Wildfires

Extreme weather displaced a record seven million in first half of 2019

Lily Puckett
The Independent
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 06:11 UTC

© Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters
Stranded passengers in a railway station in Kolkata, India, in May after trains were canceled because of Cyclone Fani.

Up to 22m people are estimated to be displaced by the end of the year

A record seven million people were displaced by disasters in the first half of 2019, suggesting that mass displacement due to extreme weather events is "becoming the norm," according to a new report.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, which uses data from governments, United Nations humanitarian agencies, and media coverage to create its reports, concluded that nearly twice as many people were displaced in the first half of the year by weather events than by conflict and violence. The report was compiled before Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas - the numbers affected by that storm are still unclear.

IDMC estimates that the number of new displacements associated with weather events will reach 22m by the end of the year, more than tripling the current number, and making 2019 one of the worst years for climate displacement since records began.

Comment: Watch SOTT's monthly Earth Changes Summary for extreme weather events that are occurring worldwide these days.

Australia's east coast battles more than 100 bushfires

Will Ziebell
Reuters
Sat, 07 Sep 2019 19:12 UTC

© Regi Varghese
A bushfire rages near the rural town of Canungra in the Scenic Rim region of South East Queensland, Australia, September 6, 2019.

Australian firefighters battled strong winds and fast-moving blazes on Saturday as they worked to contain out-of-control bushfires that have destroyed at least 21 homes across two states on the country's east coast.

More than 100 fires were burning in the states of Queensland and New South Wales on Saturday, with the nation's weather bureau forecasting little reprieve for firefighters due to dry conditions caused by drought and little rainfall over winter.

In the north-eastern state of Queensland, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said 51 fires were active on Saturday and 17 homes had been destroyed, with the risk posed by fires remaining high for several days despite temperatures cooling.

Wildfires destroy more than one-million hectares of Bolivian rain forest

Dan Collyns
CGTN America
Sat, 31 Aug 2019 21:27 UTC

Bolivia is seeking help from China, Russia and France in fighting fires in its section of the Amazon. CGTN's Dan Collyns reports that more than one-million hectares of Bolivian rain forest have been destroyed.

Just when it seems like there's nothing left to burn, some of the fires in Bolivia have reignited in places already blackened. The firefighters, mostly made up of trained volunteers, are battling on multiple fronts.

In some areas of the forest, there are still hundreds of fires, some of which have reactivated. That's why the firefighters work at night, when it's much easier to see the embers and make sure they're fully extinguished. It's hot, the air is full of ash and smoke, and the ground is so hot you can feel it coming through your shoes.

Wielding machetes and shovels and water hoses, they douse the smoking remains.

"We're trying to reduce the fires to a minimum but they are still what we call a category 3, which is relatively strong in this area," said one fireman.

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

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: 60 million year old half truths and burning forests

Adapt 2030
Fri, 30 Aug 2019 23:25 UTC

Guardian claiming a plant in the UK hasn't reproduced in 60 million years but has begun to grow both male and female cones because of climate change, but the last inter-glacial 130,000 years prior was 2-3C warmer than today. Brazilian rain-forest losses far greater in 1995, 2004-2005 than today by a factor of 4X.

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

Annual Amazon farmland burn sets records for international outrage

Valerie Richardson
The Washington Times
Mon, 26 Aug 2019 16:48 UTC

Every year, farmers in the Amazon set fires to clear agricultural land during the dry season starting in August, but this year may be a record-setter, not for the number of fires, but for the global outrage.

The G-7 nations pledged Monday about $40 million to help fight fires in the Amazon rainforest in response to the outcry from celebrities, media outlets and leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, who said the blazes represented an "international crisis."

Climate scientist Roy Spencer had another term for the fires: "normal agriculture."

"I think the media focus on this is misplaced and exaggerated, as is virtually every weather-related story that appears these days," said Mr. Spencer, a former NASA scientist who does consulting on global crop-market forecasting.

"The driest years in Brazil will have the most fires set by farmers," the professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville said in an email. "That isn't a climate story, it's normal agriculture in a country where 50 million people living in poverty are trying to survive."

Wildfires ignite across Indonesia with 700 sites identified

BBC
Fri, 23 Aug 2019 14:48 UTC

A man watches on as forests helplessly burn on the Indonesian island of Sumatra

As fires rage in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, the south-east Asian nation of Indonesia is witnessing a similarly devastating ecological tragedy unfold.

The dry season has arrived in Indonesia - home to some of the world's oldest tropical forests - bringing with it its worst annual fire season since 2015.

Close to 700 hotspots have been identified in fire-prone regions in Sumatra, Kalimantan and the Riau islands.

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...

Wildfires scorch Africa but world's media stay focused on Brazil's blazes

RT
Sat, 24 Aug 2019 19:24 UTC

A tract of burnt jungle in Boca Do Acre, Brazil

Forest fires are tearing through the Amazon rainforest, prompting worldwide protests and demands for action to protect the "lungs of the world." But, away from the spotlight, the Brazilian fires are dwarfed by blazes in Africa.

Fires visible from space are currently burning up the Amazon rainforest at a rate of three football fields per minute, according to Brazilian satellite data. Brazil's National Institute for Space Research reported an 83 percent increase in wildfires on last year, with more than 72,000 fires spotted, 9,000 last week alone.

The climate prophets have spoken!

Tony Heller
YouTube
Sat, 24 Aug 2019 16:02 UTC

In this video I show how the press creates unimpeachable appeals to authority - by attaching the words "scientists say" to nonsense the journalists simply made up.

Apocalyptic scenes in Brazil as smoke from major Amazon wildfires turns cities dark by lunchtime

7news.com.au
Wed, 21 Aug 2019 10:18 UTC

Brazil's space agency has revealed a record number of fires are burning across the Amazon rainforest as smoke chokes cities across the country.

President Jair Bolsonaro is facing increasing pressure to take action against illegal deforestation fires that have spread across vast areas of the largest rainforest on the planet.

It comes as the city of Sao Paulo was brought to a grinding halt on Monday after choking smoke from fires in the states of Amazonas and Rondonia - almost 3000km away - caused a complete power blackout.