World on fire: Five times more wildfires are burning in southern Africa than in Brazil

Kevin Varley
Bloomberg
Sat, 24 Aug 2019 21:20 UTC

Blazes burning in the Amazon have put heat on the environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro, but Brazil is actually third in the world in wildfires over the last 48 hours, according to MODIS satellite data analyzed by Weather Source.

Weather Source has recorded 6,902 fires in Angola over the past 48 hours, compared to 3,395 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 2,127 in Brazil. It's not an uncommon phenomenon for Central Africa.

According to NASA, which operates the Aqua satellite, over 67,000 fires were reported in a one-week period in June last year, as farmers employed slash and burn agriculture to clear land for crops.

Over the last 48 hours, Zambia placed fourth on the list, while Brazil's neighbor in the Amazon, Bolivia, placed sixth.

Comment: Fires started by farmers are not wildfires, unless the burn gets out of control.

Now, the question is, how many of Brazil's wildfires are just controlled burns? Given the overall increase - year-on-year - in actual uncontrolled, naturally-started, or at least naturally-fueled, wildfires everywhere - from Alaska to California to Scotland to Siberia - in recent years, there's clearly a background rate of increase that the media is ignoring or conflating with man-made burns, all in service of the overall myth that climate change is driven by human activities.

It's not. After accounting for controlled, man-made burns, parts of the world are 'on fire' as part of increasing weather and other planetary extremes...