7 ms·

More Fires Now Burning in Angola, Congo Than Amazon

170 points by adventured 7y ago

Spoppys 7y ago
I found these live maps while researching the Brazilian fires earlier. Not sure if anyone will find them interesting https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/ https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/ http://viirsfire.geog.umd.edu/map/viirsMap.php http://viirsfire.geog.umd.edu/map/viirsMap.php
- Meandering 7y ago
  Excellent resources. Thank you.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  Thanks, they're so useful. It would be fantastic if one could draw some graphs indicating the amount of fires in the same area for the same time frame (say mid summer) but in different years. Does anyone know if there is such a feature? It would help to investigate politically motivated arsons by finding correlation with various events. The amount of fires we had in Rome/Italy in 2017 raised too many flags in my head; I recall days during that summer where one couldn't turn in a direction where there weren't one or more fires in sight, and I for myself got intoxicated while helping friends to fight one that was getting very close to their home. Some of those arsons were started in mid morning, before 11 am, when the already dim chances to have a spontaneous fire drop below zero, and I perfectly recalled the smell of smoke bombs (very often used at the stadium) while passing by near one just put out by the firefighters. My theory is that some "entity" wanted either to send a message to the new mayor or make her waste as much as of the city funds to fight fires (firefighters, trucks, helicopters, planes etc cost a fortune) so that she and the council would be much easier to fight at the following elections. Putting time and events on paper could help to connect the dots.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    This site has the data from 2003-2019 in the Amazon region: https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html?fbclid=IwAR1PLYS0eIDttSqnJECMaGu-2E7IEZdQ35KVs7wwYAZ8Zz0fKQv-LKmj4wk#totals https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html?fbclid=IwAR1PLY...
  - neves 7y ago
    Note that one of the alarming facts is that the fire season is just starting.
- ImprovedSilence 7y ago
  Interesting maps. I wonder how they can tell there's a fire. Also, what's the false hit rate? Interestingly enough, the FIRMS data has 2 fires in my town, not 10 miles from where I live, and I don't believe there were any actual fires in the past day. Unless some redneck was making a heck of a burn pile....
millisecond 7y ago
Anyone have a reference for fire area in all these places? All the stories I’ve seen use “number of fires” which seems useless to figure out severity/comparisons.
- sdenton4 7y ago
  I think the point is that these are slash and burn ag fires, rather than the big uncontrolled fires serve been seeing in California. So total area might be relatively low per fire, but gives a sense of how fast the major rainforest is being converted to agriculture... A total land area burnt figure would be nice, though.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  I've been keeping tabs on various atmospheric (and ocean and space) conditions via the Nullschool Earth viewer: https://earth.nullschool.org/ https://earth.nullschool.org/ Different conditions and sensors can be selected, including both particulat (PM2.5 especially) and CO concentrations, both of which are strongly (though not exclusively) associated with wildfires. SO4 is another combustion-related emission, though also associated with power plants, shipping (major shipping lanes are very sharply visible), and volcanic erruptions (see especially the Kiril Islands, north of Japan). Looking at PM2.5, Here's the current view over Brazil: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1700Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-75.77,0.43,388/loc=-55.642,-11.192 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1700Z/particulates/... And over Congo: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1700Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=23.56,-8.13,776/loc=21.239,-8.998 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1700Z/particulates/... And a year ago, 24 August 2018, over ... Brazil: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/24/0500Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-61.03,-14.64,776/loc=-63.600,-10.920 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/24/0500Z/particulates/... Congo: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/24/0500Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=23.56,-8.13,776/loc=21.239,-8.998 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/24/0500Z/particulates/... You can see other sensor information or skip forward or back a few days or weeks to see what trends are like. I'd not done this until just now, and frankly, it appears that last year's smoke activity was actually greater, though the 2019 fires may have been worse several days ago (there's been pronounced global political backlash). The "day of burning" was the 19th as I recall, let's look back a few days ... OK, unlike the timeslices above, this one is selected as a more active capture, on August 19, 2019, though a few later periods are comparable: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/20/0300Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-74.71,-28.19,776/loc=-63.600,-10.920 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/20/0300Z/particulates/... OT: Watching for unusual activity can be interesting. For example, it appears one of the East African Rift volcanos may just have lit up in Ethiopia, probably Erta Ale (the most active continuously errupting volcano on Earth), though there are others in the general vicinity: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1500Z/chem/surface/level/overlay=cosc/orthographic=44.66,10.16,3000/loc=41.263,13.130 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1500Z/chem/surface/... (All Nullschool links should be to date-anchored snapshots. You can expand the controls by tapping "Earth". "Now" will show current / most recently reported conditions.)
modo_ 7y ago
Is there any discussion around the extent of the macro climactic effect of many wildfires burning simultaneously around the globe? How much will these events contribute to warming?
- bsaul 7y ago
  I may take your comment wrong, but i feel like everybody’s becoming a bit hysterical regarding climate warming. I feel like media are surfing on population fears ( as usual) but that for some reason, the scientific minds are completely unable to take a step back, and keep their cool. Why do you think a small percentage increase on natural forest fires happening every year or so will have any kind of meaningful worldwide effect on temperature ?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - eloff 7y ago
    It's a legitimate question, which you do not provide any evidence to refute. Fires do contribute to climate change because they convert stored carbon into atmospheric carbon. A question is how much do they contribute. Fires are also natural (although not in the Amazon or Congo so much!) so it's not like you could eliminate them entirely anyway.
  - cryptoz 7y ago
    [My comments are not welcome here, I get it. I have been banned from continuing to post here so I will remove these offending posts to prevent further perceived degradation to the discussion.]
    - bsaul 7y ago
      « Small negative inputs into a system can have dramatic, quickly-shifting consequence« Or, you could consider that earth climate has proven to be resistant enough to natural catastrophies for life to evolve for millions of years. I’m not saying i’m right, but there’s no reason to have those huge headlines in news, as well as international threats to brazil just because this year’s fires are higher that last year ( but equal to those of a few years ago).
wtdata 7y ago
Besides this, there are reports from serious agencies (NASA is one of them) stating that what is happening on Amazon is on par with what has been happening at least in the previous 15 years (I think that's how far their data goes). [1] I am lead to believe that all the media attention in this past week to the problem, is a mix of political staging and sensacionalism. If it was really due to environmental concerns, the same responses we are seeing now, would have already happened many years ago under Lula and Dilma governments, given that the scale of the problem is the same. [1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-brazil https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-bra...
- Kye 7y ago
  When would be an appropriate time for people to become aware of the problem and start caring? I don't see how the motivation matters. The problem is real even if most people weren't aware of it until now.
  - wtdata 7y ago
    My point is that, at least other governments, were aware of it for a long time. In my opinion they are only raising the concern now for political gain (at least in cases like Macron). But I agree, let's do it now, it really needs to be done as soon as possible, but, it can't depend its continuation and the countries it gets applied to, on whatever political wing is in power there. The action needs to be global, with clear rules, and applied on every case, no exceptions.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    > When would be an appropriate time for people to become aware of the problem and start caring? Now is as good a time as any. What doesn't help the discussion is making it about the current administration when this is a problem that spans multiple administrations on both ends of the political spectrum. It's the same for policies that span the Trump and Obama administrations (and probably the W Bush and Clinton administrations too).
- dredmorbius 7y ago
bsanr2 7y ago
Torn between, "Glad to see that, 'This news topic concerning death nd destruction is nearing the end of its cycle, let's see if we can extend it a bit by finally highlighting the problems that have sorely needed solving even longer in Africa,' is still a thing" and, "Someone wants to take the heat off of Bolsonaro using the tried-and-true method of exclaiming, 'Yeah well African governments are doing even worse!'".
- eloff 7y ago
  Not everything is a grand conspiracy. In fact, most things are not. This is most likely getting attention now, because it's related to the Amazon fires which successfully got our attention.
  - bsanr2 7y ago
    It doesn't have to be a conspiracy. Just an annoyingly prevalent viewpoint among journalists. (See also: referring to things happening in specific locations Nigeria, Sudan, DRC, etc. as happening in "Africa".)
tomohawk 7y ago
It's always interesting to see what gets put into the news ahead of the big meetups like G7, and how that dovetails with the narrative that is being pushed. Of course, this destruction of rainforest is not a good thing, but it is not a new thing.
olivermarks 7y ago
I think we are seeing the weaponization of climate hysteria being used for regime change of the Jair Bolsonaro government. Not a fan of Jair Bolsonaro or burning forests, just making that point.
- scythe 7y ago
  I doubt there will be any regime change, it’s just a few loudmouths on twitter overestimating the EU’s ability to bully Brazil, much like Trump overestimated the US’s ability to bully Mexico. China, Japan, India, and maybe even a post-Brexit UK will have no problem picking up the demand if Europe “retaliates”. Dictatorships thrive on this kind of conflict and mistrust.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
lostlogin 7y ago
I’m picking it’s something automated that’s gone astray as immediately below the article is a link to Amazons stock price. “In this article AMZN AMAZON.COM INC 1,749.62USD-55.98-3.10%”
- knolan 7y ago
  I’d imagine the recent sale of Amazon Fire products is having similar unfortunate behaviour.
dictum 7y ago
The Minister of the Environment of Brazil tweeted the same article. https://mobile.twitter.com/rsallesmma/status/1165262442013835266 https://mobile.twitter.com/rsallesmma/status/116526244201383... (Yesterday, he said the Amazon should be monetized. With no other business plan besides a vague desire for increased ecotourism, the fires are the first step towards monetization.)
- hu3 7y ago
  > Yesterday, he said the Amazon should be monetized. With no other business plan besides a vague desire for increased ecotourism, the fires are the first step towards monetization Mind sharing the source?
  - dictum 7y ago
    Paywalled (FT) https://www.ft.com/content/f791bbc6-c2c3-11e9-a8e9-296ca66511c9 https://www.ft.com/content/f791bbc6-c2c3-11e9-a8e9-296ca6651... > “The fact is that laws and regulations that were enacted and used for the past 10 or 20 years were too restrictive to the development of Amazon areas. That is why people go over to the illegal activities, to the criminal activities, because they don’t have a space to do something within the law,” Ricardo Salles said in an interview with the Financial Times.
    - hu3 7y ago
      I like the idea! Tourism is a great way to fund preservation.
      - dictum 7y ago
        This can work for smaller areas. Tourists get to see the result of preservation because can experience almost the full extent of the territory. However, for a larger area of which most parts are boring, unsafe and hard to reach, it's hard to cover preservation with such funds. Bolsonaro is unhappy with one such arrangement, covering a much smaller area: visitors pay a $50 fee, collected by the federal government, to enter the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha for a 10 day stay. He wants to the abolish the fee. Given his general outlook on taxes, I don't see how tourism could fund preservation, except for increasing its scale to a predatory level. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2019/07/taxa-de-fernando-de-noronha-e-roubo-diz-bolsonaro.shtml https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2019/07/taxa-de-fern... (in Portuguese)
Jedi72 7y ago
I hear there are people protesting outside embassies about the Amazon fires. I agree with that, but I hope people carry it through to protesting Australian embassies aswell. We're just as guilty of destroying the Great Barrier Reef for profit (I'm Australian). Seems unfair to single out Brazil.
- mycall 7y ago
  I thought the bleaching of the GB reef was due to higher nitrates in the water runoff as well as temperature rising.
  - Sendotsh 7y ago
    Probably referring to this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/16/why-adanis-planned-carmichael-coalmine-matters-to-australia-and-the-world https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/16/why-adanis-...
buboard 7y ago
I can't read the article, what's up with fires? Fires are also a natural part of wild forest renewal. Are there unusally more fires worldwide this year?
- seltzered_ 7y ago
  They aren’t necessarily naturally triggered, and post-burn the land may be misused into industrial agriculture rather than restorative/forest regrown. Start here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/leaked-documents-show-brazil-bolsonaro-has-grave-plans-for-amazon-rainforest/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/leaked-do...
Proven 7y ago
Who cares. If I owned that land, I'd make sure it doesn't burn when it shouldn't.
fortran77 7y ago
Why do you think they're getting less attention?
guhcampos 7y ago
I see many fellow Brazilians have already made their points here, but I feel some clarification is due. First of all: forest fires are common here, and they are part of the natural cicle of the forest themselves. The real problem is not the size or count of those fires, but where they are happening. Deforestation has been blatant in Brazil for decades, but years of increased regulation had them on a continuous decreasing trend. Under the new government, however, it has surged again. Some sources mention deforestation areain 2019 might reach double the amount of 2018, although it's hard to trust any such information these days due to political appropriation of data and information channels. So with more deforestation, these fires are cutting deeper into the forest, into areas previously not touched by fire, some of which may never recover. As I mentioned: such fires are common, but at the edge of the forest where plant and wildlife are adapted to them. The ecosystem of the deeper jungle is completely different, and species from the edges, when not dead, are forced into areas they did not live before, either in or out of the forest. The impact of this movements is hard to predict, but bound to be disastrous. It would be bad enough if this was related to a more global climate trend or a natural cicle of things. What really hurts though is the fact that many of these fires are, however, intentionally started by people, driven by commercial interest in either developing or farming the land, almost always illegally, and as of recently encouraged by our very government officials. So, yeah, things are pretty bad, but hey have been so for a while and even if the numbers are worse in Angola and Congo, the conjunction of natural and political causes need to be taken into account.
- yostrovs 7y ago
  How are the fires encouraged? What does the different do exactly to promote them?
  - guhcampos 7y ago
    There's this rethoric of blaming environmental laws for slowing down development or shrinking the economy, along with an almost childish "Europe has burned down their forests now they want ours" too. Justified by that, the government has aggressively cut budgets for multiple agencies responsible for environmental enforcement and monitoring, including a few high profile cases which led to the heads of INPE (Brasil's NASA) and ICMBio (which manages all National Parks) to resign in frustration.

170 points by adventured 7y ago

I found these live maps while researching the Brazilian fires earlier. Not sure if anyone will find them interesting https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/ https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/ http://viirsfire.geog.umd.edu/map/viirsMap.php http://viirsfire.geog.umd.edu/map/viirsMap.php

Meandering 7y ago
Excellent resources. Thank you.
squarefoot 7y ago
Thanks, they're so useful. It would be fantastic if one could draw some graphs indicating the amount of fires in the same area for the same time frame (say mid summer) but in different years. Does anyone know if there is such a feature? It would help to investigate politically motivated arsons by finding correlation with various events. The amount of fires we had in Rome/Italy in 2017 raised too many flags in my head; I recall days during that summer where one couldn't turn in a direction where there weren't one or more fires in sight, and I for myself got intoxicated while helping friends to fight one that was getting very close to their home. Some of those arsons were started in mid morning, before 11 am, when the already dim chances to have a spontaneous fire drop below zero, and I perfectly recalled the smell of smoke bombs (very often used at the stadium) while passing by near one just put out by the firefighters. My theory is that some "entity" wanted either to send a message to the new mayor or make her waste as much as of the city funds to fight fires (firefighters, trucks, helicopters, planes etc cost a fortune) so that she and the council would be much easier to fight at the following elections. Putting time and events on paper could help to connect the dots.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  This site has the data from 2003-2019 in the Amazon region: https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html?fbclid=IwAR1PLYS0eIDttSqnJECMaGu-2E7IEZdQ35KVs7wwYAZ8Zz0fKQv-LKmj4wk#totals https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html?fbclid=IwAR1PLY...
- neves 7y ago
  Note that one of the alarming facts is that the fire season is just starting.
ImprovedSilence 7y ago
Interesting maps. I wonder how they can tell there's a fire. Also, what's the false hit rate? Interestingly enough, the FIRMS data has 2 fires in my town, not 10 miles from where I live, and I don't believe there were any actual fires in the past day. Unless some redneck was making a heck of a burn pile....

millisecond 7y ago

Anyone have a reference for fire area in all these places? All the stories I’ve seen use “number of fires” which seems useless to figure out severity/comparisons.

sdenton4 7y ago
I think the point is that these are slash and burn ag fires, rather than the big uncontrolled fires serve been seeing in California. So total area might be relatively low per fire, but gives a sense of how fast the major rainforest is being converted to agriculture... A total land area burnt figure would be nice, though.
dredmorbius 7y ago
I've been keeping tabs on various atmospheric (and ocean and space) conditions via the Nullschool Earth viewer: https://earth.nullschool.org/ https://earth.nullschool.org/ Different conditions and sensors can be selected, including both particulat (PM2.5 especially) and CO concentrations, both of which are strongly (though not exclusively) associated with wildfires. SO4 is another combustion-related emission, though also associated with power plants, shipping (major shipping lanes are very sharply visible), and volcanic erruptions (see especially the Kiril Islands, north of Japan). Looking at PM2.5, Here's the current view over Brazil: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1700Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-75.77,0.43,388/loc=-55.642,-11.192 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1700Z/particulates/... And over Congo: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1700Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=23.56,-8.13,776/loc=21.239,-8.998 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1700Z/particulates/... And a year ago, 24 August 2018, over ... Brazil: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/24/0500Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-61.03,-14.64,776/loc=-63.600,-10.920 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/24/0500Z/particulates/... Congo: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/24/0500Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=23.56,-8.13,776/loc=21.239,-8.998 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/24/0500Z/particulates/... You can see other sensor information or skip forward or back a few days or weeks to see what trends are like. I'd not done this until just now, and frankly, it appears that last year's smoke activity was actually greater, though the 2019 fires may have been worse several days ago (there's been pronounced global political backlash). The "day of burning" was the 19th as I recall, let's look back a few days ... OK, unlike the timeslices above, this one is selected as a more active capture, on August 19, 2019, though a few later periods are comparable: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/20/0300Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-74.71,-28.19,776/loc=-63.600,-10.920 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/20/0300Z/particulates/... OT: Watching for unusual activity can be interesting. For example, it appears one of the East African Rift volcanos may just have lit up in Ethiopia, probably Erta Ale (the most active continuously errupting volcano on Earth), though there are others in the general vicinity: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1500Z/chem/surface/level/overlay=cosc/orthographic=44.66,10.16,3000/loc=41.263,13.130 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/24/1500Z/chem/surface/... (All Nullschool links should be to date-anchored snapshots. You can expand the controls by tapping "Earth". "Now" will show current / most recently reported conditions.)

modo_ 7y ago

Is there any discussion around the extent of the macro climactic effect of many wildfires burning simultaneously around the globe? How much will these events contribute to warming?

bsaul 7y ago
I may take your comment wrong, but i feel like everybody’s becoming a bit hysterical regarding climate warming. I feel like media are surfing on population fears ( as usual) but that for some reason, the scientific minds are completely unable to take a step back, and keep their cool. Why do you think a small percentage increase on natural forest fires happening every year or so will have any kind of meaningful worldwide effect on temperature ?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- eloff 7y ago
  It's a legitimate question, which you do not provide any evidence to refute. Fires do contribute to climate change because they convert stored carbon into atmospheric carbon. A question is how much do they contribute. Fires are also natural (although not in the Amazon or Congo so much!) so it's not like you could eliminate them entirely anyway.
- cryptoz 7y ago
  [My comments are not welcome here, I get it. I have been banned from continuing to post here so I will remove these offending posts to prevent further perceived degradation to the discussion.]
  - bsaul 7y ago
    « Small negative inputs into a system can have dramatic, quickly-shifting consequence« Or, you could consider that earth climate has proven to be resistant enough to natural catastrophies for life to evolve for millions of years. I’m not saying i’m right, but there’s no reason to have those huge headlines in news, as well as international threats to brazil just because this year’s fires are higher that last year ( but equal to those of a few years ago).

wtdata 7y ago

Besides this, there are reports from serious agencies (NASA is one of them) stating that what is happening on Amazon is on par with what has been happening at least in the previous 15 years (I think that's how far their data goes). [1] I am lead to believe that all the media attention in this past week to the problem, is a mix of political staging and sensacionalism. If it was really due to environmental concerns, the same responses we are seeing now, would have already happened many years ago under Lula and Dilma governments, given that the scale of the problem is the same. [1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-brazil https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-bra...

Kye 7y ago
When would be an appropriate time for people to become aware of the problem and start caring? I don't see how the motivation matters. The problem is real even if most people weren't aware of it until now.
- wtdata 7y ago
  My point is that, at least other governments, were aware of it for a long time. In my opinion they are only raising the concern now for political gain (at least in cases like Macron). But I agree, let's do it now, it really needs to be done as soon as possible, but, it can't depend its continuation and the countries it gets applied to, on whatever political wing is in power there. The action needs to be global, with clear rules, and applied on every case, no exceptions.
- malandrew 7y ago
  > When would be an appropriate time for people to become aware of the problem and start caring? Now is as good a time as any. What doesn't help the discussion is making it about the current administration when this is a problem that spans multiple administrations on both ends of the political spectrum. It's the same for policies that span the Trump and Obama administrations (and probably the W Bush and Clinton administrations too).
dredmorbius 7y ago

bsanr2 7y ago

Torn between, "Glad to see that, 'This news topic concerning death nd destruction is nearing the end of its cycle, let's see if we can extend it a bit by finally highlighting the problems that have sorely needed solving even longer in Africa,' is still a thing" and, "Someone wants to take the heat off of Bolsonaro using the tried-and-true method of exclaiming, 'Yeah well African governments are doing even worse!'".

eloff 7y ago
Not everything is a grand conspiracy. In fact, most things are not. This is most likely getting attention now, because it's related to the Amazon fires which successfully got our attention.
- bsanr2 7y ago
  It doesn't have to be a conspiracy. Just an annoyingly prevalent viewpoint among journalists. (See also: referring to things happening in specific locations Nigeria, Sudan, DRC, etc. as happening in "Africa".)

tomohawk 7y ago

It's always interesting to see what gets put into the news ahead of the big meetups like G7, and how that dovetails with the narrative that is being pushed. Of course, this destruction of rainforest is not a good thing, but it is not a new thing.

olivermarks 7y ago

I think we are seeing the weaponization of climate hysteria being used for regime change of the Jair Bolsonaro government. Not a fan of Jair Bolsonaro or burning forests, just making that point.

scythe 7y ago
I doubt there will be any regime change, it’s just a few loudmouths on twitter overestimating the EU’s ability to bully Brazil, much like Trump overestimated the US’s ability to bully Mexico. China, Japan, India, and maybe even a post-Brexit UK will have no problem picking up the demand if Europe “retaliates”. Dictatorships thrive on this kind of conflict and mistrust.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

lostlogin 7y ago

I’m picking it’s something automated that’s gone astray as immediately below the article is a link to Amazons stock price. “In this article AMZN AMAZON.COM INC 1,749.62USD-55.98-3.10%”

knolan 7y ago
I’d imagine the recent sale of Amazon Fire products is having similar unfortunate behaviour.

dictum 7y ago

The Minister of the Environment of Brazil tweeted the same article. https://mobile.twitter.com/rsallesmma/status/1165262442013835266 https://mobile.twitter.com/rsallesmma/status/116526244201383... (Yesterday, he said the Amazon should be monetized. With no other business plan besides a vague desire for increased ecotourism, the fires are the first step towards monetization.)

hu3 7y ago
> Yesterday, he said the Amazon should be monetized. With no other business plan besides a vague desire for increased ecotourism, the fires are the first step towards monetization Mind sharing the source?
- dictum 7y ago
  Paywalled (FT) https://www.ft.com/content/f791bbc6-c2c3-11e9-a8e9-296ca66511c9 https://www.ft.com/content/f791bbc6-c2c3-11e9-a8e9-296ca6651... > “The fact is that laws and regulations that were enacted and used for the past 10 or 20 years were too restrictive to the development of Amazon areas. That is why people go over to the illegal activities, to the criminal activities, because they don’t have a space to do something within the law,” Ricardo Salles said in an interview with the Financial Times.
  - hu3 7y ago
    I like the idea! Tourism is a great way to fund preservation.
    - dictum 7y ago
      This can work for smaller areas. Tourists get to see the result of preservation because can experience almost the full extent of the territory. However, for a larger area of which most parts are boring, unsafe and hard to reach, it's hard to cover preservation with such funds. Bolsonaro is unhappy with one such arrangement, covering a much smaller area: visitors pay a $50 fee, collected by the federal government, to enter the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha for a 10 day stay. He wants to the abolish the fee. Given his general outlook on taxes, I don't see how tourism could fund preservation, except for increasing its scale to a predatory level. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2019/07/taxa-de-fernando-de-noronha-e-roubo-diz-bolsonaro.shtml https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2019/07/taxa-de-fern... (in Portuguese)

Jedi72 7y ago

I hear there are people protesting outside embassies about the Amazon fires. I agree with that, but I hope people carry it through to protesting Australian embassies aswell. We're just as guilty of destroying the Great Barrier Reef for profit (I'm Australian). Seems unfair to single out Brazil.

mycall 7y ago
I thought the bleaching of the GB reef was due to higher nitrates in the water runoff as well as temperature rising.
- Sendotsh 7y ago
  Probably referring to this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/16/why-adanis-planned-carmichael-coalmine-matters-to-australia-and-the-world https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/16/why-adanis-...

buboard 7y ago

I can't read the article, what's up with fires? Fires are also a natural part of wild forest renewal. Are there unusally more fires worldwide this year?

seltzered_ 7y ago
They aren’t necessarily naturally triggered, and post-burn the land may be misused into industrial agriculture rather than restorative/forest regrown. Start here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/leaked-documents-show-brazil-bolsonaro-has-grave-plans-for-amazon-rainforest/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/leaked-do...

Proven 7y ago

Who cares. If I owned that land, I'd make sure it doesn't burn when it shouldn't.

fortran77 7y ago

Why do you think they're getting less attention?

guhcampos 7y ago

I see many fellow Brazilians have already made their points here, but I feel some clarification is due. First of all: forest fires are common here, and they are part of the natural cicle of the forest themselves. The real problem is not the size or count of those fires, but where they are happening. Deforestation has been blatant in Brazil for decades, but years of increased regulation had them on a continuous decreasing trend. Under the new government, however, it has surged again. Some sources mention deforestation areain 2019 might reach double the amount of 2018, although it's hard to trust any such information these days due to political appropriation of data and information channels. So with more deforestation, these fires are cutting deeper into the forest, into areas previously not touched by fire, some of which may never recover. As I mentioned: such fires are common, but at the edge of the forest where plant and wildlife are adapted to them. The ecosystem of the deeper jungle is completely different, and species from the edges, when not dead, are forced into areas they did not live before, either in or out of the forest. The impact of this movements is hard to predict, but bound to be disastrous. It would be bad enough if this was related to a more global climate trend or a natural cicle of things. What really hurts though is the fact that many of these fires are, however, intentionally started by people, driven by commercial interest in either developing or farming the land, almost always illegally, and as of recently encouraged by our very government officials. So, yeah, things are pretty bad, but hey have been so for a while and even if the numbers are worse in Angola and Congo, the conjunction of natural and political causes need to be taken into account.

yostrovs 7y ago
How are the fires encouraged? What does the different do exactly to promote them?
- guhcampos 7y ago
  There's this rethoric of blaming environmental laws for slowing down development or shrinking the economy, along with an almost childish "Europe has burned down their forests now they want ours" too. Justified by that, the government has aggressively cut budgets for multiple agencies responsible for environmental enforcement and monitoring, including a few high profile cases which led to the heads of INPE (Brasil's NASA) and ICMBio (which manages all National Parks) to resign in frustration.