Comment by reco98gg
1 day 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.
> 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
I responded to this elsewhere on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49065156
Basically they had no way to fight those fires at the time, as the article explains.
[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).
[1] https://cnes.fr/geoimage/aquitaine-littoral-landais-massif-f...
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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.
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You know this was once, 77 years 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.
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendie_de_1949_dans_la_for%C...
[2] https://www.fontainebleau-photo.fr/2013/08/les-incendies-de-...
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
[0]https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/les-causes-des-inc...
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.
[1] https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/l-historique-des-f...
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>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.
And global warming reached a critical point of worseness specifically in Landes & Médoc?
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.
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.
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