth on the way and record after record being shattered.
>(hence need to invest in equipment)
Easy.
>fabricated drama and lack of perspective
The one with a lack of perspective is not the ones you think.
OJFord 4 hours ago [-]
And global warming reached a critical point of worseness specifically in Landes & Médoc?
Loquebantur 3 hours ago [-]
The human induced climate catastrophe has reached unprecedented levels because of humanity's continued failure to correctly integrate that reality into their decisions and the resulting inaction.
Landes & Médoc serve as an immediate example of the consequences of that catastrophe being left to unfold unabated.
Using diminutive terms to describe causalities that currently escalate beyond human control and ultimately lead to civilizational collapse with billions of deaths is a dysfunctional disconnect from reality.
OJFord 3 hours ago [-]
You misunderstand. Dibby053 provided interesting context for why specifically that region is so badly affected right now, on a background of global climate catastrophe. Rico98gg is derailing what could have been a more interesting thread with 'no, it's global warming', which is obvious and irrelevant.
3 hours ago [-]
markdown 10 hours ago [-]
The pine forests have been there for centuries, so it being pine is no explanation at all for why it's burning so badly now.
tirant 8 hours ago [-]
I come from the Mediterranean region and locally we know many explanations for that.
Many of those pine forests are relatively new. Pine trees burn frequently, around every 20-30 years. In the past they used to be mixed with many other original trees, but during the recent century reforestation, pines were planted as the single tree species, making fires more prone to happen and more easily to spread.
In the past, way more population lived next to the forests, where lumber used to be part of their income, so trees were frequently cut, forests maintained and shepherds would bring their sheep to feed from forest lower plants. All of that is gone.
In the past, locals used to be able to build firewalls, clean forests and fight fire with fire (provoking small controlled wildfires to stop the big ones). Green policies forbid those actions nowadays.
Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%.
jcattle 6 hours ago [-]
None of what you are writing is applicable to Landes. Outside of scandinavia Landes region is some of the most intensely managed forest in Europe.
From planting to cutting is only around 30-50 years. With multiple thinnings in between. Also none of that forest existed 200 years ago and there never was anything other than pine planted there for those 200 years, in the beginning for resin, now for pulp.
And so none of it burned in the middle ages or was affected by any higher temperatures because it didn't exist back then.
mctaylor 7 hours ago [-]
I love how four comments down there is someone posting:
"You’re both right.
However OPs post is more useful than yours.
By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change"
Thank you for proving that there are, in fact, still climate change deniers even here on hacker news.
I'm assuming you're a climate change denier. You don't say so outright, but "Green policies forbid those actions nowadays" is a bit of a dogwhistle that you oppose environmental protection regulations broadly (not merely overzealous ones that have side-effects that make combating certain types of wildfires harder in certain situations), and:
"Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%."
Well... that's pretty close to just coming out and saying you don't believe in climate science.
This truly is the least intelligent timeline.
bluebarbet 5 hours ago [-]
These factual corrections are warranted. But IMO the accusations of dog-whistling and wrongthink are unnecessary and counterproductive. Again: I agree with you on the substance! And this probably is a climate denier. But (1) that's not very interesting in itself, and (2) by adopting an accusatory tone we're just going to push them and their sympathizers into a posture of defensiveness and victimhood which will only worsen the polarization and make the whole problem even harder to solve than it already is. IMO, on this issue it's best just to stick doggedly to factual correction and avoid the temptation to police people's inner minds.
cassepipe 3 hours ago [-]
On the one hand I agree with you, on the other hand I think this is highly idealistic:
Most people would have a hard time debating a flat-earther since it's their hobby and they master all the talking points whereas you spent maximum one hour even thinking about it in the last 10 years. They will get you in a dark forest of details you don't know how to navigate and win the argument.
I am so sorry for the one in a million crackpot-sounding genius that will get hurt in the process but social shunning is just so so much more effective. No wonder the crackpots and grifters are back and running the show nowadays
I think a better approach is to ask people who have contrarian/non-consensual opinions to show that they know that they are crackpots out and to distance themselves from them:
"I know some people come up with conspiracy theories that says climate is a hoax designed to control populations because they don't want to change anything in their way of life but that's not what I am. I just care about the science and I think I found a real flaw in the leading explanation of climate change. I'd love for someone with knowledge about to discuss it with me to see if they took X into account" etc.
This above is what I expect but if you quack like a quack, you're probably a quack and you'll get the social shunning treatment
phikappa 3 hours ago [-]
"but "Green policies forbid those actions nowadays" is a bit of a dogwhistle that you oppose environmental protection regulations broadly (not merely overzealous ones that have side-effects that make combating certain types of wildfires harder in certain situations)"
thats a bit of a "dogwhistle" that you're not actually convinced that green policies can ever be deranged and counterproductive. On the contrary. I don't know if you're a a brainwashed virtue signaler, but I'm assuming it. You don't say so outright, but the mental gymnastics of calling someone a climate changer denier who just said climate change is widely recognised are staggering.
This truly is the least intelligent timeline. Please check with Dunning and Kruger if you're part of the problem.
haaz 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dzink 3 hours ago [-]
The dark ages and the plague saw a lot of belief in religion and rejection of science that lead to excessive deaths all over europe. Medicine was studied and practiced in the arab world and jewish doctors were the only ones allowed to bring some of those practices to Europe. Religion was preventing tested and verified approaches to treatment. Today Europe needs to stop repeating that practice. Believing in human caused climate change doesn’t stop you from learning proper tested mitigation strategies against wildfires, cooling of people in cities, nuclear energy or anything else that allows you to mitigate the effects of your climate religion. Because you can mitigate death in your area way before you can stop china or any other high emitter from emitting CO2 on the other side of the planet from you and contributing to global warming.
Loquebantur 3 hours ago [-]
There is no dichotomy between preparing for the inevitable and preventing the preventable.
Painting the actions of people on the other side of the planet as "out of anybody's control" is hubris though. Humanity very well is capable of organizing on that scale and has done so regularly for a long time already.
The actual problem is the disconnect between the interests of those in charge of such organization and the well-being of the public.
tsimionescu 7 hours ago [-]
> Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
This was the hottest year on record. 10 of the last 15 years have been the hottest year on record, consecutively. What makes you believe this fake information about the middle ages?
tmtvl 6 hours ago [-]
Someone heard about the Medieval Warm Period, looked at the Wikipedia page, saw the temperature data for the Greenland ice sheets and misinterpreted it to mean global temperature. It fits in well with the 'well, the Jurassic was warmer than today and there were no humans then, so you can't be sure that we're responsible for any climate change that may be happening' argument.
superfrank 9 hours ago [-]
It's not, but the original comment never claimed that it was.
There have been 4 or 5 pretty massive wildfires in France that I can remember in the last 5 years, but this is the first time they've had to deal with pyrocumulonimbus caused by a wildfire. Global warming was likely a contributing factor for all of those fires, but global warming alone doesn't explain why this one is different. The first comment about the pine isn't answering "why is this happening now?", it answers the question, "why is this fire so much worse?"
AlecSchueler 10 hours ago [-]
They've actually been there for less than two centuries, just to be pedantic.
sandworm101 7 hours ago [-]
Decades ago i was a big wall rock climber. We would often see old photos of mountains and cliffs and remark "where are the trees?" Areas we knew to be covered in forrest were bare only a century ago. This wasnt logging (climbing areas are too rugged to be logged bare.) There were just fewer trees. The general assumption was CO2. The combination of longer growing seasons and more plant food (co2) may mean there are simply more trees.
Earw0rm 6 hours ago [-]
The timing is curious to me. Atmospheric CO2 didn't really start picking up bigtime until 1970, and trees, even fast growing pines, take decades to grow.
applepearlime 9 hours ago [-]
But one pine forest in France has burned badly in the past as well.
By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change.
Kon5ole 2 hours ago [-]
>By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
>Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change.
Well said!
The problem isn't who believes in global warming, the problem is a forest fire. It doesn't care if there are 0% or 100% believers. Moving the needle on that percentage has no effect on the problems we will face due to global warming.
Here and now it's possible for a small community or country to take actions that will help the next time there's a forest fire. Or a flood, or a drought, or a heat dome, or a blizzard where blizzards shouldn't be.
Such efforts should clearly be priority 1. A doctor dealing with a gunshot wound doesn't start by urging politicians to reduce crime rates, they start by stopping the bleeding.
watwut 8 hours ago [-]
> By now, everyone knows about climate change.
Not true, I have seen people deny it on HN recently.
And looking at other debates, yes it is necessary to reiterate the primary cause. Because centrists will absolutely use the lack of that reiteration to do the "well actually it is the pine trees" in two days.
Orphis 5 hours ago [-]
It's not a single source problem anyway. There are many contributing factors, some are probably more important than others.
The most important thing is knowing what can be done in the short to medium term locally to improve the situation. If you tell the people living near those forests they need to fix global warming, you're not going anywhere. Can they monitor the forest beds better, do some preventive measures to limit the propagation of fires when they happen? Probably!
Unless you're on a major international forum or you have proper global reach and are a trendsetter, complaining about the obvious global warming isn't going to do much. And even if it's not obvious to some other people, you're not going to change their mind anyway on a HN discussion.
baxtr 8 hours ago [-]
For me, it is more important to fight for human lives than fighting centrists or deniers tbh. You have to pick your battles.
pepperoni_pizza 7 hours ago [-]
It is centrists and deniers who are stopping us in implementing effective measures that would fight for human lives.
baxtr 6 hours ago [-]
You will not convince them by saying things over and over again. It’s not like they haven’t heard the facts. It might have even have the opposite effect, increasing their unwillingness to believe it’s more than just a hoax.
Ask yourself: when was the last time vigorous repetition of a position has convinced you personally?
You will convince them by showing them how to do it properly. Show them the way and they might follow.
Loquebantur 3 hours ago [-]
You're very wrong.
The propaganda practice of incessant repetition being effective even in face of blatantly obvious contradicting facts is well established.
The reason climate catastrophe deniers incessantly repeat their nonsense isn't because they like to hear themselves talk, it's because it works.
The majority of people are never convinced by rational arguments or facts, they act solely on subjectively perceived personal outcomes. Facing social opposition and loss of face very well can sway them.
baxtr 2 hours ago [-]
If I repeat here a thousand times that you’re wrong and we should focus on the effects of climate change and not the deniers will you believe me then?
hdgvhicv 3 hours ago [-]
Some people will deny water is wet. Reiterating
“Centrists” (whatever that means) aren’t denying climate change.
Even if 99% of America accepts climate change that’s still 350,000 that don’t, and there’s a good chance many deniers are just doing it for the lolz.
The world was unwilling to enact the changes that were required. The mitigations of the damage to both the human and natural world are required now, and there’s lots of discussion about that. Not least what happens when a nuclear power of 1.5 billion people reaches a wet bulb temperature high enough to start killing tens of millions.
Arodex 4 hours ago [-]
"Aktchually, forests burn because wood is flammable" is not the "useful" fact you think it is.
Yes, pine is flammable. So what? Should we replace it with wood that doesn't burn? And grows on already very dry soil? Because what the "informative" OP hasn't told you is that pine growsso much there because other woods don't do as well.
throw0101d 3 hours ago [-]
> Yes, pine is flammable. So what? Should we replace it with wood that doesn't burn?
Different trees react differently to fire. The forest fires of (e.g.) the American west are different than the forest fires in Canada:
> The forest-mismanagement argument was, in fairness, based on real evidence from some regions. In the frequent-fire dry forests of the western US that are dominated by ponderosa pine and mixed conifers the natural fire regime is low-to-moderate intensity surface fire returning every 5 to 30 years, historically stoked in part by Indigenous burning. A century of fire exclusion in those forests really did remove that frequent fire, let stands grow denser and more continuous, and build up a “fire deficit” that raises the odds of severe fire (Hagmann et al. 2021). And in that setting, fuel treatments work: Prichard et al. (2021) find wide agreement that mechanical thinning combined with prescribed burning measurably reduces subsequent fire severity. If you’re arguing about the Sierra Nevada, the management story is as important if not more important than the climate one.
> The problem is that the Canadian boreal is not the Sierra Nevada. It burns in infrequent, high-intensity, stand-replacing crown fires that kill the whole stand on natural fire cycles measured in many decades to centuries (commonly a century or more, and two centuries or longer in the east), not 5 to 30 years. It is, ecologically speaking, supposed to burn this way; black spruce is practically built for it. Fire in this system was never the gentle recurring ground-clearing that suppression interrupted in California. And the burning is astonishingly concentrated: across the boreal, something like 3% of fires account for about 97% of the area burned. This is not a landscape full of many small fires that “used to clean out the fuel.” Rather, its a landscape that waits, and then burns catastrophically under extreme weather.
> And grows on already very dry soil? Because what the "informative" OP hasn't told you is that pine growsso much there because other woods don't do as well.
Except the entire forest is 'artificial' in that Napoleon III ordered the draining of the peatlands to create said forest in the first place. Perhaps actually having it as a forest should be reconsidered.
The forest was created for industrial purposes and so pine was probably chosen as it grew faster and that's what builders wanted, but is that what want we now? Perhaps the fact that pine grows best there shouldn't be considered at such a high priority, and that reducing the mono-culture, even if it is not "optimal" for growth, be bumped up in priority.
tirant 7 hours ago [-]
Blaming everything on global warming is extremely dangerous. It fails to address many other reasons why we are experiencing fires and creates an easy to blame enemy and a sensation that there's nothing we can do.
We should really go way deeper than just blaming everything on an increase of temperatures, which nevertheless is actually happening.
We, locals, have been warning already for decades of the increase of fires due to an accumulation of reasons, which I have actually described already in another message down below but I can summarize here.
* Forest mass has actually increased a lot during the last decades, Spain has now around 50% more forest mass than in the 1970s.
* Part of the increased mass has to do with reforestation efforts done by governments happening since last half of last century, which basically planted many forests using pine varieties which grow very quickly but also burn quickly (Pines are biologically design to burn with their flammable design and dried needles, that's their feature).
* Historical local forest were composed of many varieties of trees, including oaks, holm oaks, poplar, which grow slowly, are way less prone to burn, and regrow again after a fire. Those varieties were never used in any reforestation efforts, which has resulted in many new forests being extremely prone to burn quickly
* Population has shifted enormously towards big cities, abandoning little villages where forests were part of their style of life. Lumber was part of their economical income, which resulted in continuous care of those forests and efforts in preservation. There are still some communities like that in some areas of Spain, and their forests have the lowest rate of wildfires in the whole country.
* Many techniques like firebreaks, counter-fires, low intensity burning to clear crop stubble, dry brush, and old vegetation to regenerate fresh grass for livestock and prepare fields are now forbidden, again increasing the risk and extension of wildfires
* Forest Grazing is also nowadays completely forbidden. Sheep used to roam everywhere in the country, consuming many burning-prone vegetation, reducing also the risk of wildfires.
But even despite all of that, countries like Spain for example, have nowadays the lowest proportion of burnt forest since the last 50 years.
palata 6 hours ago [-]
> Blaming everything on global warming is extremely dangerous
I don't think it's blaming on global warming. Global warming is just making those problems a lot worse.
It is just the beginning, on average it will get worse every year. Every kilogram of CO2 we emit makes it worse, so it won't stop worsening until we reach zero emissions.
> a sensation that there's nothing we can do.
On the contrary, I think there too much we must do because of global warming. There is so much that we certainly won't be able to do it all, meaning that the situation will get "more complicated" anyway. The more we do, the more we preserve.
To make a comparison that stays in the theme: saying "we won't stop it so there is nothing we can do" is like saying "this burning tree is dead anyway, so there is no need to save the rest of the forest". The tree is dead, it won't come back. And we know for sure that many other trees will die. But we should fight to preserve as much as we can from the forest. The less we do, the more we lose. But we will lose a lot anyway, maybe just not everything (depending on how well we fight).
netol 6 hours ago [-]
Hola!
While I think this is mostly correct, I don't think it's OK to downplay climate change as just a "blame target". These current and extreme wildfires result from hotter and drier conditions, too. That is a major reason. And yes, we can do something about it.
Also, I know that controlled burns, grazing and firebreaks are widely used today in Spain, they are not universally forbidden.
Earw0rm 6 hours ago [-]
Sheep and slow growing trees of course don't get along well, you have to choose one or the other at least while the trees establish, which for oaks is measured in decades.
In Wales and Ireland we have the opposite problem, the sheep strip everything bare, the old trees die and the forests cannot regenerate.
rolandog 5 hours ago [-]
To add to your point, it's also worthwhile to mention that there are stakeholders against solving the climate crisis of global warming (besides the usual suspects like producers of non-renewables like oil companies): some countries benefit from the climate change like the US and Mexico (they get higher agricultural yields IIRC) [0].
> Le sujet, c’est l’aridification du milieu. Pour revenir à cet incendie, ce n’est pas un problème de culture, mais de climat.
A bit of a distinction without a difference. The climate is not changing back, it's the new normal. In that climate, this particular kind of agriculture (huge pine monocultures) has become a problem.
It breaks my heart to say this, I've spent nearly all my childhood summers in my family's summer house down there. This year, I left just a few days before the evacuation order would have come.
It's going to be burning every year now and if we want to be safe there, the forest can't stay the same.
palata 6 hours ago [-]
> The climate is not changing back, it's the new normal.
Climate won't get any "new normal" until we reach strictly zero emission.
As long as we emit CO2, climate will get worse. There is no new normal: every year it will get worse.
It doesn't invalidate your point though, that it cannot stay the same and we have to do something. I'm just nitpicking on the "new normal". There won't be a new normal until we stop emitting CO2, it will just get worse and worse.
let_rec 5 hours ago [-]
Agree about global warming.
However, Fontainebleau forest has many pine trees.
Notice how the last was worse by one or two orders of magnitude.
You can handwave all you want the this and the southwest forests are particularly flammable, but what you are pointing out are only "canaries in the coal mines": they are the first to burn, but other forests will follow suit if global warming continues.
Kon5ole 5 hours ago [-]
>The main reason the forest is burning is global warming.
I get where you're coming from but I don't think this is helpful.
Everyone with any sense knows global warming will cause heatwaves and they increase the risk of fires, but nobody in France can do anything about it. Even if everyone in France would do everything they can to stop global warming starting tomorrow, it would change nothing. It wouldn't help even if they got all of the EU on board.
What the people of France can do is demand more resources for fire protection, build air conditioned locations for the poor and elderly, plant trees for shade and so on.
This can be done immediately and will actually help. It also engages everyone, even a climate denier can get onboard with fighting fires and having shelter for heat.
If we stop at "it's the global warming", the response is either apathy or policies. We should prioritize things that will help right now.
yostrovs 4 hours ago [-]
Moreover, because the warming is global and the whole world needs to be part of the solution, we need all the governments of the world to agree to some universal plan of action. This is governments that have trouble agreeing on most things within their respective borders, let alone globally.
remus 5 hours ago [-]
> A part of the Fontainebleau forest, much more north, no pine trees, went in smoke earlier. Forests are burning near Madrid.
Small correction, but Fontainebleau is a fairly mixed forest including 20-30% pine.
dolmen 2 hours ago [-]
Small correction, but the area of the Fontainebleau forest where the main fire occurred doesn't have this balance : les Trois Pignons, as name says, has a much higher density of pine trees.
ifwinterco 8 hours ago [-]
There’s also a significant amount of pretty sudden local warning in the North Atlantic region because of the sudden removal of sulphur emissions from ships a few years ago (thanks, IMO…).
And on top of that it’s El Niño.
Edit: Before anyone misconstrues what I'm saying: no, I'm not denying global warming. I'm just saying this is why this summer in particular was always likely to be a hot one in Europe.
And going forwards the sulphur thing has most likely caused a step change from temperatures in Europe before Covid, despite underlying warming continuing at the same rate
Earw0rm 6 hours ago [-]
The current El Niño hasn't really had time to affect NW Europe yet, there's quite some lag there AIUI.
holoduke 6 hours ago [-]
We have these fires in france since I was born in early 80s. As far as I remember we had them almost every year. Nothing new about it.
Doesn't say that global warming doesn't exist. But to shut of any discussion because of global warming is just wrong
svara 42 minutes ago [-]
Absolutely not. I've spent nearly every summer in the last 30 years in that region and it never was like this; it also wasn't that warm.
Occasional fires, sure. But very clearly nothing approaching the current scale and frequency.
The last really big one in that region was in 2022; and there are currently not one but 2 parallel fires in the same forest.
palata 6 hours ago [-]
Not shutting the discussion of course, but it's important to realise that in the early 80s, that was exceptional.
Now it will happen more and more every year, there is no stopping that trend.
mytailorisrich 5 hours ago [-]
Depending on the area that has always been the case, indeed.
In fact, in the most historically prone areas, the Mediterranean part of France, number of fires and surface area burnt have tended to decrease over time since the 1970s [1], which shows that being prepared works and this experience must now be used in more areas of the country.
I am also French, I am also born in the early 80s and I can't understand how someone like you could have such an asinine take. This isn't of the same magnitude. Get out of "vibes" and burying your head in the sand and look at the total surface burnt, look at water levels in nappes phréatiques, look at temperature records and total days of canicule...
MemoryHoleHQ 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 10 hours ago [-]
Regardless of your view on global warming, what's also vitally important is we don't do proper forest management anymore.
We used to thin the trees and clear the underbrush, which drastically reduces flammability and the ability for forest fires to rapidly spread.
But that's not seen as "environmentally friendly" these days.
palata 5 hours ago [-]
The best way to prevent forest fires is to cut all the trees. No forest means no forest fire, right?
The problem (as always) is that it is complicated.
We are living in a mass extinction right now (orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs), mostly because of habitat loss. It has nothing to do with the climate (of course the climate is making it worse, but we screwed the biodiversity before that).
Is thinning the trees and clearing the underbrush good for the biodiversity? Probably not. Is it good to reduce flammability? Probably yes.
But I don't think it is fair to say that those who care about biodiversity are obviously wrong because preserving the biodiversity make forest more flammable. If you think like this, the solution is to go live in a bunker. Many people find that attractive (just look at how many dream about living in a bunker on mars), but I don't.
bryanrasmussen 9 hours ago [-]
Well, Denmark is I believe a country very big on being seen as "environmentally friendly" and they thin trees, generally to restore habitats and increase diversity of species. What gives?
Ma8ee 10 hours ago [-]
Don't put this on the environmentalists when the simple explanation isn't short term cost effective to do this. If you need to put some big blanket blame, then blame capitalism. If nothing else because it has so far stopped all effective measure to stop the climate crisis.
Marsymars 9 hours ago [-]
And in other areas, e.g. Canada, "cost prohibitive" is underselling the magnitude of the logistical task of doing anything to the overwhelming majority of boreal forests. There's just so much forest, and no way to access most of it, that it's effectively impossible to do any forest management or anything about most fires. (Most fires don't come near population centres, so nothing need be done about them.)
swiftcoder 8 hours ago [-]
I wonder what happened to the sparse and/or nomadic populations that used to inhabit and manage such areas of forest across North America...
andsoitis 9 hours ago [-]
> blame capitalism. If nothing else because it has so far stopped all effective measure to stop the climate crisis.
Growth-driven ecological harm isn’t unique to capitalism.
Ma8ee 8 hours ago [-]
And? Capitalism is the current system, and the one that is actively thwarting efforts to mitigate the disaster. I don't see how the existence of other systems that would be equally bad or worse is relevant.
andsoitis 1 hours ago [-]
> I don't see how the existence of other systems that would be equally bad or worse is relevant.
Consumerism, the growth imperative, absence of proper carbon pricing, etc. ultimately cause ecological harm and are not exclusive to capitalism. Centrally planned economies have done the same. So you will have to address these, even if you have a different economic system.
Keep also in mind that capitalism has driven the technologies now central to decarbonization, like solar, batteries, etc., largely through market competition and innovation incentives.
apelapan 7 hours ago [-]
Wealth is a sharper answer than capitalism, even though it is an overlapping one.
To manage forrests and and other agriculture in the traditional way, we need extreme amounts of extreme poverty. We need millions and millions of people who are happy to spend 14 hours per day collecting sticks and tending sheep in the woods, in exchange for nothing more than a bowl of porridge. And they need to this every day all their lives.
We don't have that kind of poverty since capitalism took over from feudalism.
There are other ways than capitalism to build wealth in a society, but to the degree that they work and actually reduce poverty, they will have the same outcome.
jimnotgym 6 hours ago [-]
I would happily live in the forest and keep a subsistence holding whilst managing the forest. Just give me minimum wage, a small startup grant, a couple of hundred acres of forest and freedom from property taxes.... I'll bundle all the sticks up for kindling. I'll create firebreaks, increase diversity. Genuine offer
apelapan 6 hours ago [-]
Minimum wage is at least 10x too much. You would have no ownership and no startup grant.
There would also be no property taxes, but on the other hand there would also be no tax funded services like healthcare or education.
Ma8ee 7 hours ago [-]
I’m referring to the climate disaster in my last comment. It’s global warming that is the main culprit. There has never been a class of people tending Canada’s forests by collecting sticks.
rightbyte 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think multispecies plantations with thinning (until the trees are big enough) requires serfs eating only porridge.
Like, there are motor saws nowadays.
artisinal 15 hours ago [-]
Might be time to revert it back to wetland.
ColdStream 14 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a good plan to me.
Probably a dozen reasons why we cannot that I am unaware of, but from my arm chair it looks good.
coldbrewed 13 hours ago [-]
The water was likely redirected for agricultural purposes and the farmers won't/can't surrender it on top of drought, if it's anything like the US. Would be real cool if we could make investments like this though.
jcattle 9 hours ago [-]
In this case no, all the water is drained. I don't think meaningful amounts are retained for agriculture.
svara 7 hours ago [-]
The pine forest is the agriculture.
phoronixrly 4 hours ago [-]
Well... Turns out that it went up in flames...
verisimi 8 hours ago [-]
This is another point that is overlooked. If you transform a landscape, moving the water through quickly or whatever, preventing the natural action (eg deeply drenching the ground) perhaps you create a high risk of a fire where the ground gets very hot, where that wasn't a possibility before.
xbmcuser 11 hours ago [-]
Looking at what this group is slowly doing all over the world I don't think it is impossible tough but possible. https://www.youtube.com/@MossyEarth
zekrioca 12 hours ago [-]
Let it burn then?
ornornor 12 hours ago [-]
People live there. So do animals and insects. Never mind the air pollution.
Den_VR 11 hours ago [-]
And later, different animals and insects will live there.
palata 5 hours ago [-]
Depends on the time scale, I guess? We are living in a mass extinction that is orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs. So the norm, right now, is that later there will be fewer animals and insects.
In Europe, we've lost 80% of insects in the last 20 years, something like that? That was completely unrelated to climate change. I guess climate change is just coming to help with the remaining 20%.
ornornor 10 hours ago [-]
Oh ok this is fine then.
InsideOutSanta 8 hours ago [-]
Don't worry about the end of the world, I heard the cockroaches will survive the apocalypse.
Brian_K_White 8 hours ago [-]
Might well be. You understand that forest fires are actually natural, and this forest actually isn't, and so the suggestion is at least not automatically invalid.
breppp 9 hours ago [-]
We could reintroduce malaria, that might be a nice return to nature
manyatoms 12 hours ago [-]
or even just re-planting different types of trees
timpera 7 hours ago [-]
From Le Monde:
> Some efforts have begun to diversify the Landes forest and to maintain or promote deciduous trees, particularly along the edges of plots. The major difficulty, according to foresters, is that very few species are able to grow in this region, where the sandy soil is very poor and very acidic (it is one of the poorest soils in Europe). Foresters describe the maritime pine as a "miracle species" in this regard.
> While other species can still grow, it is much more slowly and with greater difficulty. Radically transforming this vast forest, currently 80% dominated by maritime pines, therefore seems complicated, and there is also a significant economic stake involved in timber production in the region.
lbriner 3 hours ago [-]
I thought pine trees were particularly acidic or their pine needles are, which is why the floor of pine forests is not very diverse, just large blankets of dead needles.
The second part is right though, these are important but very long term efforts worldwide which is why we need to start doing something now. A few percent difference could still be the difference between a fire and not a fire or between new wildlife moving there or not.
tremon 7 hours ago [-]
Is the solution repeated burning of pine to enrich the soil, making it easier for other tree species to gain a foothold in the area?
Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago [-]
Possibly, but the other option is to let it return to barren wasteland. If left alone it'll find itself a new balance, eventually.
aaron695 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
pvaldes 2 hours ago [-]
Et Lancelot dans Brocéliande
Dans le roman de la Rose
Les pierres alignées de la lande
On sent quelque chose derrière les choses
Pines are the survivalists of the forests. They can grow where nobody else can. What I mean is that this monoculture of Pine trees is not really a monoculture. Is an ecosystem.
The Landes are set over a lot of marine sand, so is not easy to create a firewall (mixing flammable and less flammable trees). The solution of just replacing pines by other species is not so easy technically. Pines are the only native tree that can trive in such poor soil.
The situation in Bordeaux right now feels close to apocalyptic. I left yesterday. Two hundred thousand people are evacuated, hundreds of homes destroyed, and the fire about 10 miles from the edge of the city.
nianderwallace 14 hours ago [-]
These train workers in northern Ontario had an intense view of a wildfire up close. I would have freaked out. They're acting like there's a cute animal on tracks.
I also left yesterday. I thought the mood was still surprisingly calm, considering that there was already enough smoke in the city to make it look like a foggy winter day and smell heavily of campfire.
Now I am wondering if my return flight from Bordeaux in a few days will actually happen. Currently the airport is still operating, although the surrounding area has been evacuated. It really looks apocalyptic there, though:
Had to evacuate a few years ago: south-west of France. We could see 20 meters high burning flames on the closest hill. But weirdly enough it wasn't the most terrifying: the most terrifying was driving back (to the same place) at night time, in the summer, and feeling like it was snowing... for ashes from a huge fire about 20 kilometers away (?) were raining down the sky and covering everything. I could hardly see the road and didn't understand at first what was happening.
orwin 17 hours ago [-]
It impacted the north of Bordeaux too. from Thursday to saturday, a lot of small fields/forest in Charente/Charente maritime started to catch fire because of the embers. The smoke was also so dense it completly modified the local climate and fucked up the wind prevision (i know because i was suppose to wingfoil all afternoon saturday and we had no wind until like 18-19), also dropping the temperature 2-3C (150km away).
Good luck, and stay safe.
a-french-anon 8 hours ago [-]
I'm 500 km away in Hérault and this morning was a tad hazy with smoke from there! Impressive I'd say.
toomuchtodo 21 hours ago [-]
What resources would you recommend to follow this event as it continues?
verzali 20 hours ago [-]
NASA FIRMS is good for tracking where the fire is. As well as the site another user recommended, I was following this one: https://feuxgironde.fr/
Just an aside: I'm a researcher trying to classify forest disturbance types from satellite imagery.
The Landes Forest which is currently burning is really interesting in that you have all 4 of the major European disturbance types there: Human clear cuts, storm damage, large scale insect infestation and fire.
Most other forested areas in Europe only have two or three of these. For example most of the Mediterranean does not have meaningful amount of storm damage.
Just shows how badly suited the Landes Forest with its current forest management is in todays climate.
throwaway2037 8 hours ago [-]
How can you identify large scale insect infestation from satellite imagery?
jcattle 7 hours ago [-]
With freely available satellite imagery you're looking at a 10x10m resolution per pixel.
So basically entire tree stands have to die or crowns have to lose their leafs for it to be detectable form space.
Main insect of concern are bark beetles (ips typographus for spruce, ips sexendtatus for pines) which disrupt the cambium causing a gradual vitality decline until you have dead standing trees. In satellite imagery this is visible as irregular brownish-red patches.
On the other hand there's gypsy moths (also known as spongy moth, Lymantria dispar) which affect the leafs directly, causing large scale temporary defoliation in broadleafed trees usually in the middle of summer.
There's hundreds more insects but few have the capability to cause large scale die-off in trees which are grown in monoculture (pine/spruce/beech).
applepearlime 8 hours ago [-]
Do you happen to know if firebreaks or fuelbreaks are used in some of these forests? Are they seen as effective? Are they costly to set up?
From what I saw online, there are indications that firebreaks do not always work, for instance when embers fly over long distances, carried by the wind, over firebreaks, and start fires on the other side. But I would guess that firebreaks like cleared areas, for instance between settlements and forests, should be able to mitigate at least some of the fires.
mahkeiro 7 hours ago [-]
They are firebreaks everywhere in this forest, you can see them from satellite images, but the fire can jump, and it's mainly used as a defense line by firefighters.
I was in this forest 2 weeks ago and the ground which is layered with pine needles was so dry that it was just a question of time.
jimnotgym 6 hours ago [-]
Do you not just make them much wider?
sandos 5 hours ago [-]
Embers can jump kilometers when its windy. At some point it gets kind of silly, no?
Here in Sweden we had a large fire that jumped a lake.
baxtr 9 hours ago [-]
Interesting. Have you tried back testing your model agains fire data to analyze how well you could predict fire likelihood?
jcattle 8 hours ago [-]
No, at the moment classifying disturbances is only done retrospective. Predicting fire likelihood is its own large area of research.
An open case is more in terms of temperate forests which are increasingly starting to burn, for example in Austria or other central European countries. These tend to be understory fires, which (for now) only rarely catch the crown.
For these fires the tree crown stays green and you can't see any change until later in the year or the next year, where the trees die due to damage the fire did to their cambium and roots. Correctly attributing this later decline to fire damage is a bit challenging.
madaxe_again 8 hours ago [-]
The Landes Forest is a human disturbance.
The whole damned thing was planted in the 1850s as an enormous pine plantation.
Same thing as drives wildfires in Portugal - maritime pine (and in Portugal’s case eucalyptus). Vast, dense, barely managed pyrophytic monocultures. The problem isn’t poorly managed forest, it’s the forest, period - it shouldn’t be there.
Yes, the same problem exists in the north of Spain. They long ago cut down native forests to plant vines and farm cattle, but once that ceased to be profitable they replanted it all in monoculture pine and eucalyptus.
Where native forest (oak, chestnut, hazel, etc) remains, we don't have major fires. They are finally experimenting with planting firebreaks of native species in some areas, which has been quite effective at halting the spread of fires. But realistically, we need a huge government investment to get rid of this monoculture entirely.
kergonath 30 minutes ago [-]
> Where native forest (oak, chestnut, hazel, etc) remains, we don't have major fires.
Not really. It helps, but it is not a perfect solution. It did not prevent the massive wildfire near Fontainebleau, for example.
swiftcoder 13 minutes ago [-]
> It did not prevent the massive wildfire near Fontainebleau, for example.
That's a pretty great example in the opposite direction, as Fontainebleau today only contains isolated pockets of protected old-growth, and the rest has been systematically converted over the last ~150 years to highly flammable pine trees...
jcattle 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, I'm well aware that Landes naturally should be an extensive sandy marsh.
With how natural forest disturbances are more and more starting to affect the plantation, it proves to be seen what the response will be.
The thing is that it is an incredibly productive forest (only in terms of biomass). So now there's a bunch of capital riding on it which will have a vested interest to keep it productive.
yubblegum 5 hours ago [-]
As an aside, N. III's reign seems to have been overall something of a disaster for the French.
othello 5 hours ago [-]
To be fair, that's more the Third Republic's verdict than what recent historians have concluded. For sure, Sedan was a catastrophe and the Mexican adventure was worse, but the two decades in between gave France the railway build-out, Haussmann's Paris, the creation of modern investment banks, and even universal male suffrage, which the Republic then kept ([1], [2] & [3]).
In this particular instance, everybody in this thread seems to be forgetting the region where the fires are currently raging used to be very unsanitary swamps before the pine forests were planted. These older wetlands were a major source of disease and misery for the local population. The reason why they only planted pines were because the soil there is poor & acidic. Nothing else grows really. Now of course, this needs to be rethought in the light of climate change, but it wasn't a stupid idea at the time.
Thanks. Always good to have a more complete and balanced picture.
I did in fact recently read about the infrastructure works in France (and elsewhere) during that era. (Great read so far: Liaquat Ahamed's 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World)
kergonath 27 minutes ago [-]
It’s more nuanced. He massively helped with industrialisation, for example. He was doing ok in his liberal years. But he had different phases and some were better than others.
falloon 13 hours ago [-]
Pedantic cloud enjoyer here, the article should name this a pyrocumulus not pyrocumulonimbus - the nimbus part means 'rain-bearing' in meteorology, fire clouds don't rain.
dualvariable 11 hours ago [-]
Cumulonimbus has been separated from its etymological roots. It now refers to the physics that can produce deep convection, high clouds, and the formation of an anvil shape (along with lightning, etc). The convection that produces a cumulonimbus rain cloud is present in a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. The word isn't wrong.
energy123 9 hours ago [-]
People need to learn what compound words are.
divbzero 11 hours ago [-]
Pyrocumulonimbus [1] appears to be the most extreme version of pyrocumulus [2] which, coincidentally, was observed halfway around the world in Washington State this week [3].
Incorrect. These fires basically create their own weather systems. All that smoke also contains a lot of water in the material that is burning. (That makes sense. They are trees, after all.) When the smoke reaches high enough in the atmosphere the smoke cools and water can precipitate out (rain) and also lightning potentially producing more fires.
During the press conference describing this the speaker claims they’re working with meteorologists from France Météo supporting the term at 6:30 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xas3lw2
Technical details in the video link start around 3:34 for those interested
Excuse the French for the non Francophones but trying to be detailed and exacting here on why this isn’t bad journalism to use that term
imoverclocked 13 hours ago [-]
It rains ash. While it’s a metaphorical use of “rain” it’s physically accurate.
nunez 9 hours ago [-]
Apparently this cloud can create lightning and its own wind though
blitzar 6 hours ago [-]
it rains hellfire
ynac 21 hours ago [-]
Just had the same here in Washington state for the Little Giant fire. Great image in the article. We had another fire cloud behind Rainier the other day, and saw it from the Rount Mainier farm - it really looked like the volcano was smoking up and ready to top-off. <clench>
I will be surprised if the climate crisis doesn’t eventually escalate to the point where basically everyone agrees that geoengineering of some kind is worth the risk.
kergonath 20 minutes ago [-]
We are already doing some geo-engineering. That’s what putting megatonnes of greenhouse gases up the atmosphere is. We’re just too stupid and shorts-sighted to do it in any useful way.
That said, piling more geo-engineering on top of the problem will not solve it. It will just create more issues with unforeseen consequences and instability. What we really need to do is to reduce emissions. It’s much simpler and cheaper than any form of geo-engineering you could think of to mitigate the consequences.
rectang 13 hours ago [-]
Geoengineering proposals spring from the same impulse as climate denial — anything to avoid consequences for those contributing to the crisis.
ColdStream 13 hours ago [-]
I think the only reason it doesn't come to this is the risk of liability over possible blow backs.
Say they start sulfur injection or whatever, and a year later there are crop failures in India. While it could have happened anyway, there is now a plausible chance that it can be pinned on who ever did the geoengineering. The amount of scapegoating on any climate issue would be wild.
Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago [-]
I think the more short term achievable one is better forest management; another thread mentions this is a big monoculture of pine trees planted nearly 200 years ago. Diversify the forests, create fire breaks, have a rapid fire response plan ready, improve water management, etc.
I'm worried that geoengineering will upset the balance of things even more, a temporary and short-term solution for incidents.
touristtam 3 hours ago [-]
The mono culture AND the encroachment on flood plain is still to this day and issue.
_ph_ 6 hours ago [-]
Eventually it might. We don't have any good ideas about what would help without things getting much worse.
What we do need now is finally the determination to fight climate change. We have all the tools at our disposal to eliminate any fossil fuel burning within some years. We should finally take this as the priority it should be.
jeroenhd 4 hours ago [-]
We can't even agree on wasting less fuel or moving to less damaging fuel sources.
One of the many problems with limiting the amount of sunlight reaching Earth is that it reduces plant growth worldwide. This would not only decrease agricultural output, with the obvious consequences for food production, but also reduce the amount of carbon absorbed and stored by growing vegetation. Which of course wouldn't help.
Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago [-]
And reduce evaporation, which reduces moisture in the air, which reduces rainfall, etc. I don't know what I'm talking about and already think messing with the weather in any way is a Bad Idea.
kergonath 18 minutes ago [-]
Yay, acid rains.
cineticdaffodil 19 hours ago [-]
So, if you used climate credits, to build up those forrests. Do they get nil and void, if those forrests burn up?
pibaker 18 hours ago [-]
Bold to assume that buying emission offsets actually leads to anything tangible being done.
ColdStream 13 hours ago [-]
A lot of the more realistic environmentalists very quickly figured out that it was nothing more than an accounting trick.
Nope, read a couple stories about climate credits over the years, and this is a problem. The credits are permanent, even if the new grown forest burns down.
Dylan16807 16 hours ago [-]
If they grow the forest back it's fine for the credits to be permanent. But definitely don't treat it as a reset. Require the regrowth and don't give out new credits for it.
hahahaa 13 hours ago [-]
Needs a coefficient of burn, so instead of 1kg maybe you count it as 200g to allow for burning and and then next replant which allocates to someone else.
15 hours ago [-]
c7b 15 hours ago [-]
How would non-permanent credits even work? You purchase the carbon-offset option on a flight, a tree gets planted somewhere, ten years later it burns in a wildfire. Then what?
hahahaa 13 hours ago [-]
I suggest an adjusted value taking burn into account. E.g. you use 20% or whatever of the value. Theory: it ain't 0 if you plant a tree and it is not the whole tree. There has to be a % that represents on average the effectiveness of the plant over 200 years say.
This also addresses the tree death issue.
c7b 12 hours ago [-]
So 20% of the trees get planted later or maybe never? How is that better?
hahahaa 5 hours ago [-]
If you want a credit you need to plant 5x the trees under this system.
KeplerBoy 9 hours ago [-]
Then the area should have to be replanted without granting new credits. It's perfectly natural that trees die and are replaced by new ones in a forest. The unusual thing is just the entire forest dying at the same time.
ButlerianJihad 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, it would be very unusual for an "entire forest" to die off, because forest fires are a natural phenomenon, and many plants and animals can survive fires, sometimes becoming more resilient afterwards.
Pyrophilic species can even benefit from forest fires with reproduction being triggered by them.
It would also be quite unusual for accountant teams to follow individual trees around throughout their lifecycle, ticking little boxes when they die or something, in order to follow through on carbon credits. Think about this realistically.
KeplerBoy 4 hours ago [-]
Sure, the point is that carbon credits are issued for a certain area of land to be and stay forested.
artisinal 15 hours ago [-]
You claim a new tree on your insurance.
ornornor 12 hours ago [-]
Yet another problem of carbon credits. Just an accounting trick which ignores reality. Reality is catching up either way, even if it’s not convenient in excel.
MrVandemar 14 hours ago [-]
Here's the thing you missed: "A tree gets planted".
There's no guarantee that a tree planted to "offset" a flight will grow to any kind of maturity, let alone survive three months. Some saplings just die.
Or maybe that tree got planted in a tree plantation for timber, or wood pulp, and 20 years later, it's framing timber or newsprint.
(I am someone who does revegetation projects and have planted a large number of trees)
c7b 12 hours ago [-]
If the program works as advertised (big if), the money should flow into projects like yours, with the success rate that those projects generally have. So far ok I'd say. Just pointing out that trying to adjust for fires would tie up capital and create a whole new layer of middlemen. Whatever you think of those programs in the first place, that doesn't sound like an improvement to me.
vasco 9 hours ago [-]
It's actually much better, now you can replant the same area and re-sell the credits. Almost as good as those farmers that say they were planning to cut thousands of trees this year and if you pay them they will not do it. And same next year.
sunshine-o 18 hours ago [-]
They should go negative because the gigantic amount of CO2 being released right now because of the obvious incompetence of the authorites is criminal.
touwer 19 hours ago [-]
Don't look up
j1elo 16 hours ago [-]
Spain is also completely on fire - there's a website that collects all official information and locates every fire on a map:
It is disheartening to see how everything is basically in red.
zipy124 3 hours ago [-]
Is it me or is the map broken as it's blocked by OSM. I get tiles that say: Access blocked ..... osm.wiki/Blocked ?
kortilla 12 hours ago [-]
Statements like these embolden climate change deniers because they look so panicked beyond reason. Spain isn’t “completely on fire” and Spain frequently has fires like California.
You need to quantify in sq km or some other objective unit what makes this so unique.
cineticdaffodil 11 hours ago [-]
Spain planted eucalyptus in state forrest. Tha treeis a bomb.
rixed 9 hours ago [-]
You are answering "tree is bomb" to someone explaining why over panicking does a disservice to your cause.
Regarding eucalyptus burning: a lot of them burned suddenly after a policy change allowing land to be repurposed after wildfires, I've just been told by locals.
watwut 8 hours ago [-]
Meh, everything emboldens them. Pretending there is no change also emboldens them.
tjwebbnorfolk 16 hours ago [-]
spain loses ~240,000 acres to wildfire every year. this is larger than normal, but fire is normal there
darkwater 9 hours ago [-]
This sounds like a climate change denier statement: Spain has always been hot, lately is a bit hotter than usual but it's normal to have hot weather there.
tjwebbnorfolk 37 minutes ago [-]
what am I denying? some people were under the impression that wildfire is a totally novel thing in Spain. I'm only pointing out that fairly large wildfires happens every year, but that this one is larger than normal.
I guess I need a disclaimer on every comment that says "climate change is obviously real you can save your downvotes" jfc
kuu 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, Spain has fires every year, but this time is different:
240,000 acres is about 97,000 hectares. By July 26, Spain had already lost more than 150,000 hectares, or around 371,000 acres, six times the area burned by the same point last year...
tjwebbnorfolk 38 minutes ago [-]
Yes that's what I meant by "this one is larger than normal"
10 hours ago [-]
rixed 9 hours ago [-]
If you unzoom even more, even the sea is red.
I don't think this map shows what you think it does.
embedding-shape 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think parent thinks the radius of the circles is the range of the fire, that'd indeed mean our sea is currently on fire too, which hasn't happened in a very long time.
donohoe 15 hours ago [-]
67 comments. One mention of “climate crisis” (appropriate), 3 of “climate credits”.
No one here is really discussing “climate change”.
Is it denial, or just that we’ve accepted the obvious?
strken 15 hours ago [-]
What is there to discuss? Outlier weather events are growing more common and the hot summer obviously played a role here.
Even climate change denial has moved from denying the fact to denying that we can fix anything, for either economic or technical reasons.
derrida 14 hours ago [-]
> What is there to discuss?
The governance crisis: how can we follow science on so many things, how can countries completely change on short order, but not for this...
ornornor 12 hours ago [-]
The French president notoriously said a few weeks ago in June during the third (!!!) heat wave of this summer “who could have predicted [it]”… that’s the level, at the highest layer which decides on policy.
ludston 13 hours ago [-]
Governments have been working on this for more then 20 years now. 40 maybe. As long as I've been alive at least. It's just that all of the actions to try and deal with this have been continuously undermined by fossil fuel industries and right-wing politics.
ColdStream 13 hours ago [-]
James Hansons Senate hearing was in 1988, so at least 38 years since it was brought front and center.
Hansen is still going and has been ringing the alarm that we have deeply under estimated the relative carbon loading and heating potential on emissions. There is a real fear that we have locked in a lot more warming potential than the models have been predicting via several factors. Namely carbon warms slightly more than anticipated, more methane releases, great water vapor levels as a result of the previous two and reduced reflective materials decreasing our relative albedo.
belorn 5 hours ago [-]
There is a national election in Sweden this year. Which parties or blocks are against construction of thermal power plants, and which are against it? Thermal power plants are primarily fueled by oil or natural gas. Party platforms are public and posted on their websites.
A few years ago EU voted to define two technologies as green. One was natural gas, and the other was nuclear. Which parties voted for natural gas, and which parties voted for nuclear?
There is a EU decision to phase out ICE in cars. A good continuation would be to issue a similar decision to phase out ICE in the energy grid. It would be nice if both sides could just join together on such decision.
halper 22 minutes ago [-]
For me, it has degraded to the point where I simply presume that no significant promises are going to be kept after the election anyway. The respective parties will promise what they think they need to get the votes, and will then target whatever is relevant for the ever-evolving social-media driven zeitgeist.
"A completely fossil-free energy system" ("Ett helt fossilfritt energisystem" (1)) yesteryear and now lower fuel prices than 20 years ago (adjusted for inflation, yes).
This is downvoted, but exactly right. Moreover, government is not a singular entity. Blaming the whole government just serves to take the blame from actually guilty and attributing it to those whonwere doing the right thing.
cineticdaffodil 11 hours ago [-]
No, its that all the action consistently denies the fact that human societies can not keep i together if degrown. The policies produce regression aka facism.
nextaccountic 14 hours ago [-]
We can fix it nonetheless, we have the resources and the need. We broke it and we will fix it
ColdStream 14 hours ago [-]
I think there is some nuance to this. It isn't likely that we will go back to the way it was before industrialization, we are too far past that. But we will head to a new normal that could be manageable.
Problems have solutions, predicaments have responses. We are in a predicament, and the quicker and more direct we can respond the better chance we have to adverting the more nasty paths of the future.
ColdStream 14 hours ago [-]
Yep, the 5 steps of climate denial.
1. It isn't happening.
2. It is happening but we aren't doing it.
3. It is happening and we are doing it but it won't be as bad as we think.
4. It is happening but it is too late to do anything.
5. Acceptance.
The wild card 6th step was 'Jewish Space lasers' or 'Jewish weather control'. It is always the Jewish people who get the rough end of the stick. It was something I wasn't anticipating coming up but here we are, hitting new lows.
derekdahmer 14 hours ago [-]
Climate change is real and contributes to this but there have been massive fires in this region for over a century - primarily from the artificially planted Maritime Pine forests. The 1940s were particularly bad. Look up the Great Fire of 1949.
ornornor 12 hours ago [-]
Never on that scale. This is unprecedented. France asked other EU members for help as the firefighters are overwhelmed and the fire uncontrollable. There hasn’t been an evacuation this large since WW2 (300k people displaced so far, 0.5% of the country’s population)
This isn’t a “it’s summer, and fires burn” type of a deal. Even though most fires are set by idiots on purpose, it spreads so well because everywhere is dry. Most parcs and fields look like savannas instead of the usual green.
And the context is that at the time, they had no way to fight those fires. So yes, it burned 50,000 ha. That was the starting point of devising ways to efficiently fight forest fires.
Today we have plenty of specialized trucks, trained firemen, planes, helicopters, who have been fighting for 5 days, and already 42,000 ha are gone. 32,000 ha 4 years ago. After a very wet winter.
Climate is changing drastically, exactly as predicted.
vasco 9 hours ago [-]
What does the means to fight the fire have to do with the starting cause of a fire?
darkwater 9 hours ago [-]
Read their post again. They say you cannot compare sizes because nowadays we are much better at extinguishing forest fires that we were 80 years ago.
vlovich123 11 hours ago [-]
Once in a hundred year (or more) event that was beaten in lethality twice in the past two decades. Hmmmm. Can’t possibly be a pattern there. Not like we have models predicting what happens and that reality is progressing far worse than the scientists are allowed to officially report.
aakresearch 11 hours ago [-]
0.5% you mean? France population is over 60 million people.
10 hours ago [-]
sdthjbvuiiijbb 11 hours ago [-]
France has more than 6 million people. I think you meant 0.5%
ornornor 10 hours ago [-]
Yes
kuerbel 10 hours ago [-]
The Landes region has a long history of devastating wildfires, and the 1949 fire is a tragic example, that's correct.
But that's not really the point being debated. Nobody is claiming climate change invented wildfires. But it is making the conditions for extreme fires more common. The IPCC concludes with high confidence that fire hazard conditions, including heatwaves and fire weather, have increased across Europe since 1980, particularly in southern and western Europe, even though ignition sources and land management still matter.
Climate change is increasing the odds that fires become larger and harder to control.
Western Europe has also experienced increasingly frequent and severe droughts in recent years. Those prolonged dry conditions leave forests and vegetation far more combustible, making fires spread faster and burn more intensely once they start.
Aboutplants 15 hours ago [-]
I truly think it’s because we are in the “Find out” phase and most people have very little hope (justifiably) in anything meaningful actually occurring that can prevent or mitigate climate change even a little bit.
ColdStream 14 hours ago [-]
It is also fairly disheartening to see a lot of proposed responses just quietly get shelved because it was economically not idea on the short term. A lot of them were fairly weak to begin with and even they couldn't hold.
I don't think it will be grim forever, this isn't "DOOOOMED, WE ARE ALL DOOMED!" but I am not holding out for the Frutiger Aero future of only a few decades back.
ballsac 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
pibaker 9 hours ago [-]
Hello from one of the accounts who mentioned "climate credits." Do you know why I mentioned it? Because I believe climate change is a real issue and the people selling a fake solution to make people feel better about their jet set lifestyle is doing a disservice to our ability to actually fix the issue. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
lazystar 15 hours ago [-]
acceptance; the problems identified. efforts now should focus on innovative solutions that dont rely on nation state investment.
derriz 10 hours ago [-]
Why? The vast majority of fossil fuel production globally is through state-owned companies.
lazystar 9 hours ago [-]
in the 1800's, were the vast majority of horses produced through state owned companies? that process was upended by human ingenuity.
begging governments to solve the problem has obviously failed; focusing our efforts on fostering ideas and inventions is our best hope at getting our of this mess.
derriz 8 hours ago [-]
We have all the technological tools available to largely decarbonize energy. We don’t have to wait for, nor have the time, to wait around for a deus-ex-machina.
Given the dominance of state level actors in fossil fuel extraction (a role they did not have in horse based transport), to deny states have a role in decarbonizing energy seems naive. I don’t see what’s unreasonable to suggest that the current massive resources states put into supporting fossil fuel consumption and spending on wars to protect its production and distribution be redirected towards accelerating the adoption of modern clean energy production and use.
darkwater 8 hours ago [-]
Well, considering that the issue was created by the same "human ingenuity" aka turbo-capitalism, I'm not sure that the solution could be found there.
I mean, we had one of such capitalists that looked like he was 100% into "fixing it" and now probably thinks it's just a woke invention. You cannot rely on single people changing the future, because they can change their mind far too easily.
nsainsbury 14 hours ago [-]
The most downvoted comment I've ever made on Hacker News was related to climate change. There's a profoundly ignorant collection of people here who want to stick their head in the sand and pretend everything is fine while the world burns around them.
ColdStream 14 hours ago [-]
Alas, a lot of people are reactive and not proactive. There is also the factor that most people see themselves as the virtuous ones, and they do not appreciate a Cassandra pointing out the awful truths that undermine this narrative.
Johnny_Bonk 11 hours ago [-]
Thank you for this
chewbacha 15 hours ago [-]
Must…
Build…
More…
Datacenters…
But seriously, hacker news routinely denies the obvious when it comes to climate crisis.
ColdStream 14 hours ago [-]
That's because there is the chance that it will benefit them short term over others. F U I got mine! Or just ignorance.
s5300 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
artisinal 15 hours ago [-]
From what I read in another comment this was caused by Napoleon.
throw-the-towel 14 hours ago [-]
Napoleon did his geo-engineering 150 years ago, in a completely different world. He's not the one to blame here.
ColdStream 13 hours ago [-]
Well he didn't help, but this is a good example of why so many military's call climate change a 'Risk Multiplier'.
There was already an issue but it has just been amplified.
artisinal 9 hours ago [-]
He planted highly flammable trees is a hot part of the country. Even in his times it got 35 degrees over there.
ballsac 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ratsimihah 8 hours ago [-]
> This smoke cloud generates its own weather system
Fascinating, we’ve got sentient clouds before sentient AI
superkuh 21 hours ago [-]
There's a good chance that conflagrations during WWII generated such clouds. There are well established incidents of such in Germany (and Japan) (ref: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/91/9/2010bam... , Hamburg, Dresden, etc) but nothing for certain in France. The British attacks on Royan which destroyed 85% of it with high explosive and napalam would be the most likely site.
tcp_handshaker 19 hours ago [-]
If you the are in the area and hesitating to evacuate, or if you want to realize what terrible phenomenon you are you facing. Watch this great documentary about the tragedy that unfolded in Portugal a few years ago. Leave now.
This is a reminder that wildfires are becoming more unpredictable than ever.
moralestapia 14 hours ago [-]
>it is a war-like scenario where we are under constant bombardment and must get everyone to safety
Thank you for your service everyone, these are real life heroes like the ones you see on Star Wars movies but real.
ButlerianJihad 15 hours ago [-]
Google Maps provides overlays for wildfires and air quality. I can watch Western Europe from here.
jobigoud 3 hours ago [-]
Just a point about precision, Google Maps fire overlay is based on NASA Firms + some processing, and it's not perfectly accurate.
It is currently marking my little town as under fire / burned down, but it's not and hasn't been so far. (north west front of the fire, next to the lake). It looks like their contouring algorithm is very greedy and any hot spot marked in the past few days has become part of their fire perimeter.
The massive fire clouds probably contribute to the difficulty of measuring ground temperature from satellite.
> So far this year, there have been 76,720 forest fires in Brazil -- the highest number since 2013, official figures show, with more than half in the Amazon rainforest.
https://incendieencours.fr/en/incendies says 17 ongoing and 92 recent in France. I can't promise they count the same way, but… the motive's also substantially different:
> Most fires here are illegally started by humans, according to scientists, the Federal Police, and the government: loggers and miners looking to exploit land in the Amazon, or farmers turning it into pasture.
marcosdumay 19 hours ago [-]
Unsurprisingly, that was just propaganda from some rich locals protecting their market power. What was really surprising was the number of people around here asking some army to come murder Brazilians.
But then, it's real that Bolsonaro was criminally negligent on fire-avoidance. What we will discover next year is how much of it could be avoided at all.
throw-the-towel 14 hours ago [-]
Wow, the audacity of that guy. When is the rest of the world sanctioning France for these fires?
Picture from the french "moderate" right journal Le Figaro, mai 2026.
"investigation into environmental alarmists"
ColdStream 13 hours ago [-]
Well that aged like milk in a forest fire.
SiempreViernes 20 hours ago [-]
Yeah, lets not forget Bush sr switching from advocating action against climate change to enforcing inaction on the political pretence of protecting jobs.
The president of the United States, and pretty much all his cult-members/followers
jauntywundrkind 21 hours ago [-]
I think part of why the right keeps getting more brazen, more anti-reality, anti-science, anti-education, anti-school, anti-democracy is that so many of their numbers are coming due. Disinformation isn't working, as the problems mount, so animosity/overdrama/anger and anti-information are the routes left to them now, as Titanic walls of flame engulf the world in their wake.
Yes because it was the old people watching Fox news who did this...those led astray; but not corporations polluting and their employees "just doing their job", not politicians enabling them and taking payoffs, not the people who own the propaganda outlets?
I mean ultimately it is everyone who ever bought an electronic product or drove an automobile or ate a burger right?... At some level. But it just seems like this level of anger should be directed at the actually decision makers and their lackeys... or are u claiming that there is some sort of functioning democracy that holds power accountable, because most of the electorate like wars and bombing and usury and these things too? If you must be angry, and not saying you shouldn't be, please focus it on the correct source and not other powerless people, misinformed as they may be.
jrajav 20 hours ago [-]
Let's roll with the futilist attitude for a second; what is it you suggest that we actually do, once we're focusing the anger on the correct source?
jubilee33 20 hours ago [-]
Well you know that answer deep down don't you. Our ancestors knew it. Its simple.
What isn't simple is how to stop the cycle from repeating over and over. But first things first perhaps.
What I personally do is not give them any money if I can help it, and certainly not any consent, any sort of of aide and succour. But this has made my own life probably a lot more difficult than it would be otherwise.
Real examples, I dont live in the west, I don't vote, I don't give any money to corpos, not firsthand, I am typing on an ancient probably third hand device and other than utilities it's negligible.
I try to be as self sufficient as possible and create as less waste as I can ...this is not futilist...these are small things that make a difference at scale.
But ultimately once the next round of guillotines has run its course, which is unenviable and inevitable at this point. We need to find a way to educate ourselves and balance our desires...which will be very hard yes.
Not fultile.
henearkr 20 hours ago [-]
"Giving money to corpos" is basically living in society where the work is shared so that somebody e.g. good at repairing a water leak can concentrate on that and do the job for others, etc.
Or you mean "big corpos"? Why does the size matter?
Or do you mean that those are unethical corporations?
So let's focus on preventing them from doing unethical things them.
In any case, we are living in society, so it is better to cooperate, and to no add but multiply our competences in order to create the future's solutions.
Living "by ourselves", all 8 billions of us, is the recipe for flash-burning through all of the planet's resources.
All of us just using wood for energy is just stupid and short-lived. Our "ancestors" lived on a much different planet and were much less many.
But let's not fall into the trap of hoping that violence can rescue us. That's the opposite of a solution. All the most devoid of ideas and of creativity, the most bloodthirsty, will win, and those are the least capable of well managing the planet in the future. (We are looking for how to prevent corporations to do unethical things, so we cannot at the same time call for guillotines.)
jubilee33 19 hours ago [-]
Communities helping each other and huge sums of capital operating autonomously in the benefit of an extremely few number of majority shareholders (yes the same few thousand people own most of the major equity is the top corporations) are hardly comparable.
co-ops and small businesses trying to navigate the legalese of modernity and "make it" though all are responsible in proportion to the degree that they maximize monetary value rather than maximize happiness and humanity.
I'm not knocking capital and it's use in development I'm knocking usury, the immoral use of capital for things that don't take into account personal responsibility.
And violence is not maybe the best way, I don't practice or preach it, but its way we have chosen for the entirety of our past and it's probably the most "natural" way, thus I would argue inevitable.
And ya no doubt it will suck for most of the planet, but the planet isn't going anywhere after all..just you and me, and I'm fine with that honestly.
henearkr 19 hours ago [-]
I'm still hopeful. And for that I am being much more active promoting ecological thinking.
And of course fighting against the idiotic far-right propaganda, largely responsible for the climate inaction.
Which by the way in the US has recently passed the stage of "inaction" to enter the realm of actively destroying the planet.
yread 19 hours ago [-]
Work close to your home, dont travel long distances, dont buy stuff you dont really need, eat less red meat
nradov 19 hours ago [-]
Trying to shame people into scaling back their lifestyles isn't going to work. We need to approach the problem with a growth and abundance mindset to innovate our way to solutions. Regardless of the larger impacts or moral issues most people aren't going to be willing to sit in dark cramped high-rise apartments eating tofu. At least not if they have other options.
lukan 15 hours ago [-]
"Regardless of the larger impacts or moral issues most people aren't going to be willing to sit in dark cramped high-rise apartments eating tofu. At least not if they have other options."
Options like VR glasses?
Or even a full VR suit?
Personally I cannot put up with living in a city, but humans can adopt to surprising conditions of living.
But I am very much with you on the abundance mindset as the actual solution. Better tech, more of it.
henearkr 19 hours ago [-]
But you also need to explain others why they should do that too (only one person doing all of that will not make a difference).
This is where "people watching Fox News" are guilty here, they got the wrong information and thus are really not able to decide to "eat less meat" or "avoid ICE vehicles".
So Fox News is a real culprit. But let's not forget that many different news channels exist, with an infinitely better coverage of AGW.
So I actually think it is perfectly OK to blame people for watching Fox News.
Dylan16807 15 hours ago [-]
Okay that'll reduce output by a third by the people that participate.
We need big funding and legal maneuvers to actually fix the problem. That or praying very hard that renewables are so good they can free-market fix everything without any additional pushes.
LtWorf 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sunshine-o 18 hours ago [-]
Also I can understand fires in gigantic forests in Canada or mountainous area are almost impossible to prevent but just looking at the Gironde/Bordeaux area on Google Maps it just looks like an absolute failure by the state.
And this is not an earthquake, it happens every years at the same time.
It is too easy to blame climate change.
vitally3643 16 hours ago [-]
Forest fires are possible to prevent most of the time. We lack the political will to do controlled burns.
And climate change is making them worse.
well_ackshually 17 hours ago [-]
They repeatedly underspent on hardware (bought 2 canadairs instead of 4 to replace aging ones), people (last time the firemen protested for a higher budget, they were tear gassed by the police), forest management (cut off the budget of the forest management agency), enforcement (private forest owners have to introduce fire cut lines into their parcels, which they didn't do. Forest management agency has nobody to spare to go verify that they did, and even when that happens, it takes years to be judged, or the government drops the case), ecology as a whole, and the list goes on.
But don't worry, it's not just about fires. The same can be said about pretty much everything they've done.
throw-the-towel 14 hours ago [-]
And meanwhile the taxes go up, and up, and up.
vouaobrasil 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
browningstreet 20 hours ago [-]
They denied climate change even before the data center boom. Poor argument, even if the target you want is on the side of the field you’re aiming at.
jryle70 20 hours ago [-]
People also stupidly watch soccer games such as World Cup, go on meaningless vacations, eat out when they can cook at home, argue nonsense on online forums such as HN. Sure those activities aren't "encouraging more consumerism and more CO2 output"?
cineticdaffodil 20 hours ago [-]
Actually- when you take it standalone- e-activities, that lead to little else consumed, are quite ideal. You will never get the budhist monk, meditating on a rock out of normal people, but somebody sittings there, playing a game for hours on a glowing rock, is as close to nilwanna as it gets. So thank you gamedevs out there for creating this.
SepiaSapient 19 hours ago [-]
Nobody tokenmaxxes because they like it, so it doesn't even produce joy. Besides, your argument is that something being wasteful is a simple binary, so we cannot make a value judgement without being the grinch.
throw-the-towel 14 hours ago [-]
At least everything you listed already existed. AI didn't exist until recently, so the pain of changing your lifestyle does not apply.
watwut 19 hours ago [-]
All of that is using way less energy then AI is planning to use.
Specifically, eating out may even save energy. Arguing on HN consumes very little of it. Same with watching football on tv
vouaobrasil 20 hours ago [-]
Yes. But AI is at the apex of that. Your argument is like saying "he already eats hamburgers, deep fried food, soft drinks, chips, and is already overweight, so there's no harm in smoking as well!"
nerdsniper 20 hours ago [-]
I feel like this would be much less of an issue if the datacenters were all fully solar+battery powered.
ajsnigrutin 20 hours ago [-]
But if the forests burn down, that makes more tree-free land to build more datacenters!
hello from California -- in 2017 three thousand homes burned (Santa Rosa) .. the damage totals are easy to look up.. The skies over San Francisco were so black that the sun was barely an orange dot. I am fully sympathetic to the people in France and elsewhere. This part of the world suffers from wildfire also.
vouaobrasil 20 hours ago [-]
What I was referring to were the elite benefitting from AI the most. Even if their house burns up, they likely have enough money to just buy a new (maybe cheaper) one somewhere else and retire. Obviously, not everyone in California is like that - I was referring to those who are getting huge salaries at tech corporations. But it's a lot different for a poorer person to lose their home than a super rich one.
ares623 16 hours ago [-]
One of the biggest lies is that these events will only happen (or will happen first) to the "global south" and only affect the "other peoples".
Unfortunately for us, the Earth has no preferences and doesn't run on our schedule.
nolok 16 hours ago [-]
I don't know where you live or where you heard that but it is not a lie that was told in france at least. If you want a "lie", it was how far in the future that was going to happen, but that's mostly because the deniers got control of the messaging for a long time.
ColdStream 13 hours ago [-]
Here is the image/tweet that will live on for a long while regarding the accelerated timeline.
I know it's a cold and cynical take, but if it has to happen somewhere, better for it to happen in Europe, the US, or other developed countries. These countries can at least do something to keep climate crisis from getting worse. (Or... more realistically, to keep it from getting worse too fast.)
AnimalMuppet 14 hours ago [-]
Too keep it from killing too many people too fast, anyway.
15 hours ago [-]
tjwebbnorfolk 16 hours ago [-]
on average, 240k acres burn every year in Spain. this is somewhat larger, but not abnormal. it's just near people this time.
tjwebbnorfolk 35 minutes ago [-]
I guess I need a disclaimer on every comment that says "climate change is obviously real you can save your downvotes"
hncsiocp9x 6 hours ago [-]
Practical and honest, love it
PAndreew 10 hours ago [-]
I hope I'm not the only one who wanted to check PyPi to see what package is this... '-.-
uwagar 10 hours ago [-]
this package drops u in the line of fire.
chewbacha 16 hours ago [-]
I’m sure if we build a few more AI data centers the world will cool down and we’ll stop having all these fires.
Just a few more GPUs ought to fix it.
ColdStream 13 hours ago [-]
I always though it would be funny if we actually did manage to get to super AGI, we then ask it "How can we save the future for us?"
It thinks for a few days, cross comparing everything in written history and then comes back with only a single sentence.
"Love the Earth and life like you love yourselves."
Then it goes quiet not answering anything else.
lnsru 9 hours ago [-]
The AGI’s conclusion will be simpler: humanity extinction. I am renovating my home and digging out the perimeter. Despite pavements being decades old I still find thrash buried around the house. Other houses in the neighborhood has the same problem. Relatives bought a villa near Bordeaux. Guess what, previous owners buries many cubic meters of asbestos under the entrance. AGI will not save few ones picking their litter for the majority of environmental pigs.
ballsac 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
TurdF3rguson 8 hours ago [-]
It reminds me of that French fire-fighter who threw caution to the wind in rescuing me and my precious cat Lulu from our flat when it was engulfed in flames. He sadly perished in that fire but I will never forget him.
I can't recall his name but I think he had a mustache.
> “What is happening right now is extremely, extremely unusual. Seeing a cloud this massive and reaching such an altitude above a wildfire is exceptionally rare,” the researcher explains.
“During the Pedrógão fire [which claimed around 60 lives in Portugal in 2017], there were two episodes of fire-induced thunderstorms. Here, we are already at eight or ten, and the forecast is not encouraging at all.”
Although unprecedented in both intensity and frequency, the phenomenon has been observed in France before, according to the expert: during the Fontainebleau wildfire (Seine-et-Marne) in July, the Ribaute fire (Aude) in 2025, and the Générac fire (Gard) in 2019.
It seems that this cloud and the attached storms have been seen before, even recently, in France, but this one is one of a kind for intensity, by far.
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2026/07/27/le-pyrocum...
But the really salient observation is how people individually and their social system as a whole react (or not).
Debating the shapes of clouds points to a fundamental dysfunctional disconnect on multiple levels.
I don't think we have the data that proves this theory (which of course doesn't mean that the theory is wrong), because the vast majority of these fires are man-made, not natural disasters.
This year's Fontainebleau wildfires were caused by 1) a deranged person ligthning bushes and drenching them with fuel 2) a simple minded person throwing a cigaret but in bushes during a heat wave...
The huge wildfire in the south some years ago was caused by a similarly simple minded dude that caried his alight barbecue from one place to another on the back of his pickup truck (creating a dozen wildfires in the process along the road).
The fundamental connection increase of CO2 => increase in mean temperature => increase in frequency of high-energy atmospheric events is entirely obvious and well established.
CO2 traps heat and heat is energy. Firestorms are an immediate consequence of that and accordingly rise in frequency as well.
The idea, such fires would be "preventable, since due to individual human action" is patently absurd even in principle. You cannot easily ignite a forest that isn't dried out. An easily ignitable forest on the other hand just waits for the first spark, no matter the source. The hotter climate provides more sparks in the form of lightning. At some point, ignition is virtually guaranteed. And that point is reached already.
All the lightning in the world isn't going to burn down a rainforest.
Two of the large recent fires in the Landes region, including the most recent, have started from poorly maintained, spontaneously igniting cars. Those also have not suddenly started appearing out of nowhere.
The common thread is very dry forests, it just takes a spark for disaster.
A part of the Fontainebleau forest, much more north, no pine trees, went in smoke earlier. Forests are burning near Madrid.
It may make some people feel better to think that it is an isolated, local problem, but unfortunately global warming is the main culprit and we at least need to acknowledge it.
Article explaining when pine tree forest resist well or not to fire. https://www.sudouest.fr/faits-divers/incendies/incendies-en-...
I know global warming plays a major role in this, but I still found it interesting to know why this fire seems so bad.
Still, I believe it is important to highlight the elephant in the room first.
For example to your point: "I still found it interesting to kmow why this fire seems so bad compared to [...] before", I think it is important to state: "because global warming is getting worse over time". Not because pine trees, which have been around for a long time, and have never burned so badly.
Are you sure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire
Basically they had no way to fight those fires at the time, as the article explains.
They do have firebreaks, paths for trucks to go in many places [1]. I've seen many.
But you could argue they're not wide enough to actually break fire. And when I see videos of how tall and wide the flames are, I have no idea how wide they should be... It's a managed forest though, definitely looked after because economics interests (wood, tourism).
[1] https://cnes.fr/geoimage/aquitaine-littoral-landais-massif-f...
Up to 40km, depending on the wind. Embers can travel a long way.
Either way, firebreaks and green firebreaks seem like they could be a reasonable mitigation approach, whatever the overall causes.
Does anyone here know whether the Landes forest has good firebreaks? If not, does anyone here know why? I failed to find anything about it online.
The forest is a giant tinderbox.
It so happens that the current fire near Bordeaux is roughy in the same area as the historic fire of 1949 in which 82 people died (and currently still smaller, hopefully it will stay that way) [1], as someone else already mentioned.
Wildfires in Fontainebleau are not new, either, even if this year's one it is historically large. First laws against fires in the in forest and obligation of inhabitants to help in case of fire date from the 14th century [2].
Yes warming trends do not help and increase risk (hence need to invest in equipment and prevention) but there is also fabricated drama and lack of perspective, which are unfortunately how everything is reported nowadays.
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendie_de_1949_dans_la_for%C...
[2] https://www.fontainebleau-photo.fr/2013/08/les-incendies-de-...
Even the criminal ones are only enabled because of the dry vegetation, caused by the recent heat waves. IMO focusing on what caused the spark is missing the root cause: global warming.
And yes you can argue that such fires existed previously, but what's concerning is that the frequency on which they are happening is increasing rapidly
[0]https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/les-causes-des-inc...
That's why I am suggesting to keep a cool head and to take a step back to analyse things rationally. In any case that is good advice to adapt to warming, too. If you go down the rabbit hole of media reporting you are going to have a nervous breakdown.
[1] https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/l-historique-des-f...
The human induced climate catastrophe is due to a systemic failure and consequentially needs to be addressed on a systemic level. The economic system and policies need to be adapted, even against the implied subjective interests of the biggest holders of capital and assets.
They like to paint that as "impossible", but of course it's not.
Being trapped in an Overton window selected for you by those invested in upholding the status quo is what leads to your emotional stress.
The fundamental disconnect between the existential threat of climate catastrophe and the official un-reaction to it is what leaves you unable to cope with actually very much white-washed reporting on the topic.
Understatement of the year, here, after the third heatwave of the year with a fourth on the way and record after record being shattered.
>(hence need to invest in equipment)
Easy.
>fabricated drama and lack of perspective
The one with a lack of perspective is not the ones you think.
Landes & Médoc serve as an immediate example of the consequences of that catastrophe being left to unfold unabated.
Using diminutive terms to describe causalities that currently escalate beyond human control and ultimately lead to civilizational collapse with billions of deaths is a dysfunctional disconnect from reality.
Many of those pine forests are relatively new. Pine trees burn frequently, around every 20-30 years. In the past they used to be mixed with many other original trees, but during the recent century reforestation, pines were planted as the single tree species, making fires more prone to happen and more easily to spread.
In the past, way more population lived next to the forests, where lumber used to be part of their income, so trees were frequently cut, forests maintained and shepherds would bring their sheep to feed from forest lower plants. All of that is gone.
In the past, locals used to be able to build firewalls, clean forests and fight fire with fire (provoking small controlled wildfires to stop the big ones). Green policies forbid those actions nowadays.
Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%.
From planting to cutting is only around 30-50 years. With multiple thinnings in between. Also none of that forest existed 200 years ago and there never was anything other than pine planted there for those 200 years, in the beginning for resin, now for pulp.
And so none of it burned in the middle ages or was affected by any higher temperatures because it didn't exist back then.
"You’re both right. However OPs post is more useful than yours.
By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change"
Thank you for proving that there are, in fact, still climate change deniers even here on hacker news.
I'm assuming you're a climate change denier. You don't say so outright, but "Green policies forbid those actions nowadays" is a bit of a dogwhistle that you oppose environmental protection regulations broadly (not merely overzealous ones that have side-effects that make combating certain types of wildfires harder in certain situations), and:
"Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%."
Well... that's pretty close to just coming out and saying you don't believe in climate science.
This truly is the least intelligent timeline.
I am so sorry for the one in a million crackpot-sounding genius that will get hurt in the process but social shunning is just so so much more effective. No wonder the crackpots and grifters are back and running the show nowadays
I think a better approach is to ask people who have contrarian/non-consensual opinions to show that they know that they are crackpots out and to distance themselves from them:
"I know some people come up with conspiracy theories that says climate is a hoax designed to control populations because they don't want to change anything in their way of life but that's not what I am. I just care about the science and I think I found a real flaw in the leading explanation of climate change. I'd love for someone with knowledge about to discuss it with me to see if they took X into account" etc.
This above is what I expect but if you quack like a quack, you're probably a quack and you'll get the social shunning treatment
thats a bit of a "dogwhistle" that you're not actually convinced that green policies can ever be deranged and counterproductive. On the contrary. I don't know if you're a a brainwashed virtue signaler, but I'm assuming it. You don't say so outright, but the mental gymnastics of calling someone a climate changer denier who just said climate change is widely recognised are staggering.
This truly is the least intelligent timeline. Please check with Dunning and Kruger if you're part of the problem.
Painting the actions of people on the other side of the planet as "out of anybody's control" is hubris though. Humanity very well is capable of organizing on that scale and has done so regularly for a long time already.
The actual problem is the disconnect between the interests of those in charge of such organization and the well-being of the public.
This was the hottest year on record. 10 of the last 15 years have been the hottest year on record, consecutively. What makes you believe this fake information about the middle ages?
There have been 4 or 5 pretty massive wildfires in France that I can remember in the last 5 years, but this is the first time they've had to deal with pyrocumulonimbus caused by a wildfire. Global warming was likely a contributing factor for all of those fires, but global warming alone doesn't explain why this one is different. The first comment about the pine isn't answering "why is this happening now?", it answers the question, "why is this fire so much worse?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire
Did you check for forest fires in the past?
However OPs post is more useful than yours.
By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change.
>Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change.
Well said!
The problem isn't who believes in global warming, the problem is a forest fire. It doesn't care if there are 0% or 100% believers. Moving the needle on that percentage has no effect on the problems we will face due to global warming.
Here and now it's possible for a small community or country to take actions that will help the next time there's a forest fire. Or a flood, or a drought, or a heat dome, or a blizzard where blizzards shouldn't be.
Such efforts should clearly be priority 1. A doctor dealing with a gunshot wound doesn't start by urging politicians to reduce crime rates, they start by stopping the bleeding.
Not true, I have seen people deny it on HN recently.
And looking at other debates, yes it is necessary to reiterate the primary cause. Because centrists will absolutely use the lack of that reiteration to do the "well actually it is the pine trees" in two days.
The most important thing is knowing what can be done in the short to medium term locally to improve the situation. If you tell the people living near those forests they need to fix global warming, you're not going anywhere. Can they monitor the forest beds better, do some preventive measures to limit the propagation of fires when they happen? Probably!
Unless you're on a major international forum or you have proper global reach and are a trendsetter, complaining about the obvious global warming isn't going to do much. And even if it's not obvious to some other people, you're not going to change their mind anyway on a HN discussion.
Ask yourself: when was the last time vigorous repetition of a position has convinced you personally?
You will convince them by showing them how to do it properly. Show them the way and they might follow.
The propaganda practice of incessant repetition being effective even in face of blatantly obvious contradicting facts is well established.
The reason climate catastrophe deniers incessantly repeat their nonsense isn't because they like to hear themselves talk, it's because it works.
The majority of people are never convinced by rational arguments or facts, they act solely on subjectively perceived personal outcomes. Facing social opposition and loss of face very well can sway them.
“Centrists” (whatever that means) aren’t denying climate change.
Even if 99% of America accepts climate change that’s still 350,000 that don’t, and there’s a good chance many deniers are just doing it for the lolz.
The world was unwilling to enact the changes that were required. The mitigations of the damage to both the human and natural world are required now, and there’s lots of discussion about that. Not least what happens when a nuclear power of 1.5 billion people reaches a wet bulb temperature high enough to start killing tens of millions.
Yes, pine is flammable. So what? Should we replace it with wood that doesn't burn? And grows on already very dry soil? Because what the "informative" OP hasn't told you is that pine growsso much there because other woods don't do as well.
Different trees react differently to fire. The forest fires of (e.g.) the American west are different than the forest fires in Canada:
> The forest-mismanagement argument was, in fairness, based on real evidence from some regions. In the frequent-fire dry forests of the western US that are dominated by ponderosa pine and mixed conifers the natural fire regime is low-to-moderate intensity surface fire returning every 5 to 30 years, historically stoked in part by Indigenous burning. A century of fire exclusion in those forests really did remove that frequent fire, let stands grow denser and more continuous, and build up a “fire deficit” that raises the odds of severe fire (Hagmann et al. 2021). And in that setting, fuel treatments work: Prichard et al. (2021) find wide agreement that mechanical thinning combined with prescribed burning measurably reduces subsequent fire severity. If you’re arguing about the Sierra Nevada, the management story is as important if not more important than the climate one.
> The problem is that the Canadian boreal is not the Sierra Nevada. It burns in infrequent, high-intensity, stand-replacing crown fires that kill the whole stand on natural fire cycles measured in many decades to centuries (commonly a century or more, and two centuries or longer in the east), not 5 to 30 years. It is, ecologically speaking, supposed to burn this way; black spruce is practically built for it. Fire in this system was never the gentle recurring ground-clearing that suppression interrupted in California. And the burning is astonishingly concentrated: across the boreal, something like 3% of fires account for about 97% of the area burned. This is not a landscape full of many small fires that “used to clean out the fuel.” Rather, its a landscape that waits, and then burns catastrophically under extreme weather.
* https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/canadas-boreal-wildfires-a...
> And grows on already very dry soil? Because what the "informative" OP hasn't told you is that pine growsso much there because other woods don't do as well.
Except the entire forest is 'artificial' in that Napoleon III ordered the draining of the peatlands to create said forest in the first place. Perhaps actually having it as a forest should be reconsidered.
* https://globalpeatlands.org/zombiefiresareravagingpeatlandsi...
The forest was created for industrial purposes and so pine was probably chosen as it grew faster and that's what builders wanted, but is that what want we now? Perhaps the fact that pine grows best there shouldn't be considered at such a high priority, and that reducing the mono-culture, even if it is not "optimal" for growth, be bumped up in priority.
We should really go way deeper than just blaming everything on an increase of temperatures, which nevertheless is actually happening.
We, locals, have been warning already for decades of the increase of fires due to an accumulation of reasons, which I have actually described already in another message down below but I can summarize here.
* Forest mass has actually increased a lot during the last decades, Spain has now around 50% more forest mass than in the 1970s.
* Part of the increased mass has to do with reforestation efforts done by governments happening since last half of last century, which basically planted many forests using pine varieties which grow very quickly but also burn quickly (Pines are biologically design to burn with their flammable design and dried needles, that's their feature).
* Historical local forest were composed of many varieties of trees, including oaks, holm oaks, poplar, which grow slowly, are way less prone to burn, and regrow again after a fire. Those varieties were never used in any reforestation efforts, which has resulted in many new forests being extremely prone to burn quickly
* Population has shifted enormously towards big cities, abandoning little villages where forests were part of their style of life. Lumber was part of their economical income, which resulted in continuous care of those forests and efforts in preservation. There are still some communities like that in some areas of Spain, and their forests have the lowest rate of wildfires in the whole country.
* Many techniques like firebreaks, counter-fires, low intensity burning to clear crop stubble, dry brush, and old vegetation to regenerate fresh grass for livestock and prepare fields are now forbidden, again increasing the risk and extension of wildfires
* Forest Grazing is also nowadays completely forbidden. Sheep used to roam everywhere in the country, consuming many burning-prone vegetation, reducing also the risk of wildfires.
But even despite all of that, countries like Spain for example, have nowadays the lowest proportion of burnt forest since the last 50 years.
I don't think it's blaming on global warming. Global warming is just making those problems a lot worse.
It is just the beginning, on average it will get worse every year. Every kilogram of CO2 we emit makes it worse, so it won't stop worsening until we reach zero emissions.
> a sensation that there's nothing we can do.
On the contrary, I think there too much we must do because of global warming. There is so much that we certainly won't be able to do it all, meaning that the situation will get "more complicated" anyway. The more we do, the more we preserve.
To make a comparison that stays in the theme: saying "we won't stop it so there is nothing we can do" is like saying "this burning tree is dead anyway, so there is no need to save the rest of the forest". The tree is dead, it won't come back. And we know for sure that many other trees will die. But we should fight to preserve as much as we can from the forest. The less we do, the more we lose. But we will lose a lot anyway, maybe just not everything (depending on how well we fight).
While I think this is mostly correct, I don't think it's OK to downplay climate change as just a "blame target". These current and extreme wildfires result from hotter and drier conditions, too. That is a major reason. And yes, we can do something about it.
Also, I know that controlled burns, grazing and firebreaks are widely used today in Spain, they are not universally forbidden.
In Wales and Ireland we have the opposite problem, the sheep strip everything bare, the old trees die and the forests cannot regenerate.
[0]: https://youtu.be/eRoU3whzX_Q?t=450
ETA: clarification
A bit of a distinction without a difference. The climate is not changing back, it's the new normal. In that climate, this particular kind of agriculture (huge pine monocultures) has become a problem.
It breaks my heart to say this, I've spent nearly all my childhood summers in my family's summer house down there. This year, I left just a few days before the evacuation order would have come.
It's going to be burning every year now and if we want to be safe there, the forest can't stay the same.
Climate won't get any "new normal" until we reach strictly zero emission.
As long as we emit CO2, climate will get worse. There is no new normal: every year it will get worse.
It doesn't invalidate your point though, that it cannot stay the same and we have to do something. I'm just nitpicking on the "new normal". There won't be a new normal until we stop emitting CO2, it will just get worse and worse.
However, Fontainebleau forest has many pine trees.
In fact there is an invasive caterpillar there that lives in pine trees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_processionary
The caterpillars are also a consequence of warming.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendies_en_for%C3%AAt_de_Fon...
Notice how the last was worse by one or two orders of magnitude.
You can handwave all you want the this and the southwest forests are particularly flammable, but what you are pointing out are only "canaries in the coal mines": they are the first to burn, but other forests will follow suit if global warming continues.
I get where you're coming from but I don't think this is helpful.
Everyone with any sense knows global warming will cause heatwaves and they increase the risk of fires, but nobody in France can do anything about it. Even if everyone in France would do everything they can to stop global warming starting tomorrow, it would change nothing. It wouldn't help even if they got all of the EU on board.
What the people of France can do is demand more resources for fire protection, build air conditioned locations for the poor and elderly, plant trees for shade and so on.
This can be done immediately and will actually help. It also engages everyone, even a climate denier can get onboard with fighting fires and having shelter for heat.
If we stop at "it's the global warming", the response is either apathy or policies. We should prioritize things that will help right now.
Small correction, but Fontainebleau is a fairly mixed forest including 20-30% pine.
And on top of that it’s El Niño.
Edit: Before anyone misconstrues what I'm saying: no, I'm not denying global warming. I'm just saying this is why this summer in particular was always likely to be a hot one in Europe.
And going forwards the sulphur thing has most likely caused a step change from temperatures in Europe before Covid, despite underlying warming continuing at the same rate
Occasional fires, sure. But very clearly nothing approaching the current scale and frequency.
The last really big one in that region was in 2022; and there are currently not one but 2 parallel fires in the same forest.
Now it will happen more and more every year, there is no stopping that trend.
In fact, in the most historically prone areas, the Mediterranean part of France, number of fires and surface area burnt have tended to decrease over time since the 1970s [1], which shows that being prepared works and this experience must now be used in more areas of the country.
[1] https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/l-historique-des-f...
We used to thin the trees and clear the underbrush, which drastically reduces flammability and the ability for forest fires to rapidly spread.
But that's not seen as "environmentally friendly" these days.
The problem (as always) is that it is complicated.
We are living in a mass extinction right now (orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs), mostly because of habitat loss. It has nothing to do with the climate (of course the climate is making it worse, but we screwed the biodiversity before that).
Is thinning the trees and clearing the underbrush good for the biodiversity? Probably not. Is it good to reduce flammability? Probably yes.
But I don't think it is fair to say that those who care about biodiversity are obviously wrong because preserving the biodiversity make forest more flammable. If you think like this, the solution is to go live in a bunker. Many people find that attractive (just look at how many dream about living in a bunker on mars), but I don't.
Growth-driven ecological harm isn’t unique to capitalism.
Consumerism, the growth imperative, absence of proper carbon pricing, etc. ultimately cause ecological harm and are not exclusive to capitalism. Centrally planned economies have done the same. So you will have to address these, even if you have a different economic system.
Keep also in mind that capitalism has driven the technologies now central to decarbonization, like solar, batteries, etc., largely through market competition and innovation incentives.
To manage forrests and and other agriculture in the traditional way, we need extreme amounts of extreme poverty. We need millions and millions of people who are happy to spend 14 hours per day collecting sticks and tending sheep in the woods, in exchange for nothing more than a bowl of porridge. And they need to this every day all their lives.
We don't have that kind of poverty since capitalism took over from feudalism.
There are other ways than capitalism to build wealth in a society, but to the degree that they work and actually reduce poverty, they will have the same outcome.
There would also be no property taxes, but on the other hand there would also be no tax funded services like healthcare or education.
Like, there are motor saws nowadays.
Probably a dozen reasons why we cannot that I am unaware of, but from my arm chair it looks good.
In Europe, we've lost 80% of insects in the last 20 years, something like that? That was completely unrelated to climate change. I guess climate change is just coming to help with the remaining 20%.
> Some efforts have begun to diversify the Landes forest and to maintain or promote deciduous trees, particularly along the edges of plots. The major difficulty, according to foresters, is that very few species are able to grow in this region, where the sandy soil is very poor and very acidic (it is one of the poorest soils in Europe). Foresters describe the maritime pine as a "miracle species" in this regard.
> While other species can still grow, it is much more slowly and with greater difficulty. Radically transforming this vast forest, currently 80% dominated by maritime pines, therefore seems complicated, and there is also a significant economic stake involved in timber production in the region.
The second part is right though, these are important but very long term efforts worldwide which is why we need to start doing something now. A few percent difference could still be the difference between a fire and not a fire or between new wildlife moving there or not.
Dans le roman de la Rose
Les pierres alignées de la lande
On sent quelque chose derrière les choses
Pines are the survivalists of the forests. They can grow where nobody else can. What I mean is that this monoculture of Pine trees is not really a monoculture. Is an ecosystem.
The Landes are set over a lot of marine sand, so is not easy to create a firewall (mixing flammable and less flammable trees). The solution of just replacing pines by other species is not so easy technically. Pines are the only native tree that can trive in such poor soil.
see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/train-cab-wildfir...
[edit] other video links in case the first link isn't viewable outside Canada.
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwc16INKNq0 or https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qAerRqQQHAM
Now I am wondering if my return flight from Bordeaux in a few days will actually happen. Currently the airport is still operating, although the surrounding area has been evacuated. It really looks apocalyptic there, though:
https://static.actu.fr/uploads/2026/07/aeroport-bordeaux-fum...
Good luck, and stay safe.
More layers -> PM2.5 is very telling.
The Landes Forest which is currently burning is really interesting in that you have all 4 of the major European disturbance types there: Human clear cuts, storm damage, large scale insect infestation and fire.
Most other forested areas in Europe only have two or three of these. For example most of the Mediterranean does not have meaningful amount of storm damage.
Just shows how badly suited the Landes Forest with its current forest management is in todays climate.
So basically entire tree stands have to die or crowns have to lose their leafs for it to be detectable form space.
Main insect of concern are bark beetles (ips typographus for spruce, ips sexendtatus for pines) which disrupt the cambium causing a gradual vitality decline until you have dead standing trees. In satellite imagery this is visible as irregular brownish-red patches.
On the other hand there's gypsy moths (also known as spongy moth, Lymantria dispar) which affect the leafs directly, causing large scale temporary defoliation in broadleafed trees usually in the middle of summer.
There's hundreds more insects but few have the capability to cause large scale die-off in trees which are grown in monoculture (pine/spruce/beech).
From what I saw online, there are indications that firebreaks do not always work, for instance when embers fly over long distances, carried by the wind, over firebreaks, and start fires on the other side. But I would guess that firebreaks like cleared areas, for instance between settlements and forests, should be able to mitigate at least some of the fires.
Here in Sweden we had a large fire that jumped a lake.
An open case is more in terms of temperate forests which are increasingly starting to burn, for example in Austria or other central European countries. These tend to be understory fires, which (for now) only rarely catch the crown.
For these fires the tree crown stays green and you can't see any change until later in the year or the next year, where the trees die due to damage the fire did to their cambium and roots. Correctly attributing this later decline to fire damage is a bit challenging.
The whole damned thing was planted in the 1850s as an enormous pine plantation.
Same thing as drives wildfires in Portugal - maritime pine (and in Portugal’s case eucalyptus). Vast, dense, barely managed pyrophytic monocultures. The problem isn’t poorly managed forest, it’s the forest, period - it shouldn’t be there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landes_forest
Where native forest (oak, chestnut, hazel, etc) remains, we don't have major fires. They are finally experimenting with planting firebreaks of native species in some areas, which has been quite effective at halting the spread of fires. But realistically, we need a huge government investment to get rid of this monoculture entirely.
Not really. It helps, but it is not a perfect solution. It did not prevent the massive wildfire near Fontainebleau, for example.
That's a pretty great example in the opposite direction, as Fontainebleau today only contains isolated pockets of protected old-growth, and the rest has been systematically converted over the last ~150 years to highly flammable pine trees...
With how natural forest disturbances are more and more starting to affect the plantation, it proves to be seen what the response will be.
The thing is that it is an incredibly productive forest (only in terms of biomass). So now there's a bunch of capital riding on it which will have a vested interest to keep it productive.
In this particular instance, everybody in this thread seems to be forgetting the region where the fires are currently raging used to be very unsanitary swamps before the pine forests were planted. These older wetlands were a major source of disease and misery for the local population. The reason why they only planted pines were because the soil there is poor & acidic. Nothing else grows really. Now of course, this needs to be rethought in the light of climate change, but it wasn't a stupid idea at the time.
[1] The unlikely triumph of Napoleon III, https://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-unlikely-triumph-of-...
[2] Napoleon III and the Second Empire, https://www.routledge.com/Napoleon-III-and-the-Second-Empire...
[3] The People's Emperor, https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571361304-the-peoples-em...
I did in fact recently read about the infrastructure works in France (and elsewhere) during that era. (Great read so far: Liaquat Ahamed's 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_flammagenitus
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammagenitus_cloud
[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...
Technical details in the video link start around 3:34 for those interested
Excuse the French for the non Francophones but trying to be detailed and exacting here on why this isn’t bad journalism to use that term
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...
That said, piling more geo-engineering on top of the problem will not solve it. It will just create more issues with unforeseen consequences and instability. What we really need to do is to reduce emissions. It’s much simpler and cheaper than any form of geo-engineering you could think of to mitigate the consequences.
Say they start sulfur injection or whatever, and a year later there are crop failures in India. While it could have happened anyway, there is now a plausible chance that it can be pinned on who ever did the geoengineering. The amount of scapegoating on any climate issue would be wild.
I'm worried that geoengineering will upset the balance of things even more, a temporary and short-term solution for incidents.
What we do need now is finally the determination to fight climate change. We have all the tools at our disposal to eliminate any fossil fuel burning within some years. We should finally take this as the priority it should be.
Wonder how much 2020 Bunker Fuel ban contributed.
Greta Thunberg announces she has gone 'net-zero' on swearing after 'f-bomb' furore - https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/greta-t...
This also addresses the tree death issue.
Pyrophilic species can even benefit from forest fires with reproduction being triggered by them.
It would also be quite unusual for accountant teams to follow individual trees around throughout their lifecycle, ticking little boxes when they die or something, in order to follow through on carbon credits. Think about this realistically.
There's no guarantee that a tree planted to "offset" a flight will grow to any kind of maturity, let alone survive three months. Some saplings just die.
Or maybe that tree got planted in a tree plantation for timber, or wood pulp, and 20 years later, it's framing timber or newsprint.
(I am someone who does revegetation projects and have planted a large number of trees)
https://xn--incendiosespaa-2nb.es/ (in Spanish)
It is disheartening to see how everything is basically in red.
You need to quantify in sq km or some other objective unit what makes this so unique.
Regarding eucalyptus burning: a lot of them burned suddenly after a policy change allowing land to be repurposed after wildfires, I've just been told by locals.
I guess I need a disclaimer on every comment that says "climate change is obviously real you can save your downvotes" jfc
240,000 acres is about 97,000 hectares. By July 26, Spain had already lost more than 150,000 hectares, or around 371,000 acres, six times the area burned by the same point last year...
No one here is really discussing “climate change”.
Is it denial, or just that we’ve accepted the obvious?
Even climate change denial has moved from denying the fact to denying that we can fix anything, for either economic or technical reasons.
The governance crisis: how can we follow science on so many things, how can countries completely change on short order, but not for this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Hearing_of_James_E._Han...
Hansen is still going and has been ringing the alarm that we have deeply under estimated the relative carbon loading and heating potential on emissions. There is a real fear that we have locked in a lot more warming potential than the models have been predicting via several factors. Namely carbon warms slightly more than anticipated, more methane releases, great water vapor levels as a result of the previous two and reduced reflective materials decreasing our relative albedo.
A few years ago EU voted to define two technologies as green. One was natural gas, and the other was nuclear. Which parties voted for natural gas, and which parties voted for nuclear?
There is a EU decision to phase out ICE in cars. A good continuation would be to issue a similar decision to phase out ICE in the energy grid. It would be nice if both sides could just join together on such decision.
"A completely fossil-free energy system" ("Ett helt fossilfritt energisystem" (1)) yesteryear and now lower fuel prices than 20 years ago (adjusted for inflation, yes).
(1) https://moderaterna.se/app/uploads/2022/03/220326FemVallöfte...
Problems have solutions, predicaments have responses. We are in a predicament, and the quicker and more direct we can respond the better chance we have to adverting the more nasty paths of the future.
1. It isn't happening.
2. It is happening but we aren't doing it.
3. It is happening and we are doing it but it won't be as bad as we think.
4. It is happening but it is too late to do anything.
5. Acceptance.
The wild card 6th step was 'Jewish Space lasers' or 'Jewish weather control'. It is always the Jewish people who get the rough end of the stick. It was something I wasn't anticipating coming up but here we are, hitting new lows.
This isn’t a “it’s summer, and fires burn” type of a deal. Even though most fires are set by idiots on purpose, it spreads so well because everywhere is dry. Most parcs and fields look like savannas instead of the usual green.
Climate is changing drastically, exactly as predicted.
But that's not really the point being debated. Nobody is claiming climate change invented wildfires. But it is making the conditions for extreme fires more common. The IPCC concludes with high confidence that fire hazard conditions, including heatwaves and fire weather, have increased across Europe since 1980, particularly in southern and western Europe, even though ignition sources and land management still matter.
Climate change is increasing the odds that fires become larger and harder to control.
Western Europe has also experienced increasingly frequent and severe droughts in recent years. Those prolonged dry conditions leave forests and vegetation far more combustible, making fires spread faster and burn more intensely once they start.
I don't think it will be grim forever, this isn't "DOOOOMED, WE ARE ALL DOOMED!" but I am not holding out for the Frutiger Aero future of only a few decades back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Benz
begging governments to solve the problem has obviously failed; focusing our efforts on fostering ideas and inventions is our best hope at getting our of this mess.
Given the dominance of state level actors in fossil fuel extraction (a role they did not have in horse based transport), to deny states have a role in decarbonizing energy seems naive. I don’t see what’s unreasonable to suggest that the current massive resources states put into supporting fossil fuel consumption and spending on wars to protect its production and distribution be redirected towards accelerating the adoption of modern clean energy production and use.
Build…
More…
Datacenters…
But seriously, hacker news routinely denies the obvious when it comes to climate crisis.
There was already an issue but it has just been amplified.
Fascinating, we’ve got sentient clouds before sentient AI
"Witness to Disaster | National Geographic" - https://youtu.be/clTeqIpGBeU
https://youtu.be/clTeqIpGBeU?t=1734
At 29:00 pyrocumulonimbus is explained.
Thank you for your service everyone, these are real life heroes like the ones you see on Star Wars movies but real.
It is currently marking my little town as under fire / burned down, but it's not and hasn't been so far. (north west front of the fire, next to the lake). It looks like their contouring algorithm is very greedy and any hot spot marked in the past few days has become part of their fire perimeter.
The massive fire clouds probably contribute to the difficulty of measuring ground temperature from satellite.
https://incendieencours.fr/en/incendies says 17 ongoing and 92 recent in France. I can't promise they count the same way, but… the motive's also substantially different:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgxv8n7wd0o
> Most fires here are illegally started by humans, according to scientists, the Federal Police, and the government: loggers and miners looking to exploit land in the Amazon, or farmers turning it into pasture.
But then, it's real that Bolsonaro was criminally negligent on fire-avoidance. What we will discover next year is how much of it could be avoided at all.
Never let them live this down
Picture from the french "moderate" right journal Le Figaro, mai 2026.
"investigation into environmental alarmists"
https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/globalwarming2ed/chpt/bush...
Bush II dismantled NASA's mission statement to monitor the world, for example. This is not a new foe, and I have not forgotten. https://www.ucs.org/resources/nasa-earth-removed-mission-sta...
I mean ultimately it is everyone who ever bought an electronic product or drove an automobile or ate a burger right?... At some level. But it just seems like this level of anger should be directed at the actually decision makers and their lackeys... or are u claiming that there is some sort of functioning democracy that holds power accountable, because most of the electorate like wars and bombing and usury and these things too? If you must be angry, and not saying you shouldn't be, please focus it on the correct source and not other powerless people, misinformed as they may be.
Real examples, I dont live in the west, I don't vote, I don't give any money to corpos, not firsthand, I am typing on an ancient probably third hand device and other than utilities it's negligible. I try to be as self sufficient as possible and create as less waste as I can ...this is not futilist...these are small things that make a difference at scale. But ultimately once the next round of guillotines has run its course, which is unenviable and inevitable at this point. We need to find a way to educate ourselves and balance our desires...which will be very hard yes. Not fultile.
Or you mean "big corpos"? Why does the size matter?
Or do you mean that those are unethical corporations?
So let's focus on preventing them from doing unethical things them.
In any case, we are living in society, so it is better to cooperate, and to no add but multiply our competences in order to create the future's solutions.
Living "by ourselves", all 8 billions of us, is the recipe for flash-burning through all of the planet's resources.
All of us just using wood for energy is just stupid and short-lived. Our "ancestors" lived on a much different planet and were much less many.
But let's not fall into the trap of hoping that violence can rescue us. That's the opposite of a solution. All the most devoid of ideas and of creativity, the most bloodthirsty, will win, and those are the least capable of well managing the planet in the future. (We are looking for how to prevent corporations to do unethical things, so we cannot at the same time call for guillotines.)
I'm not knocking capital and it's use in development I'm knocking usury, the immoral use of capital for things that don't take into account personal responsibility.
And violence is not maybe the best way, I don't practice or preach it, but its way we have chosen for the entirety of our past and it's probably the most "natural" way, thus I would argue inevitable. And ya no doubt it will suck for most of the planet, but the planet isn't going anywhere after all..just you and me, and I'm fine with that honestly.
And of course fighting against the idiotic far-right propaganda, largely responsible for the climate inaction.
Which by the way in the US has recently passed the stage of "inaction" to enter the realm of actively destroying the planet.
Options like VR glasses?
Or even a full VR suit?
Personally I cannot put up with living in a city, but humans can adopt to surprising conditions of living.
But I am very much with you on the abundance mindset as the actual solution. Better tech, more of it.
This is where "people watching Fox News" are guilty here, they got the wrong information and thus are really not able to decide to "eat less meat" or "avoid ICE vehicles".
So Fox News is a real culprit. But let's not forget that many different news channels exist, with an infinitely better coverage of AGW.
So I actually think it is perfectly OK to blame people for watching Fox News.
We need big funding and legal maneuvers to actually fix the problem. That or praying very hard that renewables are so good they can free-market fix everything without any additional pushes.
And this is not an earthquake, it happens every years at the same time.
It is too easy to blame climate change.
And climate change is making them worse.
But don't worry, it's not just about fires. The same can be said about pretty much everything they've done.
Specifically, eating out may even save energy. Arguing on HN consumes very little of it. Same with watching football on tv
(/s, it's a joke, like this one: https://i.imgur.com/CMsAp8v.png )
Unfortunately for us, the Earth has no preferences and doesn't run on our schedule.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F3...
Just a few more GPUs ought to fix it.
It thinks for a few days, cross comparing everything in written history and then comes back with only a single sentence.
"Love the Earth and life like you love yourselves."
Then it goes quiet not answering anything else.
I can't recall his name but I think he had a mustache.