Comment by markdown
1 day 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.
1 day 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.
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%.
It does seem that the area burnt p/year by wildfires hasn't grown in the last 40 years in Europe, and even decreased slightly. This is somewhat odd to me. The evacuation and disruption of settlements seems to have increased in severity in the last few years, or at least the media gives that perception. If I'm looking at the wrong data and this could be misleading, then apologies.
The chart I'm looking at (1980-2020):
- https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/maps-and-charts/burnt-...
This one starts in the 00s but goes to 2024, and also shows a decrease:
- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-area-burnt-by-wild...
Do you have the data that goes as far back as 80 years ago though?
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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"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.
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They've actually been there for less than two centuries, just to be pedantic.
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?"
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.
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.
But one pine forest in France has burned badly in the past as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire
Did you check for forest fires in the past?