French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time | Hacker News Reader

French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

france24.com

462 pointssaaaaaam367 comments

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.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2026/07/27/le-pyrocum...

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.

> 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).

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.

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.

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.

Spot on. But logic is lost on people who are ideologically motivated.

> You're conceptually wrong about "the theory" and factually about the majority of fires.

Well then prove me wrong...

The BDIFF publishes data of close to 30 years of wildfires reports.

If you plot the number of wildfire occurrences per year, you will see a decreasing curve up to 2010, then a constant rise onward, forming a U shape. I don't think you will find any correlation with global warming data there.

If you plot a pie chart of investigated wildfire causes, you will see the top cause being "criminal" at 35% of investigated occurrences, followed by "Involontary individual" (the simple minded guy with his cigaret but) at 25%, and "Involontary work" at 15%.

Now let me repeat again, I'm not saying that CC does not play a role in this story (not sure why I bother since it does not seem like people really try to understand the comments anymore), what I'm saying is that data does not really exhibit any obvious correlation between the two, and would suggest that even if CC is a factor, then other factors would seem to have a much greater impact.

Said impacting factors are not hard to find btw, and top is: investments in prevention and detection (which positively correlates with French BDIFF data FYI), and addition of stoppers and lay-lines in man made forests (yes, because the majority of French forests are not natural but man shaped as huge lumps of uninterrupted tree)

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.

Ah, would the world not be full of so many simple-minded people, we'd all be free!

[edited out things that were badly worded]

Wildfires being incited by arsonists don't contradict climate effects, neither would an increase in arson.

But it's important to point out arson instead of ignoring it, even more so when the situation is dangerous. Agreed.

It's just also important to do research on the environment that sustains our lives, no matter how many know-it-alls tell you that the sweet fountain of fossil fuels will enlighten us forever, no matter how wasteful and corrupt we are in distributing its yield.

What is with this snark? Why do we assume that everyone who says anything even slightly challenging to the narrative directly blaming climate change, is aligned with pro-fossil fuel interests?

Instead, why not, for example, show the model of what would have happened to the fire if the current weather in the region had been a couple of degrees cooler? (I mean, it's not as if we can even do a ceteris paribus comparison to the stats on wildfires from pre-industrial times; there is way too much ceteris to paribize.)

I am not capable to assess the direct effect of CC on the probability of this disaster.

I question what is the value or helpfulness of continuing to doubt scientifically proven facts. The summer heatwaves and other natural disasters have increased enough in my lifetime to witness it, but even if that wasn't the case,

I consider dismissing widely accepted scientific results using words like "simple-minded" as pretty much the definition of snark.

As a reflection on my original comment (I depend on fossil fuels myself, like we all do):

Of course, shortening the reasoning enough, attributing any weather event to climate change, or even the climate alone, is impossible. I don't like beligerent simplifications myself. But that's why the quoted sentence in the original comment is about frequency, not just this particular wildfire season. At least that's what I thought.

The mechanisms of the short-term disruption of the Earth's climate due to greenhouse gas emissions and habitat destruction are more and more well-understood, as far as I know, though.

All reports that I read have phrasing that states the problems of climate attribution carefully, often including a paragraph about the importance of wildfires for the natural cycle.

In my opinion, claiming that not dedicating the problems of climate attribution at least 3 paragraphs in every report on a natural disaster that mentions climate change, is short-sighted (to use a different word).

In statistics, you can always play devil's advocate.

If Europe would be covered in ice in 50 years, there would probably still be someone claiming "see, there's no such thing as global warming!"

I explicitly mentioned arson as relevant to balance my point, but my patience ran out at some point. It is important.

And climate change is at least as important.

I don't read attempts at attributing natural disasters to climate change as "direct" or "simple-minded". I think the science has surpassed this point about 50 yrs ago.

Have a nice day. I tried to edit out snark and hate it every time I get into such a discussion at all. But I also am at least irritated by climate-denialism (or feel a tendency towards it).

It's a terrible word, there should be a better one, but I don't think "climate science skeptics" cuts it...

I get into such discussions too often because I see us depending on fossil fuels, for the foreseeable future. As well as on water, housing, food, etc.

Related: Dust Bowl, a good, recent enough example of man-made large changes causing (albeit local) climate change. If I'm not mistaken. Fascinating topic.

> I question what is the value or helpfulness of continuing to doubt scientifically proven facts.

And I question why you believe that anyone here did doubt them.

> I consider dismissing widely accepted scientific results using words like "simple-minded" as pretty much the definition of snark.... In what world is calling climate attribution "simple-minded" not snark?

That is not what happened. The term "simple-minded" was not used to describe "scientific results" of any kind, nor the underlying scientific theory, nor any scientist involved. It was used to describe someone who carelessly started the fire.

Oof. that's on me then, because I did read the parts about people making fires and smoking in the forests, but still misread this.

I'll leave the rest of what I wrote as it is.

> Debating the shapes of clouds points to a fundamental dysfunctional disconnect on multiple levels.

No, it points to the HN community exhibiting the exact kind of neurodiversity that would be expected here. Specifically: an ability to compartmentalize, and to take interest in trying to be accurate about something less consequential, purely for accuracy's sake.

The fires being large enough to create their own thunderstorms is a proxy for intensity, hence the significance.

You're right about that, but that's a corner too much to turn for most people.

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.

Might be time to revert it back to wetland.

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.

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.

In this case no, all the water is drained. I don't think meaningful amounts are retained for agriculture.

The pine forest is the agriculture.

Well... Turns out that it went up in flames...

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.

Let it burn then?

People live there. So do animals and insects. Never mind the air pollution.

And later, different animals and insects will live there.

Oh ok this is fine then.

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.

Don't worry about the end of the world, I heard the cockroaches will survive the apocalypse.

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%.

Jail the arsonists is much better

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

or even just re-planting different types of trees

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.

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?

Possibly, but the other option is to let it return to barren wasteland. If left alone it'll find itself a new balance, eventually.

Burning the pine is how you end with a soil composed of 90% sand. Respecting the slow building of fertile soil is basic. There are several decicuous trees able to grow in very acid soils. Not so much in acid, plus sandy, plus salty.

A fact that is not being noticed is that pine trees forests evolve naturally to substitute the pines with a bigger mix of species so if you plant a pine monoculture you need to manage it to keep the monoculture. This forest evolution happens for free by natural means unless:

Sheep enter the forest or...

Weather is very cold or very hot or...

Soil is really poor, because wildfires.

Keep controlled this variables for a generation and the flammable monoculture problem will fix itself. All forests evolve to be eventually less flammable, but they need time to do this.

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.

We could reintroduce malaria, that might be a nice return to nature

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.

Article explaining when pine tree forest resist well or not to fire. https://www.sudouest.fr/faits-divers/incendies/incendies-en-...

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.

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.

They've actually been there for less than two centuries, just to be pedantic.

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?

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?"

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%.

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.

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

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.

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.

Villages all over the world since ancient times would have houses with some form of a summer kitchen. During hot days the temps in the house are already uncomfortable and cooking there would make things worse, so they built basic kitchen facilities away from the main house to keep heat and smoke and smells out (that also reduced some fire risks).

Many western countries now summer-kitchen most of their uncomfortable output to corrupt poorer countries where the leadership doesn’t mind taking cash for poisoning their citizens. The naïveté is then claiming that those poorer countries are then the main polluters. Recyclables in the US and a lot of Europe are shipped off to southeast asia thus 80% of plastics in the ocean are found there. A train of plastic to be burned was even shipped to Bulgaria (a EU member) by the mafia a few years ago.

In the mean time “carbon credit” companies have their offices in Hong Kong and are guilting Disney and Adidas and Apple and any Western public brands into paying for “carbon laundering”. Forests that would have been planted anyway for lumber collect carbon credits as extra income right before selling said lumber for consumption. It takes real faith to keep believing any of the activity actually removes carbon legitimately, but the money movement in that movement is very real.

While anyone can target the source of the warming with any resource they want to dedicate, and should be free to do so. Governments need to focus on mitigating the risks to human life and that involves real fire prevention (trimming, controlled burns - maybe smart tech the smoke so it gets captured instead of irritating the noses of non-summer-kitchen citizens), clean energy generation, and installing damn air conditioning units into old European capitals so Europeans don’t end up dying in droves from preventable basic climate change consequences.

"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.

> 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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...

> 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.

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...

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.

Thanks for illustrating my point...

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.

>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.

It's you that is (intentionally?) missing the forest for the trees (wordplay intentional). The overall pattern of worsening fires is clear and well-documented, and disingenously asking "Why Landes & Medoc specifically?" ignores the broader issue.

Nobody asked that. Information about the local ecology was volunteered, and was much more interesting than yet another argument (being had against nobody) that climate change is a major contributor.

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.

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.

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.)

I wonder what happened to the sparse and/or nomadic populations that used to inhabit and manage such areas of forest across North America...

Cultural burns are infeasible for forest management at scale. Paywalled, but not too difficult to get access to: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-wildf...

"Prescribed burning to reduce fire hazards has been employed throughout large parts of Australia. Yet robust scientific evidence showing that it is effective is remarkably limited. In some places, prescribed burning can reduce fire severity and restrict fire spread for a few years, but afterwards the regrowing vegetation becomes more flammable – an increased fire-risk effect that can last for many decades."

"A sobering fact is that prescribed burning makes very little difference in extreme-fire weather – precisely the conditions when most houses are lost and people die. One of us (Prof. Lindenmayer) lived through many weeks of extensive prescribed burns around the town of Marysville in the Australian state of Victoria. Just months later, in February, 2009, the entire town was razed by wildfire; all but a few buildings were destroyed and 34 people died. "

"Whilst Australia’s First Nations used cultural fires for hunting, promoting food growth and clearing pathways, it was not used for asset protection. The areas they burned were small and very localized."

"The huge scale and often very high intensity of the prescribed burns now being lit are the polar opposite of how First Nations people burnt the land. These massive-scale burns have significant negative impacts on the environment, on human health, and on Australia’s wildlife. For instance, medical data quite clearly show that Australians are far more likely to die from respiratory problems linked with prescribed burning than they are to die in a wildfire."

"An important fact – from an analysis of ice cores – is that many megafires have occurred in Australia over the past 2,000 years, even though First Nations people were applying cultural burns."

"Beyond the issue of the questionable effectiveness of widespread prescribed burns, scientific studies in Australia show that forests that are logged and then regenerated are characterized by a pulse of elevated flammability that can last for 40 to 70 years.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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?

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.

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.

> 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.

For me, it is more important to fight for human lives than fighting centrists or deniers tbh. You have to pick your battles.

It is centrists and deniers who are stopping us in implementing effective measures that would fight for human lives.

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.

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.

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?

Then focus on effects of climate rather then trying to make the rest of us shut up.

The likelihood of me getting you to focus on the effects on climate change are much higher than you convincing some lunatics. So I try not to shut you up, I try to funnel your energy. We both have the same ultimate goal.

First of all, "lunatics" are on the rise. They are largely winning and one of contributing factors is that non-lunatics did not opposed them for the sake of peace again and again.

Second, effects of climate change will just get worst if climate change itself is not addressed.

Third, you cant address effects of climate change if the only voices speaking are the "actually there is no climate change" voices.

> So I try not to shut you up, I try to funnel your energy.

We are talking about HN comments. Not about some grand advocacy. The only effect of us listening to you here is ... write nothing and move to comments thread about AI.

That propaganda trick isn't "one guy repeats stuff a thousand times" and works on a substantial subset of the population.

Human society isn't restricted to "focusing on one thing or the other".

That false dichotomy is another rhetoric trick utilized by interested parties that essentially follow the tobacco industry's playbook.

Deniers finally are a serious problem, as they provide social cover for those putting their personal interests even over human survival.

Vigorous repetition of position when you are facing opposition that vigorously repeats their position ... is the only option.

What you suggest leads to a word where only deniers tall, thus only their side is heard and thus they win. And yes, I was convinced by people I heard talking. I was never convinced by people who said nothing.

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.

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.

"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.

> 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.

* 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.

And you think the peatlands were natural? In France, in 1857, a stone's throw from Bordeaux?

It was already a huge product of human activity: the forest there was cut for firewood, great colds killed the rest in the XVIIe century and grazing sheeps kept it treeless. Pine was chosen because it is endemic and one of the few species able to grow on such poor soils, washed out by rain and sea salt.

You have to love all the people on this website giving advice on Europeans and Canadians on forest management, and that they should abandon any economic use of forests, while they see no problem with the rest of their economic choices fuelling global warming.

> And you think the peatlands were natural? In France, in 1857, a stone's throw from Bordeaux?

If it is indeed a question between "artificially forest" or "artificially peat", then pick what's most useful to humans at the moment: how much lumber is needed? Is resin tapping still important? How much more utility is that compared to having to deal with wildfires that seem to regularly rip through the area over the decades:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire

Does 100% of what is now forest 'have' to stay that way? Or 80%? 50?

> You have to love all the people on this website giving advice on Europeans and Canadians on forest management

1. I am Canadian.

2. The French themselves have considered doing something else besides the forest that is currently there:

* https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2022/08/16/mps-sho...

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648...

>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.

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

The current El Niño hasn't really had time to affect NW Europe yet, there's quite some lag there AIUI.

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.

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.

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.

> 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).

And cats. Don't forget cats.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/22/europe/arson-cats-italy-w...

> The problem is that species that grow slow are not being used and they would be less flammable

> The problem is that sheep are not allowed to graze

Choose one. Slow growing saplings, or sheep grazing on slow growing saplings.

> The problem is that many techniques to regenerate fresh grass for livestock are forbidden.

Because is a forest, not a meadow. The goal shouldn't be to breed sheep here. Farmers are always pressing to remove just a few trees, to make space, to burn bush for "regenerating grass". In the current situation, their short term interests aren't compatible with our middle and long term survival.

> The problem is that people migrated to the city

Good. Most wildfires are caused by people

> 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.

> 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.

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

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.

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...

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.

[1] https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/l-historique-des-f...

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.

Can confirm from my own experience that Fontainebleau forest is partly pine forests (40% according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Fontainebleau#Fauna,...).

And it does burn, but here are the history of fire:

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.

> 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.

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.

>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.

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.

>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.

You are falling for the voting fallacy: "my vote had a miniscule effect on the final result, why should I vote?". The paradox is that at the end, if everyone thinks so, nobody votes.

See also: collective action problem.

>You are falling for the voting fallacy

>See also: collective action problem.

I think you misread me - I'm not saying "Don't try to stop global warming", I'm saying "Don't focus on global warming when there is a forest fire".

The nation of France has a decent chance of preventing forest fires within their borders, but it won't happen by subsidizing electric cars or buying carbon credits. It will happen by adding firefighters, fire trucks, better training and such.

I'm not saying one thing has to exclude the other, but in this case they are competing for some of the same money.

Carbon credits and big conferences to discuss Paris agreements could pay for a *lot* of firefighters.

Agree about global warming.

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.

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].

[0]: https://youtu.be/eRoU3whzX_Q?t=450

ETA: clarification

Something about the Pine tree that the British also planted forests of them in the Levant: https://www.trtworld.com/article/9ab8ec0a341a

sounds like Japan

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.

What resources would you recommend to follow this event as it continues?

It’s in French but this crowd sourced website updates quite quickly : https://feuxdeforet.fr/gironde-33/saumos-22-07-2026-4367/

Needs a smoke layer like https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/

https://www.windy.com/-Menu/menu?camsEu,pm2p5,50.069,14.395,...

More layers -> PM2.5 is very telling.

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/

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:

https://static.actu.fr/uploads/2026/07/aeroport-bordeaux-fum...

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.

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.

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.

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

"ah, we're encased in flames here, eh?"

This video is so insane. They're in a combustion engine. I can not fathom why they survived let alone managed to drive out of this. Trains are not build for fire resistance.

I'm 500 km away in Hérault and this morning was a tad hazy with smoke from there! Impressive I'd say.

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.

Interesting. Have you tried back testing your model agains fire data to analyze how well you could predict fire likelihood?

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.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landes_forest

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.

> 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.

> 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...

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.

>Yes, I'm well aware that Landes naturally should be an extensive sandy marsh.

No, it shouldn't. It used to be a forest but was cut down by firewood and sheep grazing.

Stop with the "return to nature" fallacy. With how things are going, even "natural" forests are going to burn down.

Ah, I thought that was the main vegetation present beforehand? What kind of forest was it before it was cut down?

A mixed forest with oak, beech and the like, as you can find higher north. But that was during the middle ages' European "little ice age", when the winters were much colder, and the Thames and the Netherlands froze over. That's also likely the reason why the forest was cut so much to feed fires.

https://daily.jstor.org/climate-canvasses-of-the-little-ice-...

As an aside, N. III's reign seems to have been overall something of a disaster for the French.

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.

[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...

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)

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.

wow amazing comment. awesome rebuttal or whatever you spell it

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.

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.

Do you not just make them much wider?

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.

arsonists can walk.

How can you identify large scale insect infestation from satellite imagery?

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).

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>

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...

https://archive.is/20260725052942/https://www.seattletimes.c...

"East" of Seattle is certainly one way to describe it (100 miles east).

Taylor Swift recently got married east of Seattle

And, technically, west of Seattle.

Would you feel weird with someone saying 100 miles North of Miami, 100 miles Sourth of Orlando, 100 miles west of Huston, 100 miles South of Chicago?

If they left of the distance yes.

Some more photos without a paywall. https://westseattleblog.com/2026/07/about-that-huge-cloud-vi...

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.

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.

To be fair, it's not the article that's the problem. Pyrocumulonimbus is the accepted scientific name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_flammagenitus.

Thanks for the article. However, the article mentions that they might involve precipitation.

Yes, they might. The grandparent comment of this thread in multiple different ways, not just the name.

The term used by the UK Royal Meteorological Society is pyrocumulonimbus: https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/pyrocumulonimbus-clouds

It rains ash. While it’s a metaphorical use of “rain” it’s physically accurate.

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.

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].

[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...

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.

People need to learn what compound words are.

Well, I was confidently wrong about that. I stand corrected, thanks for the pointers.

Comment threads like these are why I read HN comments.

Thank you for the insights, both of you.

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

Apparently this cloud can create lightning and its own wind though

it rains hellfire

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.

"Witness to Disaster | National Geographic" - https://youtu.be/clTeqIpGBeU

https://youtu.be/clTeqIpGBeU?t=1734

At 12:00 pyrocumulus is explained.

At 29:00 pyrocumulonimbus is explained.

We get these in the Australian bushfire season, the weather systems they create can flip a 10 tonne fire appliance. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/31/volun...

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.

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.

Could start with Sulphur spray into atmosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...

Wonder how much 2020 Bunker Fuel ban contributed.

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.

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.

Yay, acid rains.

Geoengineering proposals spring from the same impulse as climate denial — anything to avoid consequences for those contributing to the crisis.

Is this about some kind of sense of "justice", or is it about solving the problem?

Geoengineering proposals are often unserious because the point is to give the appearance of doing something while the root cause goes unaddressed. "No need to reconsider those fossil fuel subsidies because [fanciful geoengineering proposal] will save the day!"

That has not at all been my experience of listening to such people.

And, what subsidies? The fossil fuel companies are just trying not to get legislated out of business, last I checked. In my book the disruptive subsidies are for corn (encouraging irresponsible land use; solar panels in those fields would be far more energy efficient).

I’m as uninterested in debating someone who denies the existence of fossil fuel subsidies as I am in debating climate denialists. I recommend that interested parties perform a trivial web search.

I literally advocated for solar power and you want to be rude to me because you perceive me as an enemy here. Please reconsider.

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.

The mono culture AND the encroachment on flood plain is still to this day and issue.

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.

We can't even agree on wasting less fuel or moving to less damaging fuel sources.

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.

Lets have a resume:

Biggest wildfire in the history of Spain: 2026

Biggest wildfire in the modern history of Norway: 2026

Biggest wildfire in Austria: 2026

Biggest wildfire in Germany: 2025

Biggest wildfire in Denmark: 2025

Biggest wildfire in UK: 2025

Biggest wildfire in Montenegro: 2025

Biggest wildfire in Serbia: 2025

Biggest wildfire in Albania: 2025

Biggest wildfire in Bulgaria: 2025

Biggest wildfire in Malta: 2025

Biggest wildfire in Ukraine: 2024

Biggest wildfire in USA: 2024

Biggest wildfire in Greece: 2023

Biggest wildfire in Switzerland: 2023

Biggest wildfire in Czechia: 2022

Biggest wildfire in Slovenia: 2022

Biggest wildfire in Italy: 2021

Biggest wildfire in Turkey: 2021

Biggest wildfire in Poland: 2020

Biggest wildfire in Ireland: 2020

Plus some special honorary mentions for some of the largest wildfires in:

- France: 2026

- Lithuania: 2026,

- Estonia: 2026.

- Cyprus: 2025

Almost every European country and USA suffered the biggest wildfires in their whole history in the same period as the Ukraine war. France still can sing bingo. Almost there.

Hungary on the other hand, suffered their biggest wildfire in 2012. One hurrah for Hungary. And Croatia in 2017, congratulations. I wonder what is different to the other countries here. They must clean their forests really good.

Spain is also completely on fire - there's a website that collects all official information and locates every fire on a map:

https://xn--incendiosespaa-2nb.es/ (in Spanish)

It is disheartening to see how everything is basically in red.

spain loses ~240,000 acres to wildfire every year. this is larger than normal, but fire is normal there

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.

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

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...

Yes that's what I meant by "this one is larger than normal"

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.

Spain planted eucalyptus in state forrest. Tha treeis a bomb.

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.

Explain not with malice, what can be explained by stupidity. Eucalyptus is part of a fire ecology.

The most common species used does not stand cold and needs a lot of water. This means that they are often restricted to the humid parts of the country near the seashore. They have also owners that seen it as valuable, and regrow as trees, not as a pasture, so unsurprisingly they burn much less than people would expect.

Some very big wildfires with criminally suspicious causes are based on Eucaliptus, but pines and forest regeneration on the low bush state are the worse offenders, as they were actively targeted first by locals and now also by foreigners. Locals hate young bushes of the less flammable species with passion here. They really can't refrain themselves from keep burning it.

Laws that forbid the change of use of land did make a big difference in the past, but are seen as ideological and were revoked by far right politicians. The start of wildfire waves after that move was immediate. This happened a few years ago. One step forward is followed by two steps backward.

Meh, everything emboldens them. Pretending there is no change also emboldens them.

If you unzoom even more, even the sea is red. I don't think this map shows what you think it does.

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.

Is it me or is the map broken as it's blocked by OSM. I get tiles that say: Access blocked ..... osm.wiki/Blocked ?

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?

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.

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.

acceptance; the problems identified. efforts now should focus on innovative solutions that dont rely on nation state investment.

Why? The vast majority of fossil fuel production globally is through state-owned companies.

in the 1800's, were the vast majority of horses produced through state owned companies? that process was upended by human ingenuity.

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.

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.

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.

From what I read in another comment this was caused by Napoleon.

Napoleon did his geo-engineering 150 years ago, in a completely different world. He's not the one to blame here.

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.

He planted highly flammable trees is a hot part of the country. Even in his times it got 35 degrees over there.

Must…

Build…

More…

Datacenters…

But seriously, hacker news routinely denies the obvious when it comes to climate crisis.

That's because there is the chance that it will benefit them short term over others. F U I got mine! Or just ignorance.

Where are you seeing such denial?

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.

> 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...

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.

James Hansons Senate hearing was in 1988, so at least 38 years since it was brought front and center.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

(1) https://moderaterna.se/app/uploads/2022/03/220326FemVallöfte...

Fuel prices is one of those things where people will complain about Iran war driving prices up, and then in the next sentence complain that low fuel taxes will encourage consumption. The reduction in taxes has basically removed half of the price on gasoline, but with the increase in global market price this has only resulted in a minor price reduction in total. For diesel the price is still above that of last year.

It will be interesting to see if researchers will find any significant behavioral change from having half the fuel prices compared to nearby countries. Personally I doubt it will be a significant statistical difference, but it is a perfect time to get some real data if people treat fuel as a necessity and pay what the market demands, or if its a luxury product where consumption goes up and down based on price.

Right-wing politics being opposed to environmental action is so weird when back in the day right-wing politicians didn't have such an issue with it (for example this speech by Margaret Thatcher: <https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107346>).

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.

We can fix it nonetheless, we have the resources and the need. We broke it and we will fix it

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

France has more than 6 million people. I think you meant 0.5%

Yes

The sources I can readily find place the total extent of forest fires in France this year at 40,000 hectares, still less than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire .

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.

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.

What does the means to fight the fire have to do with the starting cause of a fire?

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.

0.5% you mean? France population is over 60 million people.

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.

Thank you for this

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.

That's remember me of https://www.france24.com/en/20190824-macron-france-brazil-bo...

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.

Wow, the audacity of that guy. When is the rest of the world sanctioning France for these fires?

> 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:

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.

[flagged]

>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.

Google Maps provides overlays for wildfires and air quality. I can watch Western Europe from here.

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.

https://support.google.com/maps/answer/9985621#zippy=%2Csour...

> This smoke cloud generates its own weather system

Fascinating, we’ve got sentient clouds before sentient AI

In other news, July 23 has recorded the busiest flight day ever with over 150k flights: https://simpleflying.com/over-150000-flights-airlines-busies...

“Australia enters the chat”

fire force

So, if you used climate credits, to build up those forrests. Do they get nil and void, if those forrests burn up?

They should go negative because the gigantic amount of CO2 being released right now because of the obvious incompetence of the authorites is criminal.

Bold to assume that buying emission offsets actually leads to anything tangible being done.

It fills the pockets of grifters.

Saving the environment with Microsoft Excel.

A lot of the more realistic environmentalists very quickly figured out that it was nothing more than an accounting trick.

Greta Thunberg announces she has gone 'net-zero' on swearing after 'f-bomb' furore - https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/greta-t...

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.

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.

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.

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?

You claim a new tree on your insurance.

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)

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.

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.

So 20% of the trees get planted later or maybe never? How is that better?

If you want a credit you need to plant 5x the trees under this system.

Ok. But what about just making the credits 5x more expensive without requiring monstrous bookkeeping of tree populations and their associated credits over centuries?

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.

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.

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.

Sure, the point is that carbon credits are issued for a certain area of land to be and stay forested.

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.

I hope I'm not the only one who wanted to check PyPi to see what package is this... '-.-

this package drops u in the line of fire.

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.

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.

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.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

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.

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.

Here is the image/tweet that will live on for a long while regarding the accelerated timeline.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F3...

on average, 240k acres burn every year in Spain. this is somewhat larger, but not abnormal. it's just near people this time.

I guess I need a disclaimer on every comment that says "climate change is obviously real you can save your downvotes"

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.)

Too keep it from killing too many people too fast, anyway.

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.

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