[superfrank]

I don't think the person you're responding to was trying to deny global warming being a factor. I think they're just explaining why this fire is so bad compared to other fires we have seen in France before.

I know global warming plays a major role in this, but I still found it interesting to know why this fire seems so bad.

[reco98gg]

You may be absolutely right about the OP, I cannot know.

Still, I believe it is important to highlight the elephant in the room first.

For example to your point: "I still found it interesting to kmow why this fire seems so bad compared to [...] before", I think it is important to state: "because global warming is getting worse over time". Not because pine trees, which have been around for a long time, and have never burned so badly.

[mytailorisrich]

The elephant in the room is that many of those fires are criminal and that the French government has arbitrated budget restrictions against investing in fire-fighting equipment, especially planes.

It so happens that the current fire near Bordeaux is roughy in the same area as the historic fire of 1949 in which 82 people died (and currently still smaller, hopefully it will stay that way) [1], as someone else already mentioned.

Wildfires in Fontainebleau are not new, either, even if this year's one it is historically large. First laws against fires in the in forest and obligation of inhabitants to help in case of fire date from the 14th century [2].

Yes warming trends do not help and increase risk (hence need to invest in equipment and prevention) but there is also fabricated drama and lack of perspective, which are unfortunately how everything is reported nowadays.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendie_de_1949_dans_la_for%C...

[2] https://www.fontainebleau-photo.fr/2013/08/les-incendies-de-...

[evomassiny]

About a third of those fires are criminal [0], yes that's a lot, but the majority are still accidental or natural.

Even the criminal ones are only enabled because of the dry vegetation, caused by the recent heat waves. IMO focusing on what caused the spark is missing the root cause: global warming.

And yes you can argue that such fires existed previously, but what's concerning is that the frequency on which they are happening is increasing rapidly

[0]https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/les-causes-des-inc...

[mytailorisrich]

In the South of France, dry vegetation in summer is normal. Areas where this is most expected, the Mediterranean, have actually seen a decrease of fires over time as preventive measures and fire-fighting readiness have increased. [1] See graph for "Nombre de feux de foret in zone mediterraneene 1973-2024", graph for "surfaces parcourues", and text.

That's why I am suggesting to keep a cool head and to take a step back to analyse things rationally. In any case that is good advice to adapt to warming, too. If you go down the rabbit hole of media reporting you are going to have a nervous breakdown.

[1] https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/l-historique-des-f...

[Loquebantur]

A rational approach to existential threats is indeed good advice, but to surrender in the face of complexity is not.

The human induced climate catastrophe is due to a systemic failure and consequentially needs to be addressed on a systemic level. The economic system and policies need to be adapted, even against the implied subjective interests of the biggest holders of capital and assets.

They like to paint that as "impossible", but of course it's not.

[mytailorisrich]

Thanks for illustrating my point...

[Arodex]

>warming trends do not help

Understatement of the year, here, after the third heatwave of the year with a fourth on the way and record after record being shattered.

>(hence need to invest in equipment)

Easy.

>fabricated drama and lack of perspective

The one with a lack of perspective is not the ones you think.

[yoghurtwere]

> Not because pine trees, which have been around for a long time, and have never burned so badly.

Are you sure?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire

[reco98gg]

I responded to this elsewhere on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49065156

Basically they had no way to fight those fires at the time, as the article explains.

[reco98gg]

[Answering here to @applepearlime bc limits of my green acct]

They do have firebreaks, paths for trucks to go in many places [1]. I've seen many.

But you could argue they're not wide enough to actually break fire. And when I see videos of how tall and wide the flames are, I have no idea how wide they should be... It's a managed forest though, definitely looked after because economics interests (wood, tourism).

[1] https://cnes.fr/geoimage/aquitaine-littoral-landais-massif-f...

[bigfatkitten]

> And when I see videos of how tall and wide the flames are, I have no idea how wide they should be...

Up to 40km, depending on the wind. Embers can travel a long way.

[applepearlime]

I can't say that I buy your argument.

Either way, firebreaks and green firebreaks seem like they could be a reasonable mitigation approach, whatever the overall causes.

Does anyone here know whether the Landes forest has good firebreaks? If not, does anyone here know why? I failed to find anything about it online.

[gabaix]

I grew up there. I used to bike along stretches of firebreaks between plots. These firebreaks are nowhere nearly enough. Trees are young, pine needles spread everywhere, and ground is sandy.

The forest is a giant tinderbox.

[Arodex]

You know this was once, 77 years ago?

[OJFord]

And global warming reached a critical point of worseness specifically in Landes & Médoc?

[Loquebantur]

The human induced climate catastrophe has reached unprecedented levels because of humanity's continued failure to correctly integrate that reality into their decisions and the resulting inaction.

Landes & Médoc serve as an immediate example of the consequences of that catastrophe being left to unfold unabated.

Using diminutive terms to describe causalities that currently escalate beyond human control and ultimately lead to civilizational collapse with billions of deaths is a dysfunctional disconnect from reality.

[OJFord]

You misunderstand. Dibby053 provided interesting context for why specifically that region is so badly affected right now, on a background of global climate catastrophe. Rico98gg is derailing what could have been a more interesting thread with 'no, it's global warming', which is obvious and irrelevant.

[anthonyrstevens]

It's you that is (intentionally?) missing the forest for the trees (wordplay intentional). The overall pattern of worsening fires is clear and well-documented, and disingenously asking "Why Landes & Medoc specifically?" ignores the broader issue.

[OJFord]

Nobody asked that. Information about the local ecology was volunteered, and was much more interesting than yet another argument (being had against nobody) that climate change is a major contributor.

[markdown]

The pine forests have been there for centuries, so it being pine is no explanation at all for why it's burning so badly now.

[tirant]

I come from the Mediterranean region and locally we know many explanations for that.

Many of those pine forests are relatively new. Pine trees burn frequently, around every 20-30 years. In the past they used to be mixed with many other original trees, but during the recent century reforestation, pines were planted as the single tree species, making fires more prone to happen and more easily to spread.

In the past, way more population lived next to the forests, where lumber used to be part of their income, so trees were frequently cut, forests maintained and shepherds would bring their sheep to feed from forest lower plants. All of that is gone.

In the past, locals used to be able to build firewalls, clean forests and fight fire with fire (provoking small controlled wildfires to stop the big ones). Green policies forbid those actions nowadays.

Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.

Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%.

[tsimionescu]

> Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.

This was the hottest year on record. 10 of the last 15 years have been the hottest year on record, consecutively. What makes you believe this fake information about the middle ages?

[tmtvl]

Someone heard about the Medieval Warm Period, looked at the Wikipedia page, saw the temperature data for the Greenland ice sheets and misinterpreted it to mean global temperature. It fits in well with the 'well, the Jurassic was warmer than today and there were no humans then, so you can't be sure that we're responsible for any climate change that may be happening' argument.

[jcattle]

None of what you are writing is applicable to Landes. Outside of scandinavia Landes region is some of the most intensely managed forest in Europe.

From planting to cutting is only around 30-50 years. With multiple thinnings in between. Also none of that forest existed 200 years ago and there never was anything other than pine planted there for those 200 years, in the beginning for resin, now for pulp.

And so none of it burned in the middle ages or was affected by any higher temperatures because it didn't exist back then.

[arboles]

It does seem that the area burnt p/year by wildfires hasn't grown in the last 40 years in Europe, and even decreased slightly. This is somewhat odd to me. The evacuation and disruption of settlements seems to have increased in severity in the last few years, or at least the media gives that perception. If I'm looking at the wrong data and this could be misleading, then apologies.

The chart I'm looking at (1980-2020):

- https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/maps-and-charts/burnt-...

This one starts in the 00s but goes to 2024, and also shows a decrease:

- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-area-burnt-by-wild...

Do you have the data that goes as far back as 80 years ago though?

[mctaylor]

I love how four comments down there is someone posting:

"You’re both right. However OPs post is more useful than yours.

By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.

Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change"

Thank you for proving that there are, in fact, still climate change deniers even here on hacker news.

I'm assuming you're a climate change denier. You don't say so outright, but "Green policies forbid those actions nowadays" is a bit of a dogwhistle that you oppose environmental protection regulations broadly (not merely overzealous ones that have side-effects that make combating certain types of wildfires harder in certain situations), and:

"Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.

Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%."

Well... that's pretty close to just coming out and saying you don't believe in climate science.

This truly is the least intelligent timeline.

[bluebarbet]

These factual corrections are warranted. But IMO the accusations of dog-whistling and wrongthink are unnecessary and counterproductive. Again: I agree with you on the substance! And this probably is a climate denier. But (1) that's not very interesting in itself, and (2) by adopting an accusatory tone we're just going to push them and their sympathizers into a posture of defensiveness and victimhood which will only worsen the polarization and make the whole problem even harder to solve than it already is. IMO, on this issue it's best just to stick doggedly to factual correction and avoid the temptation to police people's inner minds.

[cassepipe]

On the one hand I agree with you, on the other hand I think this is highly idealistic: Most people would have a hard time debating a flat-earther since it's their hobby and they master all the talking points whereas you spent maximum one hour even thinking about it in the last 10 years. They will get you in a dark forest of details you don't know how to navigate and win the argument.

I am so sorry for the one in a million crackpot-sounding genius that will get hurt in the process but social shunning is just so so much more effective. No wonder the crackpots and grifters are back and running the show nowadays

I think a better approach is to ask people who have contrarian/non-consensual opinions to show that they know that they are crackpots out and to distance themselves from them:

"I know some people come up with conspiracy theories that says climate is a hoax designed to control populations because they don't want to change anything in their way of life but that's not what I am. I just care about the science and I think I found a real flaw in the leading explanation of climate change. I'd love for someone with knowledge about to discuss it with me to see if they took X into account" etc.

This above is what I expect but if you quack like a quack, you're probably a quack and you'll get the social shunning treatment

[dzink]

The dark ages and the plague saw a lot of belief in religion and rejection of science that lead to excessive deaths all over europe. Medicine was studied and practiced in the arab world and jewish doctors were the only ones allowed to bring some of those practices to Europe. Religion was preventing tested and verified approaches to treatment. Today Europe needs to stop repeating that practice. Believing in human caused climate change doesn’t stop you from learning proper tested mitigation strategies against wildfires, cooling of people in cities, nuclear energy or anything else that allows you to mitigate the effects of your climate religion. Because you can mitigate death in your area way before you can stop china or any other high emitter from emitting CO2 on the other side of the planet from you and contributing to global warming.

[Loquebantur]

There is no dichotomy between preparing for the inevitable and preventing the preventable.

Painting the actions of people on the other side of the planet as "out of anybody's control" is hubris though. Humanity very well is capable of organizing on that scale and has done so regularly for a long time already.

The actual problem is the disconnect between the interests of those in charge of such organization and the well-being of the public.

[dzink]

Villages all over the world since ancient times would have houses with some form of a summer kitchen. During hot days the temps in the house are already uncomfortable and cooking there would make things worse, so they built basic kitchen facilities away from the main house to keep heat and smoke and smells out (that also reduced some fire risks).

Many western countries now summer-kitchen most of their uncomfortable output to corrupt poorer countries where the leadership doesn’t mind taking cash for poisoning their citizens. The naïveté is then claiming that those poorer countries are then the main polluters. Recyclables in the US and a lot of Europe are shipped off to southeast asia thus 80% of plastics in the ocean are found there. A train of plastic to be burned was even shipped to Bulgaria (a EU member) by the mafia a few years ago.

In the mean time “carbon credit” companies have their offices in Hong Kong and are guilting Disney and Adidas and Apple and any Western public brands into paying for “carbon laundering”. Forests that would have been planted anyway for lumber collect carbon credits as extra income right before selling said lumber for consumption. It takes real faith to keep believing any of the activity actually removes carbon legitimately, but the money movement in that movement is very real.

While anyone can target the source of the warming with any resource they want to dedicate, and should be free to do so. Governments need to focus on mitigating the risks to human life and that involves real fire prevention (trimming, controlled burns - maybe smart tech the smoke so it gets captured instead of irritating the noses of non-summer-kitchen citizens), clean energy generation, and installing damn air conditioning units into old European capitals so Europeans don’t end up dying in droves from preventable basic climate change consequences.

[phikappa]

"but "Green policies forbid those actions nowadays" is a bit of a dogwhistle that you oppose environmental protection regulations broadly (not merely overzealous ones that have side-effects that make combating certain types of wildfires harder in certain situations)"

thats a bit of a "dogwhistle" that you're not actually convinced that green policies can ever be deranged and counterproductive. On the contrary. I don't know if you're a a brainwashed virtue signaler, but I'm assuming it. You don't say so outright, but the mental gymnastics of calling someone a climate changer denier who just said climate change is widely recognised are staggering.

This truly is the least intelligent timeline. Please check with Dunning and Kruger if you're part of the problem.

[AlecSchueler]

They've actually been there for less than two centuries, just to be pedantic.

[superfrank]

It's not, but the original comment never claimed that it was.

There have been 4 or 5 pretty massive wildfires in France that I can remember in the last 5 years, but this is the first time they've had to deal with pyrocumulonimbus caused by a wildfire. Global warming was likely a contributing factor for all of those fires, but global warming alone doesn't explain why this one is different. The first comment about the pine isn't answering "why is this happening now?", it answers the question, "why is this fire so much worse?"

[sandworm101]

Decades ago i was a big wall rock climber. We would often see old photos of mountains and cliffs and remark "where are the trees?" Areas we knew to be covered in forrest were bare only a century ago. This wasnt logging (climbing areas are too rugged to be logged bare.) There were just fewer trees. The general assumption was CO2. The combination of longer growing seasons and more plant food (co2) may mean there are simply more trees.

[Earw0rm]

The timing is curious to me. Atmospheric CO2 didn't really start picking up bigtime until 1970, and trees, even fast growing pines, take decades to grow.

[applepearlime]

But one pine forest in France has burned badly in the past as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire

Did you check for forest fires in the past?