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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

#301

Post by Loquebantur »

OJFord wrote: post #297
reco98gg wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#302

Post by zipy124 »

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.

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

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#303

Post by dzink »

mctaylor wrote: post #227
tirant wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wa…

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,…

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#304

Post by lbriner »

timpera wrote: post #233
manyatoms wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#305

Post by Loquebantur »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #282
evomassiny wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 bac…

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#306

Post by touristtam »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #245
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.

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#307

Post by mytailorisrich »

Loquebantur wrote: post #305
mytailorisrich wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bac…

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 "…

Thanks for illustrating my point...

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#308

Post by yubblegum »

othello wrote: post #288
yubblegum wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

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)

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#309

Post by Loquebantur »

wosk wrote: post #180

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 Portu…

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.

Re: French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

#310

Post by phikappa »

mctaylor wrote: post #227
tirant wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wa…

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,…

"but "Green policies forbid those actions nowadays" is a bit of a dogwhistle that you oppose environmental protection regulations broadly (not merely overzealous ones that have side-effects that make combating certain types of wildfires harder in certain situations)"

thats a bit of a "dogwhistle" that you're not actually convinced that green policies can ever be deranged and counterproductive. On the contrary. I don't know if you're a a brainwashed virtue signaler, but I'm assuming it. You don't say so outright, but the mental gymnastics of calling someone a climate changer denier who just said climate change is widely recognised are staggering.

This truly is the least intelligent timeline. Please check with Dunning and Kruger if you're part of the problem.

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