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This is just another political play to oust Bolsonaro, the Brazil's president, from power. There have already been EU voices pushing for sanctions against Brazi
by molteanu 7y ago
This is just another political play to oust Bolsonaro, the Brazil's president, from power. There have already been EU voices pushing for sanctions against Brazil and the Amazon fires are on the G7 agenda which brings a lot of negative press against the political body in Brazil. All the while central Africa is also ravaged by fires but you don't hear that in the news.
Like most of what you hear in the big press, it comes with an agenda. It's not the case that a 'zero' was mispelled or enough info was not available, thus the erroneous reporting. You won't win the argument that way. The piece simply has another purpose from the one it is claiming to have, in this case, that future generations will say that the fires wiped out the entire human civilization in all it's glory at the hand of the Brazilian president. Ergo, he has to go until it's not too late.
- dev_dull 7y agoYou’re being downvoted, but it clearly is a political move. The fires aren’t even outside of the average and already countries are applying political pressure on the president. When the facts are detached from the narrative, it’s usually a political story.
- Bjartr 7y agoI heard the fires were up by 87% from last year, no matter the base rate, nearly double seems to qualify as "outside the average"
- alacombe 7y agoNot according to NASA... https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-brazil https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-bra...
- skosch 7y agoThat article is from over a week ago, and it cites http://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html#amazon http://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html#amazon, which has since been updated. Indeed, people are burning more this year than they did in the past few years – any burning at all has always been unacceptable, but if the current spike is what it takes to finally create some international outrage and put pressure on Bolsonaro, then I'll gladly take it.
- gus_massa 7y ago> any burning at all has always been unacceptable It's a traditional farming practice that has been used all over the word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn The idea is that you can burn a small place, cultivate it for a few years and then abandon it so the natural grow of the forest regenerate it. And some years later repeat the cicle. When the population is small it's fine because the time between burn and burn was enough for the soil and forest to recover. When the population increase the time gets too small and the forest has not enough tome to recover, and after a few cicles you have problems like reduction of fertility, erosion and desertification.
- skosch 7y agoFalse. The 2019 fires are way outside of the average: http://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html http://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html Also, what you call average is only the average over the past few years, which means: illegal loggers and ranchers burning the forest on purpose. The true long-term average is a healthy forest with very few fires.
- icebraining 7y agoCan you point out where that page supports that claim? > only the average over the past few years That only reinforces in the point; if the numbers changed from the average a few years ago, why the sudden massive response just now?
- mrpopo 7y agoThe fires were man-made back then too and there was uproar about it, and the situation improved a lot. But even then deforestation was still ongoing. So it's a step back, meanwhile the deforestation rate never reached 0.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- meerita 7y agoYou're being downvoted and I also know why because it's 100% political. It's amazing that HN people downvote this and don't attach to the current evidence (the NASA report) which is 100% clear the fires aren't a new thing and there's no killing amazonia conspiracy from Bolsonaro.