Re: The unspoken truth about wildfires

On Sat, 1 Aug 2026 17:30:27 -0700, Dude <[email protected]> wrote:

>On 8/1/2026 10:23 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
>> On Sat, 1 Aug 2026 18:04:46 +0100, Julian <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 30/07/2026 19:04, Julian wrote:
>>>> Bordeaux and Madrid are threatened by flames. In Sicily, arsonists tied
>>>> burning rags to the tails of cats to spread fires. Here in Britain the
>>>> Cairngorms and Peak District national parks are ablaze. It’s the climate
>>>> Armageddon, say the greens. If only we had built more wind farms and
>>>> eaten fewer cows this would not be happening.
>>>>
>>>> Hot, dry spells undoubtedly make fires more likely, but awkwardly for
>>>> those blaming climate change, wildfires are getting less frequent
>>>> worldwide, not more, as the globe warms. The acreage burned has
>>>> decreased steadily since 2000, according to Nasa’s satellites, and is
>>>> thought to have almost halved in a century. The great fires of 1871 in
>>>> Wisconsin and Michigan burned more than a million hectares long before
>>>> anybody drove a car, before even Joseph Swan’s first light bulb, when
>>>> the world was cooler.
>>>>
>>>> It is not just the trend that is surprising. Hard to believe, but this
>>>> year is an unusually quiet year for wildfire: so quiet it is breaking
>>>> records for lack of fires by this date, even in Europe. If you don’t
>>>> believe me, check the figures produced by the Global Wildfire
>>>> Information System: as of last week, the world had seen 106 million
>>>> hectares burn this year, the lowest at this date since these records
>>>> began in 2012. In Europe, just 3.6 million hectares have burned – less
>>>> than half the average for this date. That’s cold comfort to people
>>>> driven from their homes in France, but it is nonetheless a fact.
>>>>
>>>> The real issue is that climate change is a handy excuse for politicians
>>>> who have failed to take precautionary measures to prevent wildfires.
>>>> They can just shrug: it’s global warming, innit? It has been known for
>>>> many decades that in fire-prone habitats, the longer you go without a
>>>> fire, the worse the fires will be. So preventing the build-up of tinder
>>>> by controlled burns is the most important factor.
>>>>
>>>> The California filmmaker Gabriel Mann’s hard-hitting 2023 documentary
>>>> Hotshot showed in detail how fire suppression has made today’s fires
>>>> harder to control. He has no patience with those who use climate change
>>>> as an alibi. ‘They tell you the sky is falling and it’s all the fault of
>>>> our modern, shitty climate,’ he says. ‘But when was the climate not
>>>> shitty?’
>>>>
>>>> Here in Britain the government has consistently and relentlessly
>>>> demanded less ‘cool’ burning – low-intensity, controlled fires – in
>>>> winter on heather moorland, Britain’s most fire-prone habitat. Such
>>>> fires have been used by farmers and gamekeepers for generations to
>>>> create a mosaic of short and long heather. This encourages fresh young
>>>> heather shoots for sheep and grouse to feed on and makes open areas for
>>>> rare birds such as golden plover and curlew to nest in. If done in
>>>> winter it can burn off the rank heather plants while leaving the moss
>>>> underneath barely touched, as demonstrated by a famous video in which a
>>>> gamekeeper places a Mars bar in the moss, lights a fierce fire over it,
>>>> then picks up the unscorched, unmelted chocolate bar, unwraps it and
>>>> eats it.
>>>>
>>>> Natural England argues that regular cool burning harms the habitat;
>>>> researchers at York University and elsewhere argue the opposite: that it
>>>> encourages the growth of sphagnum moss and other species by letting
>>>> light in. But both sides agree that regular cool burns can dramatically
>>>> reduce the risk of much more damaging wildfires, which burn down through
>>>> the moss layer and into the peat. Cutting heather instead is less
>>>> effective but better than nothing. Yet Natural England has banned
>>>> heather burning on deep peat altogether and is pushing hard to limit it
>>>> further everywhere – or at least tie it up in complicated licensing
>>>> rules. As a result, the fuel load on heather moorland has been
>>>> increasing; in places the heather is now waist-deep. The National Fire
>>>> Chiefs Council warned last year that such restrictions on heather
>>>> management would increase ‘the danger to firefighters and the public’.
>>>>
>>>> Unlike private owners, bodies such as the Royal Society for the
>>>> Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the National Trust are refusing to burn
>>>> and reluctant to graze heather moorland, as they join the cult of
>>>> ‘rewilding’. With the support of government, they plan to mitigate the
>>>> fire risk by ‘rewetting’ moors with leaky dams to hold back rainwater.
>>>> But this approach is useless in a drought.
>>>>
>>>> Case in point: the Tintwistle fire in the Peak District spread from a
>>>> wild camp in woodland on to a heather moor owned by United Utilities and
>>>> managed by the RSPB. This moor had been extensively ‘rewetted’ yet it
>>>> went up like a torch and the fire spread, drowned Manchester in smoke,
>>>> burned deep into the peat and was only contained – for now – when local
>>>> gamekeepers and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue used two diggers and
>>>> a bulldozer to create a firebreak on its northwest flank on the
>>>> neighbouring Stalybridge estate. But so quick is Natural England to
>>>> prosecute landowners and gamekeepers for even inadvertently breaking
>>>> rules about managing habitat that they were anxious they might be
>>>> punished for doing this.
>>>>
>>>> Richard Bailey, coordinator of the Peak District Moorland Group,
>>>> estimates that the past month’s firefighting by gamekeepers would have
>>>> cost the taxpayer millions of pounds if done by the fire service. Many
>>>> long, hot, hard days and nights have left gamekeepers and their families
>>>> under severe mental strain, alleviated a little by generous food drops
>>>> from Micklehurst cricket club. You can imagine how much it sticks in the
>>>> craw for these gamekeepers that they have been working to save land
>>>> managed by an organisation that makes the risk worse.
>>>>
>>>> The nearby Dovestone fire was also started on RSPB-managed land after a
>>>> man drowned in the local reservoir and his friends commemorated him with
>>>> fireworks. The Cairngorms fire too began on land owned by the RSPB at
>>>> Abernethy. The irony is not lost on locals that the very same people who
>>>> tell us that climate change is an existential crisis are also the ones
>>>> urging us to stop using the one tool we know helps to mitigate the
>>>> problem. If your view is that climate change is a massive threat, why
>>>> are you pursuing policies that increase fuel load?
>>>>
>>>> The North York Moors fire last year affected 2,500 hectares of moorland,
>>>> smouldering for more than a month in the peat and releasing vast
>>>> quantities of carbon dioxide. Yet no Defra minister bothered to visit.
>>>> The cost of fighting these fires does not fall on their department, so
>>>> why do they care, says Jamie Blackett, founder of Ground Cry, a new
>>>> organisation campaigning on behalf of ground-nesting birds like curlews.
>>>>
>>>> The authorities know their policies increase the fire risks. Here is
>>>> what the Cairngorm National Park says in its Integrated Wildfire
>>>> Management Plan about plans to increase shrubs and other vegetation by
>>>> reducing deer and stopping burning: ‘These habitats will take many years
>>>> to develop and during the intervening period fuel loads will increase,
>>>> as will the corresponding need for fire risk mitigation.’ So they knew
>>>> the risk was increasing. But little was done. John Kirk, a board member
>>>> of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, told the Strathspey Herald:
>>>> ‘Everyone is furious… the entire Abernethy forest has no firebreaks.’
>>>>
>>>> Andrew Gilruth, chief executive of the Moorland Association, says:
>>>> ‘While Scotland has a clear plan to manage the excess vegetation, in
>>>> England the authorities are obsessed with rewilding and restricting all
>>>> commonsense measures for reducing fuel loads.’
>>>>
>>>> In May, before the drought, Gilruth wrote to MPs who represent moorland
>>>> constituencies to point out that the number of firefighters is down by a
>>>> quarter over the past seven years and that the fire service relies
>>>> heavily on gamekeepers’ vehicles, water bowsers and other equipment.
>>>> Banning the burning of heather means fewer keepers can justify having
>>>> such equipment. He described Defra’s refusal to change policy on heather
>>>> burning as reckless.
>>>>
>>>> Sadly he was proved right. So was I. After I warned in these very pages
>>>> last year that government policy was worsening the fire risk on
>>>> moorland, it gives me no pleasure to say: ‘I told you so.’
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Matt Ridley
>>>
>>> The EU has failed to get a grip on Europe’s wildfires
>> 
>> As if any old carpenter would know how to do that.  Stupid eu anyway.
>> 
>Any old carpenter would know common sense.

Any old carpenter would know that photons must either be a waves or
particles.  Too bad that the universe does not lend itself to
comprehension by common sense.  

>Human activity causes roughly 85% to 90% of all wildfires, with nature 
>accunting for the remaining small fraction.
> >
>
>
>>> Europe is burning. From France to Spain, from Portugal to Greece, and
>>> even in Britain, the continent has been engulfed by flames this summer.
>>> In France, more than 117,000 hectares have been lost to a succession of
>>> wildfires and nearly a quarter of a million people have been evacuated.
>>> It’s already been dubbed ‘the worst season of fire in history’.
>>>
>>> In Madrid, Paris and in other European capitals, politicians argue about
>>> the fires – or rather the response to them. The lack of fire-fighting
>>> aircraft in France, for example, has been seized on by opponents of
>>> Emmanuel Macron’s government.
>>>
>>> Some of the media have focused on the human aspect: the fact that the
>>> majority of the fires have been started by people, either inadvertently
>>> or deliberately. Hundreds of arrests (predominantly young males) have
>>> been made by European police forces and in France courts intend to take
>>> ‘tougher criminal action’ to deal with fire-starters.
>>>
>>> But all this misses the crucial point, as Matt Ridley wrote in this
>>> week’s magazine. Most of Europe has made a mess of its wildfire
>>> management strategy this century. Ridley quoted Andrew Gilruth, chief
>>> executive of the Moorland Association, who explained: ‘In England the
>>> authorities are obsessed with rewilding and restricting all commonsense
>>> measures for reducing fuel loads.’
>>>
>>> A lack of common sense has characterised Europe’s response to wildfires
>>> in the 21st century. During the scorching summer of 2003, some 740,000
>>> hectares were burnt and in response, the EU ‘set up an expert group to
>>> advise on how to prevent and fight fires in Europe’.
>>>
>>> They published a report in early 2005, Forest Fires in Europe, declaring
>>> that their ‘general principle is to restore nature and not to change the
>>> landscape’. The report contained a great many statistics about forest
>>> fires in EU member states and bemoaned ‘the lack of a common EU forestry
>>> policy framework’. The report recognised the increased risk because of
>>> ‘climate change and desertification’ but it didn’t offer coherent solutions.
>>>
>>> It took another 21 years before the EU finally unveiled its wildfire
>>> strategy in March this year. It contained the usual Brussels waffle
>>> about ‘holistic approaches’ and ‘stakeholders’. Roxana Mînzatu, the
>>> Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and
>>> Preparedness, declared:
>>>
>>> Europe must be ready before the first fire starts. That means building a
>>> real culture of preparedness: equipping people with the right skills,
>>> supporting firefighters and first responders, and helping communities
>>> understand the risks they face.
>>>
>>> Underneath the trite soundbites, there was a recognition in the report
>>> that Europe has allowed great areas of combustible vegetation to spread
>>> throughout EU member states in recent decades. Abandoned farmland and
>>> unmanaged forests, together with droughts and rising temperatures, have
>>> created the conditions for a perfect firestorm.
>>>
>>> The report said that in order to prevent future wildfires, the EU must
>>> pay ‘farmers and foresters to thin forests, graze livestock and restore
>>> abandoned land’. It also recommended restoring peatlands, flood plains
>>> and wetlands to retain moisture.
>>>
>>> This strategy will take years to implement effectively. And, crucially,
>>> has the EU really got the will? At a meeting of agriculture ministers in
>>> Brussels in May, Environment Conmissioner Jessika Roswall announced that
>>> the Commission does ‘not plan any new initiatives on forest management’.
>>>
>>> The management of forests and land planning is also the preserve of
>>> individual governments and the EU has struggled for a unified approach.
>>> Brussels can recommend and encourage but it can’t force governments to
>>> act. Sweden and Finland are the most resistant to EU interference on
>>> forest management, while France also broadly believes the issue should
>>> be one of national competence.
>>>
>>> Critics claim there is no competence. There was a huge wildfire in the
>>> south-west of France in 2022, an area famous for its intensive maritime
>>> pine monoculture. Many hectares of pine trees were lost. The response?
>>> To replant thousands of pine trees in exactly the same layout.
>>>
>>> On Monday, Emmanuel Macron visited the Gironde department, in the
>>> south-west of France, where more than 40,000 hectares have been lost to
>>> flames this month. The president was confronted by the independent mayor
>>> of one town affected by the fire.
>>>
>>> ‘We need a better-maintained, larger firebreak, even if it means losing
>>> 1,000 or 2,000 hectares,’ said Bruno Lafon, the independent mayor of
>>> Biganos and the head of the association for the protection of forests
>>> against fire in his region.
>>>
>>> Lafon also took aim at politicians and environmentalists pontificating
>>> in Paris. ‘We need to stop talking,’ he said, adding that the Paris
>>> elite and the people whose homes are burning ‘no longer live in the same
>>> world’.
>>>
>>> The same rings true of the Brussels elite. It’s time to stop talking and
>>> take commonsense action.
>>>
>>>
>>> Gavin Mortimer
-- 
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian  shrinks in horror and warns others away