Climate Change Is Making Fire Weather Worse for World's Forests (nytimes.com) 26
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2023 and 2024, the hottest years on record, more than 78 million acres of forests burned around the globe. The fires sent veils of smoke and several billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, subjecting millions of people to poor air quality. Extreme forest-fire years are becoming more common because of climate change, new research suggests.
"Climate change is loading the dice for extreme fire seasons like we've seen," said John Abatzoglou, a climate scientist at the University of California Merced. "There are going to be more fires like this." The area of forest canopy lost to fire during 2023 and 2024 was at least two times greater than the annual average of the previous nearly two decades, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers used imagery from the LANDSAT satellite network to determine how tree cover had changed from 2002 to 2024, and compared that with satellite detections of fire activity to see how much canopy loss was because of fire. Globally, the area of land burned by wildfires has decreased in recent decades, mostly because humans are transforming savannas and grasslands into less flammable landscapes. But the area of forests burned has gone up.
"Climate change is loading the dice for extreme fire seasons like we've seen," said John Abatzoglou, a climate scientist at the University of California Merced. "There are going to be more fires like this." The area of forest canopy lost to fire during 2023 and 2024 was at least two times greater than the annual average of the previous nearly two decades, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers used imagery from the LANDSAT satellite network to determine how tree cover had changed from 2002 to 2024, and compared that with satellite detections of fire activity to see how much canopy loss was because of fire. Globally, the area of land burned by wildfires has decreased in recent decades, mostly because humans are transforming savannas and grasslands into less flammable landscapes. But the area of forests burned has gone up.
Re: (Score:2)
China is trying to fix it's stuff, but probably because coal power is causing a lot of deaths by air pollution.
Let's say that "yep, another 2 million died this year of air pollution" is a lot more solid and convincing than "the weather is acting weird".
Both are true, but one is more palpable.
Until (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the wealthy find their property is uninsurable, nothing will change.
Whilst greedy people can make money at the expense of others, or move the problem somewhere else in the globe, nothing is going to happen. It is terribly sad. Culturally we need to look at greed differently, it needs to become shamed so that money doesn't get you nice things.
Won't change then either. (Score:5, Insightful)
The wealthy can absorb the damage or complete destruction of their property. What they would not want to do is sabotage the circumstances that made them wealthy enough to acquire the property. The holders of wealth aren't likely to want to destabilize the world order so they can hold onto property that's at risk. They'll push that risk downstream first.
Re:Won't change then either. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of wealthy people have investments in land, that's why there's a push to RTO, because the land value of town centres is dropping as footfall is lower. As that has had enough knock on effect that business owners are throwing clout around to RTO, it follows that if the land is uninsurable the same business owners will take notice.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure they'll take notice. It just wont change any thing.
Re: Won't change then either. (Score:2)
That depends on which businesses you are referring to. Fewer and fewer retail and office businesses own their own real estate. The last big one I can think of is Sears. And we all know how that ended.
The property development, or more accurately the mortgage paper generation businesses might demand RTO. But the actual tennants can do what is best for themselves. Including closing up unused office space. Of course there will be pushback from the commercial real estate business. But the moral of the story is
Climate change is global; no place to hide wealth (Score:2)
Interesting take—but I’m not sure you're disagreeing with GP so much as sidestepping the core argument. The point wasn’t that a burned mansion breaks a billionaire, but that uninsurability is a market signal even the wealthy can’t ignore. It devalues land, kills liquidity, and—eventually—undermines the systemic wealth-preserving environment you referenced.
As you rightly noted, some of the wealthy will try to push risk downstream—but to where? Climate risk may begin
First World Problem (Re:Until) (Score:1)
Until the wealthy find their property is uninsurable, nothing will change.
That is a claim that sounds like global warming is a first world problem. Am I wrong?
We have something of a dilemma here, do we not? For anyone to be concerned with global warming then we'd have to get them to a point where their needs with some greater impact and urgency have been met. That means such a person has food, clean water, an education, a job, a place to live, clothing, some minimal semblance of medical care, some minimal semblance of safety and peace, and reliable and affordable energy. That
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For anyone to be concerned with global warming then we'd have to get them to a point where their needs with some greater impact and urgency have been met. That means such a person has food, clean water, an education, a job, a place to live, clothing, some minimal semblance of medical care, some minimal semblance of safety and peace, and reliable and affordable energy.
Well climate change is going to fuck up every one of those things before they have a chance to get to medical care on your list.
Drought and floods will take out their food, clean water and place to live. Good luck finding an education and job as a refugee in their next country. The rest isn't even a daydream to those people.
Re: (Score:1)
Well climate change is going to fuck up every one of those things before they have a chance to get to medical care on your list.
Are the people in this situation to believe that by trading in their Ford F-150 for a Chevy Bolt they can avoid the problems of global warming? That's unlikely. Then is the issue that expectations are that it would take 20 years to mine enough materials for replacing every car and light truck with a BEV equivalent. And that is considered a best case outcome.
There was something on Slashdot before on how China is powering their solar PV factories with coal. If anyone is to follow that model to mitigate ag
Re: (Score:2)
undoing moderation due to stray click.
Re: Seriously (Score:3)
Every Saturday, I sweep the forest here in California. So that part is taken care of, no need to concern yourself about it.
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In 2021 California set down $500 million to dethatch and clean up its 33 million acres of forest land in an effort to prevent the super spread of wildfires amid an ongoing and worsening drought that also threatened to overtax the state’s power grid that summer.
While some treatments do literally involve "raking" around large trees to reduce/eliminate fire damage to redwoods and giant sequoia. Thinning and fuel reduction treatments (mechanical or prescribed fire) need to happen on a landscape scale. Put
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Yes, and I swept up 3.25 acres every year for the last few years. When I say swept, I mean I ran over it with a brushcat. Took out lots of coyote brush and invasive broom (which goes up like gasoline - nasty stuff).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Your first link is an opinion piece, and the comments section tells me all I need to know about the intended audience.
"The fear narrative is impenetrable to facts and logic because it is a agenda that wants radical economic, social and political change. The "climate" or "environment" is merely a vehicle for the West's own version of the 1917 revolution."
From your second link:
"This doesn't mean that weather-related risks of wildfires have declined: warmer and drier conditions increase these risks. And despit
Several billion tons (Score:1)
https://news.aibase.com/news/14945