You've probably seen
some wildfire photos
online, or on television:
Like the stock wildfire
photo I used above,
few of the photos
were taken this year,
and some were not
even of fires in the
Amazon.
I'm sure "climate
change" is usually
blamed, or implied
to be the cause.
That's nonsense,
of course, just like
blaming climate
change for the
California wild
fires last year
was nonsense.
If an area is dry,
and could burn,
then being a few tenths
of a degree warmer
from "climate change"
will make no difference.
The skies above Sao Paulo,
Brazil suddenly turned black
at three in the afternoon
last Monday.
The cause was raging fires
in South America, and
weather conditions that
pushed particulate matter
over the city.
Day became night.
Videos and images
posted on social media,
by local residents,
showed pedestrians
under black skies,
and cars driving in
mid-afternoon with
their headlights on.
Fires on our planet
stretched from
South America
all the way up
to the Arctic.
Some of the fires produced
so much smoke they were
easily visible from space.
Wildfires are not unusual.
The count has been high
so far this year.
The number fires in Brazil,
so far in 2019,
as tracked by the
National Institute for
Space Research (INPE),
were the most for the
same period since 2013.
Note that 2019 is
only the seventh year
of data collection.
which started in 2013.
There have been more than
74,000 wildfires in Brazil
so far in 2019, most of them
in the Amazon rainforest:
Approximately 60% of the
Amazon rainforest is in
Brazilian territory.
9,000 fires were raging
in Brazil last week, and
up to 640 million acres
have been affected.
There were also
50 large wildfires burning
in a dozen U.S. states.
The worst fires were happening
in Alaska, where more than
400,000 acres were burning.
The McKinley Fire destroyed
at least 50 structures, about
100 miles north of Anchorage.
The Arctic as a whole has seen
unusually high wildfire activity
this summer.
Meanwhile, the U.S. experienced
one of the coldest winters ever,
during the first half of this year,
and the middle of our country
experienced unprecedented
rainfall and flooding.
Every year there's
unusual weather
somewhere,
with or without
gradual long term
climate change.