Here, way way south of the Rio Grande, all news channels are discussing it. Some say it's not worse than a few years ago but the political stink with brazilian president Bolsonaro is blowing it out of proportions.

Got people protesting in front of the Brazilian Embassies everywhere. The local one is just a couple of blocks away.

Bolivia is said to have large uncontrolled fires and that the winds have sent the smoke as far as Sao Paol, Brazil. The largest polupated city in south america.

Down here, a month short of Spring, it is cold still. The smoke is not supposed to reach this far under current weather conditions.

So, what's SF take on this one?

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Keep us updated, I have just heard a couple of passing mentions in the news but that could be just my situation.

I understand that the green hand wringers are worried the end is near now.

HK Ag

I have seen it reported on the TV news three times today. I would like to know what is true and what is not.

Real-time satellite data shows it is bad but not at an unprecedented level: Linky

More hype and fear-mongering by the usual suspects.

Hollywood is saying that this will destroy the planet, oh my God.

https://www.breitbart.com/ente...earth-are-in-flames/

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:
Hollywood is saying that this will destroy the planet, oh my God.

https://www.breitbart.com/ente...earth-are-in-flames/

I missed in the article what they were actually doing to put out fires or provide economical and environmentally friendly ways for farmers to clear land? How much did they donate to purchase fire fighting equipment? When is the event they have planned to raise money for the efforts? I'd chip in a few bucks to save our lungs. Please celebrities tell me how we can make this happen.

The leftist lost the election and now everything is the new President's fault, the sky is falling and capitalism is bad....sound familiar?

I heard rumor of a gas or oil company being denied rights to passage or something, right before the fires.

I haven't been able to really research it myself yet... but wondering what being said down there...

What they say in Argentina:

It´s been like this before already. It´s serious.

Farmers/landowners/Huge Companies are the cause. People set the jungle on fire so they can get use it later for farming. Therefore, it´s fluid and ongoing situation.

The fires cover a surface the size of France.

Thing is that countries like Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil, where this is happening, do not have the resources, the political will and the knowledge to handle such a massive event.
Over 35000 sources active at any moment.

The political angle is that when the smoke reached Sao Pablo and the crisis became globaly known, the Brazilian president made it known he didn´t care much about it. Tree huggers went bananas.

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I'm embarrassed to admit that when I quickly scanned the thread title on my small phone screen I thought it read Amazon was burning, as in the online retailer business.

I don't watch TV often, but listen to radio mostly and the top/ bottom of the hour news breaks, while not leading with the Amazonian fire story, have mentioned it several times. One of the stats that they've been repeating is that %20 of the earth's O2 supply comes from this region...following former Obama administration's Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuelle's mantra "never let a crisis go to waste", the national news appears to be ginning up the Global Warming/ Climate Change narrative...which is a shame to see tragedies of the fire's proportion politicized. Living in a state that has a long history of wild fires and experiencing large scale wild fire devastation locally, I'm praying for you guys down there and hoping you are able to get the fires under control before the hot weather sets in.

With all the fires we have had in the past our state has assembled an air attack wild fire fighting squadron. Although we have a few fires in the state, a cool wet Winter/ Spring and snows as late as June have helped to minimize our wild fires this Summer and so we recently sent a 747 tanker to Bolivia to help fight the fires.

https://fireaviation.com/2019/...ildfires-in-bolivia/

The UN is apparently upset; Macron of France wants some kind of international intervention since the UK and Germany apparently withheld foreign assistance to punish the Brazilians for not fighting this more aggressively. It really does look like an anti-Trump reaction as much as anything given that I've never heard of an international reaction on this scale before.

Apparently a lot of misinformation up here. Fox News featured it briefly and pointed out that most of the photos being shown were from years ago.

flashguy

As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database, a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data.


https://earthobservatory.nasa....5464/fires-in-brazil

Instead of condemning and monitoring Israel, the UN could instead allocate that budget on agriculture and development assistance for these S.American countries who can't seem to understand that continual burning of a rain forest may not be the best solution to land clearing.

TXJIM, thanks for posting that. So NASA says it’s about the same as usual and will stop around November, and all these pequeñas pollos are screaming “the sky is falling”? WTAF?

quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:
As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database, a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data.


https://earthobservatory.nasa....5464/fires-in-brazil

^^^ THIS!

I was listening to NPR yesterday (sorry) and they had some “expert” on there pontificating the end of the world as we know it but when he was questioned he admitted that while there were more individual fires than last year the amount of acreage was about the same...funny how they don’t mention that on most reports.

Now don’t get me wrong, the burning of the Amazon is not a good thing but let’s put it in proper perspective...

^^ If there was one thing Macron made clear, it's that this is a campaign against burning in the Amazon in general - "lungs of the globe", species diversity, medical breakthroughs, etcetera. The idea is to treat Brazil's greatest natural resource as somehow being held in trust for the world rather than being used as a springboard for Brazil to develop itself. Think in terms of Californians insisting that half of Nevada has to be declared inviolable national park land so that, in theory, San Franciscans have somewhere pretty to ride their overpriced mountain bikes on vacation and you're on the right track.

It's Trumps fault.

Aren’t the “lungs of the globe” still diatoms? (like they have been for millions of years)

I don’t like burning to clear space for farms but people do have to feed themselves.
The number of times we’ve been told the end is near is REALLY getting annoying.

It's even more annoying when you stop to think how aggressively things grow in the Amazon.