Maybe it depends on the context of the seemer in question. I can't pretend to unravel the matter of their ecological impact; it seems to me that question has t

Maybe it depends on the context of the seemer in question. I can't pretend to unravel the matter of their ecological impact; it seems to me that question has too much nuance for a casual observer of the literature to unravel. However from the perspective of actually being near these things, I can say for sure that they're worse than I anticipated. The smoke is far more unpleasant than I anticipated. The fires also burn hotter and faster than I expected. Before having some personal experience with forest fires I thought that paved roads (certainly at least highways) would be effective fire breaks and that motorists would be largely unimpacted by a fire on the side of the road, but I now know these fires to be disturbingly powerful. They can stall out your car and roast you so hard you turn into a charred skeleton.