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French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

france24.com

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Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#181

Post by Ma8ee »

rasz wrote: post #113
senderista wrote: post #85

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.

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#182

Post by breppp »

artisinal wrote: post #74
Dibby053 wrote: post #57

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…

Might be time to revert it back to wetland.

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

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#184

Post by Marsymars »

Ma8ee wrote: post #171
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#185

Post by vasco »

cineticdaffodil wrote: post #31

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

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#186

Post by darkwater »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #60
j1elo wrote: post #56

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#187

Post by superfrank »

markdown wrote: post #162
superfrank wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

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?"

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#188

Post by applepearlime »

reco98gg wrote: post #173
yoghurtwere wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#189

Post by cindyllm »

applepearlime wrote: post #188
reco98gg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#190

Post by darkwater »

vasco wrote: post #178
reco98gg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, exactl…

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.
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