Yeah, yeah, yeah and now tell us something new.
With wildfires raging across Europe, the race is on to repatriate thousands of British holidaymakers caught up in inferno hotspots.
Flights to bring back UK tourists stranded by the flames are due to land on the Greek island of Rhodes later, while another evacuation order has been issued for parts of Corfu.
Wildfires are also wreaking havoc across parts of southern Italy, with the risk of some breaking out in areas of Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Cyprus over the coming days.
It follows a week of record-breaking heat on the continent and has led to fears that many other British holidaymakers could have their summer getaways disrupted by the fires.
Somewhere in the attic I have a photograph of my old BMW R1100RS taken during a trip to Portugal. It’s in a forest. Well, what was a forest until it burned down. Wild fires are nothing new. The trip was in 1995 and the place still smelled of the recent burning. Talk to the locals (as we did) and they will tell you that it happens every so often. The forest then renews itself and the cycle starts again – as it has been doing since the dawn of time.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Especially as it appears 90% of these fires are due to arsonists.
Poor forest management causes or exacerbates a lot of them.
I heard that people are much keener nowadays at trimming back unwanted jungle, and maintaining unruly forest than they used to be.
Brazilians, in particular, I understand often cut lots of the forest away.
Or did I misunderstand?
A couple of news reports I’ve read Stony..
1 – The Greeks need a special scoop plane to put out these fires. The problem is, the only country on the planet who has them is Russia, and Greek borders are closed to Russians.
2 – The BBC were interviewing a British woman about the heatwave and she was attributing it to climate change (as they do), whilst standing there wearing a fleece.
Why are people so readily taken in by obvious propaganda? Even if you haven’t actually looked at temperatures over the past couple of hundred years, at least one’s own lifetime should tell you that all the dire catastrophes these people have prophesised have been utter codswallop. If someone is consistently wrong – as these doom merchants are – the rational thing to do is stop believing them, yet people still do. It’s garbage. Utter, utter garbage. I once believed it. The evidence contradicted that opinion, so I changed my opinion. It’s not difficult. There is no climate emergency and the climate does, indeed change – all by itself.
Those cunning Canadians have built some – they are called Canadair CL415 and there are quite a few in Europe – France has 12, Italy and Greece have 18 each, Spain has 25. Overall production is nearly 200. They are spectacular to watch – I have seen them in action.
One idea is that we’re actually too good at fighting forest fires. Usually they burn for a while, but then burn out.
Now we put them out too fast and the underscrub builds up because it isn’t being burnt off, until the conditions are right for a conflagration that is just too big to control.
When wildfires are reported by the media, it is always implied that they are getting worse and more frequent. Never stated outright because the opposite is actually true. Outright lying is usually avoided because they usually get called out for it.
Most of these fires come from careless people. There were some in Devon last year, no forests involved, but scrubland. People will use throwaway BBQs and drop fag ends. Doesn’t take much when we get a long dry period and the grass, shrubs, trees are dry and brittle. People have smoked for years but not sure when the BBQs came about.
Perhaps these fires are man made. Also the areas are more built up so will cause an impact on humans. It must be scary when it is encroaching on your town. Just hope no one dies.
“record-breaking heat on the continent”
The Daily Torygraph had full pages of hysterical tourists in Rome and Athens, in temperatures of “46 degrees Celsius”. Turn to the back page, and look at the official European temperatures for the same day. Rome, Athens: 36 degrees.
Their contenmpt for the public is so great they cannot even be bothered to make their lies consistent.
Grown-ups call it summer.
Yep. Calling the same bullshit on BBC Weather.
BBC has a big 40C sign slapped over coastal/Med France where we are going on vacation. Where partners mother is currently. She says it’s a bit warm but peaks about 29C at midday.
So, not just codswallop, but lying codswallop.
The powers that be have redefined “the temperature” to be taken from the surface of the ground, not the air temperature at 6 feet above the ground.
Stand on a piece of black tarmac in bare feet and see if “Globull Warbling” is increasing …