European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Wildfires and global warming spiral

by Laurent GUERBY
Sat Jul 29th, 2006 at 06:43:29 AM EST

From Agoravox (in french), an interesting graph:

The idea is that climate change is giving us more powerful thunderstorms which in turn is lighting more wildfire which release more CO2 into the atmosphere which reinforces global warming.

I don't know if the numbers are significant compared to human carbon-emitting activities, any idea?

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Wildfires and global warming spiral | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Wildfires and global warming spiral (none / 0)

I don't know about the science...but I do know that much of the US has been experiencing 2-3 weeks of high temperatures...much over 100 degrees f. I just talked to my cousin in LA, and she said that in San Fernando Valley (just north of LA city) the temperature reached 118 in the last week (or something like 48c !!). They have wild fires already, and this fall will definitely be worse. Frightening...is this where we are heading, or is this only a rare occurence?

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

by whataboutbob on Sat Jul 29th, 2006 at 06:47:52 AM EST

Re: Wildfires and global warming spiral (none / 0)

I measured 37.8 Celsius outside my flat in Paris (and 34 inside but that's another story...).

I orderer a small "class A" air conditionner on July 11, but they screwed up the tagging and I'll get it only next week grrrr..

by Laurent GUERBY on Sat Jul 29th, 2006 at 07:16:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The area to worry about is Siberia (none / 0)

Apart from being a carbon sink for the equivalent of billions of supertankers, Siberia has almost NO firefighting capability.

Every summer the huge fires rage out of control and they are getting bigger. A colleague of mine who has flown regularly to China from Finland, says they are visible from the air as they cover such vast areas.

I saw an animation at the Finnish Forest Institute which showed that for a 2 degree C rise in average temperature, the entire Siberian region would become a tinderbox.

The Russians are developing special aircraft for water pick up and transport, and firefighting capabilities eg fire commandoes who parachute down to cut breaks. But it is a drop in the ocean to coin a phrase - there is NO infrastructure, no roads, no airfields, no way to fight these fires.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Sat Jul 29th, 2006 at 07:08:51 AM EST

Re: The area to worry about is Siberia (none / 0)

Yes, the Russians already have an excellent plane to fight forest-fires with water, retardants and parachuted teams and materials. See the whole description of the Beriev-200 plane in an earlier diary.

The problem is, only 7 are built so far and four of them are leased for this summer to Portugal and Italy. The Russians want sell planes abroad instead of using them themselves. There were fierce debates on this in the Russian parlement.(Any Russian around?)

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

by Elco B (elcob at scarlet dot be) on Sat Jul 29th, 2006 at 01:29:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Wildfires and global warming spiral (none / 0)

I'd love to see a down to earth comprehensive data on the carbon cycle.

Siberia fires are I assume mostly from natural origin, this means they've been happening forever, I'd love to know is this cycle is leaking or not.

by Laurent GUERBY on Sat Jul 29th, 2006 at 07:18:17 AM EST

Wildfires and global warming spiral | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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